Reading between the lines of Yelp Reviews - I'm a data geek.

Reviews are not always what they appear, especially on Yelp.  This post won't get into the nitty gritty about filtering, shill reviews, and other shenanigans, but this post will give a different view of how you can read between the reviews on Yelp.

*Note: This data generally applies to Austin-area restaurants (trailer or brick and mortar).  This does not apply to other types of businesses or mail order food products.  I have not looked at the data concerning those types of businesses. I have not looked at data in other cities. If you have a restaurant, don't fret if your review behavior doesn't line up with what generally happens.  Your restaurant might just be an outlier.  This will not apply.  

*In less webbie (or techie) locations or places with a smaller population, I find Yelp to be only marginally useful. 

When I use Yelp for search, the first two questions I have are:

• 1. What is the average star rating?
• 2. How many ratings? 

In Austin, you would expect a successful places to have a relatively large number (more than 75) of reviews after a year.  If the location has very few reviews after being open for a year or so, my next questions are:

• 1. Who wrote the reviews?
• 2. Is there anything that makes this place an outlier (difficult to reach location, odd hours, unavailable to the public, special events only, or otherwise)?
• 3.When I Google this location, is there anything odd on the web?  Is the owner an axe-murderer?

After making sure that there was nothing that made this place a horrendous outlier, I would think read the actual reviews for the qualitative data.  This is typically a laborious process just to figure out where I should eat. 


After going through this routine of trying to interpret the data, I found that the review behavior is much more telling than the reviews themselves.  Any place can have a high average star rating as it is fairly easy manipulate.  A restaurant can have only four ratings of five stars each, geee...... that restaurant looks perfect doesn't it?  I would beg to differ, the low number of ratings could be because people really dislike the restaurant and avoid it, or it could be that some Yelp users just don't write about negative experiences.  In any case, a low number of reviews after being open for business for a significant amount of time is a red warning flag.

Being the big data geek that I am, I've looked at review behavior for many restaurants over a long period of time.  One thing that stuck out was that successful restaurant consistently garnered reviews, positive and negative.  Not so successful restaurants would stagnate after an initial burst of reviews, garnering maybe one review every month or so.  In my interpretation of that behavior, a restaurant with a four-star average with a consistently growing number of reviews is a much better choice than a restaurant with perhaps a 4.5 star average, only a handful of reviews, and the latest review was two months ago.  Personally, I would rather eat at a restaurant with a lower average rating that had consistent growth in their reviews rather than a restaurant with a high average rating but no new reviews.  That's just my interpretation of the data, and my opinion. 

I will also add that public relations effort does have an impact on the review behavior, but only significantly in the early days of a restaurant's opening.  There will inevitably be a spurt of reviews (positive or negative) when a restaurant first opens, but if the restaurant fails to perform, the reviews stop coming in.  Additionally, if the restaurant participates in branding and publicity efforts, that might cause other spurts of reviews.  However, it doesn't change the review behavior significantly in the long term.

The chart above is something I created to model the review behavior, and it is based off of many Austin restaurants.  I will not list the ones that are unsuccessful, but I'll point out one that is successful.  The Noble Pig is a great example of a successful restaurant that did not engage in a large public relations effort.  They have been open for only about six months, and they are located a 40 minute drive away from downtown; yet they already have 69 reviews to-date with a 4.5 star rating.  Even though the location makes them an outlier, they are consistently garnering reviews.  That's a place I would definitely visit again, and again, and again.  *Disclosure: I met the chef at several events, and I really like his sandwiches. 

This post is just a suggestion that reviews and star ratings should just be taken with a grain of salt.  Looking at review behavior can give you more in-depth look at a restaurant's success. I'm using the word "success" loosely.  You can define it however you like.

@GoogleHotPot:The Evolution of Search, Social Media, and Community

I've been mulling over this topic on and off for the last couple of months. Google HotPot made it's debut recently, and there are many more issues to discuss in this post. Isn't everything social media these days?  If it is online and you can have "friends," it must be social media.  Simon Salt and I have debated (friendly, of course because we're both friendly) about this issue and Yelp.  We both run around in similar circles, and we both use similar tools. But we view them in different ways.  *My opinions are well, my opinions, and they do not reflect on any of the Yelp community managers or users. **I don't work for Google, Yelp, or any other like website. Side 1: Yelp is social media.  You can add friends. You can meet people who become your friends.  You can send messages to your friends.  It must be social. Side 2: Yelp is crowd sourced content. People write reviews, and they sort through reviews.  Though Yelp has a community in select cities, those are free-standing and created after content starts to come in. I used to be on side 2.  Simon was on side 1. Yelp is full of reviews that come from people who want to voice their opinions.  Those opinions are combined into a star rating.  That is the quick and dirty of it. However,a deeper look into why Yelp was leaps and bounds ahead of similar sites like Chowhounds or Urbanspoon was because they had a community.  They built communities after there was enough momentum by hiring an official community manager (to keep the peace and to put on parties) and started the Elite badging system.  Having been in two separate Yelp communities (Houston and Austin) and attending a Yelp Elite event in San Francisco, I could easily see that each community has a distinct demographic, personality, and dynamics.  You might have remembered my post about the destruction of the Austin Yelp Community by de-eliting Michelle C.   Since then, the communities have worsened in my opinion.  Long-time users began to fade away, the speed of reviews posted seemed to slow, and the talk threads because much less active.  During the 2011 eliting week, threads like this one and this one brought about heated conversations.  Anyone who crossed Yelp, created problems for Yelp, or  voiced their opinions louder than Yelp did not have their elite status renewed.  I was one of those people who did not have their 2011 elite badge, and I was surprised at first.  At SXSW 2010, I spoke at a core convesation with Addie Broyles about how review sites were changing the restaurant review landscape.  As Yelp was just slapped with lawsuits, it quickly became Yelp-centric.  I stood up for the Yelp community (the users), and I gave my unbiased opinion about Yelp's role in the restaurant reviews.  I still think that they had a genius model.  Before community became a buzzword, they were building them.  Yelp was one of the first websites that hosted in person meet ups.  I wish I had thought of that and executed as well as they did.  Anyways, after my post about how they were destroying the community and my voice in the social media world, Yelp was displeased and did not renew my elite status as well.  They didn't give my the axe after the blog post, when I was expecting it.  They waited four months later.  That portion of Yelp's Corporate email to me read: "We also understand that you are a social media consultant. Though not technically a business owner, there is an inherent conflict of interest with being Yelp elite and a social media consultant. Per the above, unfortunately we are unable to welcome you back to the Elite Squad at this time."     I'm putting that on all my future resumes.  :o)  It's kind of flattering that an individual that has my own consulting service on the side would be a conflict of interest with a giant website.  You might be asking yourself, "Who cares about the community?  I don't care about those people, I just want to see the ratings."  And you're absolutely right in asking.  I don't think Yelp is going to fold just because the communities are less loyal, less active, but I know that I'm going to shift how I categorize Yelp.  Yelp to me is turning into a search tool, a very useful one at that.  I frequently listen and read Jason Calicanus and Fred Wilson's blogs and podcast, and both of them use Yelp (mobile too).  But I've never heard or read of Jason or Fred commenting about feeling right at home with the Yelp community.  Most of the comments are about the search features.  I too really like the search feature on Yelp mobile.  I can drive into a new location, hit find close to me button, and start weeding it through.  However, one time late at night, Yelp recommended that I get dinner at the Yellow Rose, the gentlemen's club.  I declined that recommendation.  The numbers geek inside me really likes that you can get more data.  While there is more noise in Yelp data (variability in reviews), if I didn't know the source, I would rather look at the reviews of 100 people instead of 5 people.  Statistically, more reviews are more favorable. I'll update my views of Yelp.  It isn't crowd-sourced content driven by a strong community anymore.  Honestly, who is going to join a community just to find out where to eat a taco?  Now that a particular threshold of content already exists (at least in Austin and other larger cities), Yelp is a great search tool.  I use Yelp to collaborate with my friend's recommendations, and I often read reviews to see what dishes are extra tasty (or not). The Evolution of Search : GoogleHotPot Search is great, and who is the typical suspect in search?  Google.  Google recently launched their HotPot product that could throw a wrench into the current review sites.  I listened to the This Week in Startups podcast with Lior Ron (the product developer of GoogleHotPot) several times.  Lior Ron describes HotPot as the evolution of search, making search personalized and socially relevant - almost like a Netflix or Pandora for places.  I would add that there's an even more social aspect to this type of search.   A different type of community. Even though GoogleHotPot is a search, there are still community components to it.  Google users have friends.  You can share information with your friends and you can read information posted by your friends.  The community is already there, and users are sharing the information with each other which is similar to a social media tool.  Yelp on the other hand, tried to nurture a community by bringing together users to contribute content.  Sure, there is a community, but that community didn't exist without the Yelp platform.  The Yelp community was created after the platform was available.  I view GoogleHotPot as giving a community a tool, and Yelp built a community on a platform.  You can watch/listen to TWIST episode with Lior Ron here. What can GoogleHotPot do for users?    1. You wouldn't have to go to multiple review sites (Yelp, Chow, UrbanSpoon) to see reviews.  GoogleHotPot collects the ratings and shows it to you in a pretty box. 2. You can start to personalize the searches, and thusly improve recommendations.  Every time you rate a place, Google starts to learn what you like and don't like, and thusly adjusting recommendations to you.  I've asked Yelp about this several times to no avail.  I wanted a tool where Yelp would discard reviews from people who did not share the same taste preferences or styles of food as well.  From a data perspective, their ratings and reviews would be ignored by me anyways. 3. You are already in your community.  Since GoogleHotPot is on your Google profile, it is easy to add friends that are already in your email box.  No need to join a new community or to start one.  You already have your community of friends that you can add to your GoogleHotPot.  I have just shy of a quajillion contacts on Google.  I already know these people, and I already communicate with them. What can GoogleHotPot do for businesses? 1. Your business shows up on Google.  They don't adjust or change your rankings, but you get to highlight when you are on Google.  With Yelp, you have to hope that Yelp's SEO will get your Yelp page ranked high on the first page.  And well, Yelp business pages aren't getting as high as they used to.  There were some Yelp business pages that I couldn't find on Google.  However, Yelp talk threads are still highly ranked. Like really highly ranked. 2. Information that Google gives business owners for free: Update your details, phone number, address, hours, photos, or special announcements. Business intelligence and insights via a dashboard. Where are people coming from (physically)? What queries are people searching to find you? Impressions (and mobile impressions) User behavior on your Google Places 3. The ability to add tags to highlight your business when it shows up in Google.  The fee to for the tags is only $25 per month.  That is very affordable, even to small businesses. You add tags to enhance: Photos of your business Videos of your business Coupons for your listing Menu for your restaurant Reservations page for your business Posts for your business Other benefits are: Easily and inexpensively highlight your listing on Google from Google Places. Potential customers in your local area will see what you think is most important or unique about your business. Track the effectiveness of your tag with your Google Places dashboard. There is no additional work or ongoing management is needed. 3. Boost, which is like Google adwords.  I can tell you from experience that the Boost is effective on mobile devices.  I once searched for a business by name, and all the similar businesses who had Boost showed up on my Google Map.  The actual business I was searching did not.  That can be a very practical way for businesses to edge out the competition in the mobile space. What's in the future?    I can't tell you how GoogleHotPot will pan out.  To be honest, Google has had their fair share of failed products like Wave and Buzz.  However, unlike HotPot, Wave and Buzz relied entirely on people to talk to each other using Google tools.  GoogleHotPot is capitalizing on content that already exists.  That might make or break this new product.  After attending the Launch Conference, I also saw that new tools that were quoted to be like the "Netflix of _________."  Whether or not GoogleHotPot takes off, it is pretty obvious that search is evolving.     You might wonder why I've made such a big deal about GoogleHotPot, I kind of love Chinese hot pot.  That's my comfort food, one of them anyways.

How to spot fake reviews

You're a business owner, and you're wondering how other businesses get so many reviews.  How did Uchi get 527 reviews with an average of 4.5 stars on Yelp (as of 1/1/11)?  How did Sugar Mama's get 314 reviews with an average of 4.5 stars on Yelp (as of 1/1/11)?  How come no one is talking about your business?  *I know that Uchi and Sugar Mama's do NOT engage in the behavior described below.  Thusly, I feel comfortable using their data.  The temptation sets in.  You want more people to know about you.  You think no one will find out.  You're antsy for people to click on your website link.  You make a fake account on Yelp.  You give yourself five stars.  You wait a few minutes.  That wasn't too bad.  So you make another fake account.  You give yourself another five stars.  That was easy.  On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog right?  So you do it again. And again. And again.  Now you have seven positive reviews.  Job well done!  You ask your employees to log onto Yelp and to write reviews.  You ask all your friends, suppliers, regulars, and family members to do it.  It isn't technically wrong, if you don't get caught.  What an easy way to increase your ratings and pump up those reviews.  WRONG. It isn't long before you get sniffed out.  You're slammed on the Master Debater's Threads, and Google Alerts show that you have been caught red-handed.  Moral of the story. Don't write fake reviews.  Social media and crowd sourced content sites already spark controversy and debate.  Throw in examples of fake reviews written by business owners or their rivals, and everyone goes bananas.  Transparency in social media has been the norm with demand for honesty ever growing.  Users want to be able to put a face with a social media voice, and rest assured that conflicts of interests are revealed.  No one wants to be tricked.    As a consumer, you do want to know which reviews are honest.  Here's some quick tips on sniffing them out. Photo and name (Lack of online presence).  No photos and fake names are often hallmarks (though not always) of fake reviews.  Some fake reviewers have become savvy and will use a stock photo on the profile, and a generic screen name.  Stock photos (often flowers, trees, or puppies) are pretty easy to spot. Names are more difficult to gauge, but there are several ways to investigate. You can Google the screen name along with the city (example: Jennie C. Austin or MisoHungry Austin).  If nothing turns up, then it can get suspicious.  On occasion, the business owners and employees will use their real names and photos when reviewing their own businesses.  That's a dead give away as it is easy to check websites for business owner names or to find via Linkedin.com.  Sometimes, they will also write the review in first person.  "I worked really hard to open this restaurant" doesn't seem unbiased to me.  Location listed on the profile.  If the location listed is not in same town that the businesses, look for other reviews in the same town.  Frequently, travelers review more than one business when visiting other cities.  If a person from Montana reviews just a single business in Austin, that would raise eyebrows.  It is unlikely (but not impossible) that an out-of-towner would review a business that isn't already well-known.  Depth and breadth of reviews.  The number of reviews, types of businesses reviewed, and the details of the reviews are also very telling.  Lack of depth and breadth generally means that the person doesn't invest much time in the reviews or only selects particular businesses to review for whatever reason.  Those types of reviews are typically vague, lack descriptions, and are generic.  Here's some examples of vague reviews (names removed):  ********* has small plates packed with big flavor. Perfect place to meet for a drink and gently roll into dinner. Appreciated the guidance of the staff with perfect pairings of both beer and wine for our dishes. We ended up ordering the entire menu and nothing disappointed! Welcome to the neighborhood,*******! Wow, the ****** are amazing!!!!! I love all the*********, my favorite was the *******. I also had the ******* which was pure, literally....and wonderful on the recent cloudy cool days.  On a warmer day, the ****** is heaven on earth! What a novelty, can't believe I've never seen ******* anywhere else. This place is off the hizzy. HmmmMmmm I know what good is and this place is good, ya hear?  Other contributions and timing of reviews.  If the reviews for the business were written before the business opened, you better believe that raises the red flag.  Also, contributing photos of "behind the scenes" or construction shots of a business is an indicator of conflict of interest with the business.  If you see the same shots uploaded to a review site that are on a photographer's portfolio, that is a dead give away.  *Anyone that has a relationship with the business or conflict of interest should either disclose it in a review or not review at all.  Narrow range of businesses reviewed and aspects revealed.  This is a completely hypothetical example, though it has happened before with other suppliers.  A supplier naturally wants their customers to flourish, so they might be tempted to write reviews for their customers.  You might find a Yelp user that reviews only sushi restaurants, and the reviews praises only the freshness of the fish, how it is handled, and how it is prepared.  The reviewer's profile might say something about fish or link to a fish wholesaler website.  It is highly likely that the profile might belong to the restaurants' fish supplier.  That should be disclosed OR reviews of the restaurants in question should be avoided.  I can understand that a supplier really wants to let everyone know about their great ingredients and food, but the behavior should still be avoided. There are other ways to let people know about the ingredients.  Sometimes reviewers will outright say that they "are employees, and that's why they know the quality of the food is so great."  Oops. Sometimes the only other reviews are for other businesses in the same family (same owners).  Positive reviews of every single store in a chain is a little less than subtle.    The same review (or clusters of reviews) appear on multiple websites, sometimes posted within minutes of each other.  That's waving the giant red flag of "someone on our marketing team was given the task of copying and pasting fake reviews to different websites this morning."  A cluster of positive reviews pop up right after a single negative review.  Sometimes businesses have fake profiles in waiting.  If they receive a negative review, they immediately unleash several positive reviews.  It is pretty obvious when they are lined up chronologically. Those are just some ways that fake reviewers are sniffed out.  The best defense against them is the time it takes to create believable fake profiles/online presence.  *I've been going back and forth on whether or not I should write this.  I thought that in writing this, shady businesses owners might find tricks to appear less fake.  Honestly though, to create an online presence to does not escape the vigilant detection of savvy internet users and the likes of the Google machine would take hours upon hours.  I would guess that it would take no less than 50-100 hours per fraudulent online presence.  The likelihood of a business investing that many hours into a single fake review is extremely low.  Those types of businesses wouldn't even invest the time in reading this post. I don't think this blog post will affect these behaviors at all.

Yelp's New Transparency Bad New for Businesses who write shill reviews

Yelp is trying to turn things around.  Public distrust.  Angry business owners.  Three class-action law suits.  Yelp has been on many people's naughty list lately, and they have implemented something new to turn that all around.  They have allowed previously "filtered" or "suppressed" reviews to be viewed by anyone and everyone.  Here's several links to the details on that, and I'll avoid rehashing all that information.   Yelp's Official Blog Post about Filtering Mashable's Blog post about Filtering However, I spent a large chunk of time studying Austin business reviews, and here's what it means to users and to businesses (from my limited information that is).  I noticed that some businesses has only 10% of reviews filtered while others had more filtered reviews than reviews visible (i.e. 28 reviews visible, 47 filtered).  The percentiles were highly variable.  I haven't seen any patterns to them yet.  A few other things I gathered included: 1. Yelp has increased it's transparency, and that is bad news for sneaky businesses out there.  With the filtered reviews exposed, I easily found many businesses who wrote themselves shill reviews either using their own names or only writing positive reviews for other businesses they owned.  It appears that even if reviews are flagged by the community as being fake (i.e. the master debater's thread) they are either filtered or deleted due to violation of terms of service (TOS).  While I can't be absolutely certain due to the limits of information I have, I think they are deleted and placed below the filtered reviews.  You can't read the reviews anymore, but you can see who wrote them. 2. One thing I do notice is that the filtering system is fairly ineffective.  Sometimes it filters out people with 20 reviews, yet it leaves people with only one review unfiltered. Sometimes it filters out people who have spent a significant amount of time writing a thoughtful review, yet it leaves people with one-line reviews visible on the business page. That's the problem with having an algorithm do your work.  3. The users who have filtered reviews (if everything is truly computer run numbers) should have all their reviews filtered.  I did find this to be true for the few people I researched on Yelp, but I can't be absolutely sure that this is true for all users who have filtered reviews.  Also, on the user(s)' profile page, it does not show whether or not their other reviews have been filtered.  It is also unlikely that any of these users know that their reviews have been filtered.  Theoretically, there should be a waiting period for all new users who have to work their way out of the filter by crossing whatever threshold the algorithm uses.  Yelp does not inform new users about that they are being filtered, which can be good or bad.  New users probably have a difficult time understanding the concept of filtering, and it might scare off new users from joining if they have to read a bunch of rules and regulations.  However, I think that if new Yelp users were informed of this filtering mechanism, Yelp might see more engaged new users.  That's all speculation though.  I can't think of any psychology studies examining commitment to a social community if there was a heavy time investment upfront without immediate reward.  4. It appears that some administratively removed reviews are never shown in the deleted reviews.  I noticed very recently that Yelp had administratively deleted all reviews for a business if they were written before the business officially opened (i.e. Urban An American Grill and Lick it Bite it or Both).  After the business opened, those reviews did not reappear nor did they appear in the filtered or deleted review section.  It is my understanding that Yelp administrators would send an email to each of the users informing them that the review was removed.  However, there have also been some claims about missing reviews without an email from administration.  It does appear that all other administratively removed reviews that were flagged by the community do appear in the deleted review section.   My advice for businesses is to scroll through your filtered reviews.  If they were written by yourself, your employees, or your friends, delete them as soon as possible.  These reviews might have been previously filtered and not visible to the Yelp community.  Now that they are visible to the Yelp community, users might feel as if you were trying to fool them with fake reviews and retaliate.  You might have escaped the master debater's thread previously, but now you can't hide those filtered reviews.  Even if users flag them now as shill reviews, they might still end up in the deleted section.  Deleting them now from the accounts you've (or employees or friends) created is the only way that they will disappear.  Additionally, reviews that are deleted are not searchable and do not come up in Google searches.  Threads, however, have no delete or edit button.  If you are called out on a thread, it is there to stay forever.  *Google can find quotes from filtered reviews though.  Yelp has taken steps to be more transparent, but that also means that the businesses must also be more transparent.  You can run and hide, but not for long.

SXSWi 2010 Core Conversation: The Yelp Effect

Yelp is the new four-letter word.  Slapped with three class-action lawsuits, there is no doubt that Yelp brings out the fury in business owners.  I'm a Yelp user, and I have been since 2008.  Addie Broyles and I hosted a core conversation at SXSW 2010 entitled "The Yelp Effect: When Everyone's a Restaurant Critic."  The original focus was to discuss how user-generated reviews had changed the challenges that restaurants faced, but it quickly turned into a conversation about Yelp.  She_Eats from the Houston Press wrote up a very thorough review of the conversation, and the hashtag for the conversation was #theyelpeffect.  Here's some of my personal thoughts that we may not have discussed at SXSW.  I am NOT employeed by Yelp, nor do I have any comments on their legal situation.  I'm a user that sees both the good and bad of Yelp.  A big thank you to the always thoughtful Addie Broyles for inviting me to share my thoughts.   1. Yelp is a social community, and reviews are the commonality among the users.  Many people see Yelp as a review site, which it is, but it also a community of people who happen to write reviews.  Yelp uses have also been called anonymous.  This may be true for the lurkers or the mostly inactive users on Yelp, but most users are NOT anonymous.  In the age of social media, most of the users are identifiable.  Users are pretty easily identified by the places they review, their photos, or other profile information.  Even users with the most generic profiles have been identified by the community.  This business was sniffed out by the community, and well, it didn't go over so well.  To say that users are completely anonymous is a misunderstanding.  Additionally, Yelp Elite members are required to use their real names and real photos.  2. "I don't trust Yelp."  This was a common phrase muttered at the core conversation, and I would totally agree if I didn't know many of the Austin Yelp users in person.  While I do read reviews and view star ratings with a grain of salt, there are some users that I do trust.  I know their likes and dislikes.  I know that they have experience dining out.  And I know that there are not the type to give a restaurant a low rating without considerable thought.  3. "People on Yelp must be *insert derogatory adjective here.*"  The demographics of Yelp users might actually surprise you.  Most users are over 21, well-educated, and typically interested in food beyond just stuffing their faces.  You might think that Yelp users must be lazy-do nothings because they "waste" their time on Yelp.  Here's a video on cognitive surplus that might help you understand why people use online tools including Twitter, Blogging, and Facebook.  Spending time socializing with people (even if online) is not a waste of time in my opinion.  They are contributing to a community, and using that cognitive surplus.  4. "10% of the dining experience comes from the food." There are so many factors that influence one's mood, perception, and memory of a dining experience that ultimately feeds into review.  Stay with me for a moment as I dive into some academia.  People in happy moods tend to ignore negative information, and people in grumpy moods tend to think more logically about situations.  There's an vast amount of research in the field of social psychology that investigates that impact of mood on perception and memory.  For example: Let's say that I receive terrible service along with some fairly satisfying and tasty food.  I would hazard to guess that the service might put a damper on my experience and therefore I might rate the restaurant worse the food actually was.  On the other hand, there are some restaurants I frequent because no matter how terrible my day was, they always put me in a good mood.  Thank you @FSAustin and @MilanoAustin. Perspective also influences memory.  Research has shown that in relationships, people who are anxiously attached (about 10% of the population) tend to remember things much worse than they actually were. People who are securely attached (about 60-70% of the population) tend not to remember past events as bad as they were, or they may not remember them at all.  At the Business of Software Conference 2009, Dr. Jennifer Aaker gave a presentation about Disneyland.  Disneyland is actually a miserable place. The lines are long.  The food is expensive.  But our memories of Disney are fantastic.  Disney is so skilled at branding and framing, that we have great memories of the miserable time we had.  That's just some food for thought.  5. Yelp can be likened to a focus group for your business.  People come, pay, and give you feedback.  What's more?  They are your actual consumers.  What better focus group can you get than to get actual consumers?  However, the catch with this focus group is that they put it online for the world to see.  My advice for a business would be to use their free business owner's account to reply (politely).  That reply is also up for the world to see.  For further details on how to use Yelp, check out their business owners section or contact me. You might say, "But that review is blatantly wrong!" or "I don't agree!"  This isn't easy for people (myself included) to get negative feedback about ourselves.  Humans are designed to have high self-esteem.  We are also susceptible to group think (groups that don't think or listen to feedback).  We tend to ignore things that are inconsistent with our own beliefs, and we tend to look for opinions that are consistent with our own opinions.  We are angry when someone disagrees with our self-perception.  There's no way around this sticky issue except to accept it.  We all get negative reviews.   As a professor, when those course evaluations come in, I'm sure to get at least one negative evaluation.  I typically get 90-95% "We LOVE Ms. Chen!" evaluations, and 5-10% "I hated this class!" evaluations.  Sometimes those were correlated to the students' grades, and sometimes not.  I had one student who knew she was going to fail my course, but she gave me a hug on the last day of class and wrote me a thank you note.  I also had one semester where I had such good evaluations that students protested to the department head when I told them I was no longer teaching, but that's pretty out of the ordinary.  I did teach at that institution for the next three years.  There's no pleasing every single customer as there is no pleasing every single student.  I take my feedback, improve, and I move on. At this point, I'm fairly certain that this post will turn into somewhat of a novel.  I'll end this post by saying that Yelp is not a perfect website.  There are things I would like to change and policies I'd like to implement if I could.  However, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Yelp is a useful website for both consumers and restaurant owners.  I've also found that once most businesses have learned how to navigate and use Yelp effectively, much of the anxiety surrounding Yelp disappears.

Why I South by

SXSW is a monstrosity of an event, and I love it for many reasons.  For people who love the crowded parties jammed packed full of awesome people, SXSWi is where to be.  People (yes, you) are the reason why I go to SXSW events.  You might have noticed that I’m a relationship oriented person.  My personal philosophy is that social media isn’t about the user, but everyone else.  Social media isn’t social unless you have relationships.  That’s why I go: to meet you.  To give you a handshake or hug, and to turn our online pinging into an offline relationship.

I’m very sad that I will be out of pocket for Friday and Saturday of SXSW.  Instead, I’ll be wearing a lilac dress, really tall high heels, and holding a bouquet of roses.  Anyone want to trade places?  )   If you do see me running around Austin, don’t be afraid to jump in and say “Hi!”  I’m always thrilled to meet new people.
Here’s a short list of events that I would have loved to attend or am attending:

Techmunch

NomX3 with Peter Cashmore

NomX3 Buzz Out Loud

Texas Social Media Awards Party

The Yelp Effect:  When Everyone’s a Critic

Rise Austin Session: Hacking online Communities - Yelp for Business Owners

We've heard all about the website Yelp.  Some people love it, and some people hate it.  Some people feel that their policies are unfair to business owners and that business owners are powerless to reviews.  Don't fret.  Don't get angry.  Do get proactive, and do learn how to manage your business owner's account to turn sour reviewers into happy customers.  On Tuesday, March 3rd, I'll be giving a presentation on Rise Austin to show you how to navigate and understand the ins and outs of Yelp policies and how to understand the Yelp community.  I'll also show you several small Austin businesses that used Yelp to drum up business (without paying $300 per month). Click here to register. 

And the biggest question on your mind now: Since Yelp is being sued, will it go away?  My personal opinion is "No, Yelp is not going away."  The amount of traffic on Yelp is staggering compared to other similar websites.   Yelp was offered $500 million dollars by Google.  Yelp has spurred many angry articles in the past about their policies.  None of those things have made any impact on Yelp as they are continuing to grow bigger and bigger.  Yelp isn't going away, in fact business pages on Yelp are often very close to the top when searching for a business on Google.  If a business doesn't have a website and adequate SEO skills, you can guarantee that their Yelp page will be the first link up on Google. 

What can you do?  You can ignore Yelp.  Some businesses thrive regardless what reviewers write about them.  On the other hand, you can use Yelp, a website with roughly 8.5 million visitors daily, as a marketing tool.  For Free.  If you can't make it to the session, here's a sneak peak into one of the topics I'll be covering.  I'm also available at jennie@misohungrynow.com or 512-981-7627.

Rule 1: Do NOT ask for reviews.  This is in fine print on the Yelp for Business Owners page here.  It really should be in bold and in all caps.  Do not ask customers for reviews.  Do not ask friends to review.  Do not ask family to review.  Anytime a business starts to get many positive reviews from people who aren't obviously part of the community, things look suspicious.  These newbies are often referred to as 0/1 as in zero friends and only one review.  There's nothing against newbies as everyone starts somewhere, but it does look suspicious when as business gets nothing but newbie reviews.  There an entire thread on Yelp dedicated to outing suspsicous looking activity on reviews also called shill reviews.  This type of behavior only creates anger and distrust in the community, and even casual Yelp users recognize the behavior easily.  Urban, an American Grill took it to a new level by having employees write shill reviews even before the restaurant opened.  Yep, it is pretty easy to see that they have literally shot themselves in the foot.  I'll be displaying the reviews written by the employees and of the Yelp community at the Rise presentation.  They have been taken down by Yelp Admin for the time being. 

You might ask, "But I'm referring users to Yelp when I ask people to write reviews for my business."  Yelp gets about 8.5 million visits a day.  They probably don't care if you referred 100 users a day to their website; they don't really need word of mouth advertising.  However, the community does care that your reviews (even though your friends and customers have good intentions) look like shill reviews.  If your friends and family do review you, it should be disclosed within the review.  With social media being a huge part of our lives, you can't hide your friends and family anymore.  It is better to be upfront rather than the being outed on the master debater business flogging thread. 

Also, here's a few other interesting characteristics about the Yelp community.  They love dogs and support almost every single event or cause for dogs.  If you have a dog business, you are pretty much welcomed with open arms.  They love supporting local businesses.  Most are internet savvy and educated.  While there are always a few angry and unsocial-able people in every community, Yelp users are generally very friendly and outgoing.  Many business owners are also have individual accounts on Yelp, and they are also active in the community. 

To register for the full presentation on March 2nd, click here: http://www.riseaustin.org/hacking-online-cultures-offline-behaviors-how-turn-negative-feedback-cheerleaders   For more information: jennie@misohungrynow.com or 512-981-7627.

Review of the Day Celebration@Swad Monday, Aug 24th, 7pm

Wednesday, August 19th, My review of Swad got Review of the Day (ROTD). Review of the Day on Yelp is determined by an algorithm of sorts. It is supposedly determined by the number of votes a review recieves in ratio to the number of friends and reviews the user already has. It also makes sure that there is equal spacing between getting ROTDs so that the same user doesn't get many ROTDs in a row. At least that's what Yelp HQ says. I've noticed that the core group of active Yelp users usually get a ROTD once every 3-5 months or so. There are new users to Yelp who get them as well, but on a less frequent basis, though a higher proportion of their reviews may become ROTD.

Review of the Day Celebrations are gatherings at the location of the review that was selected for ROTD. Getting ROTD doesn't mean that the user did anything in particular to earn it, but there's a gathering for the sake of getting together for food and drinks. Celebrations are usually spontaneous and held soon after the day it was selected. The gatherings are usually low-key, laid-back, and come and go as you please. There are no tickets or rsvps required, you just pay for what you eat.

You are officially invited to ROTDC @ Swad. It will be on Monday, August 24th, at 7:00 pm. Swad serves South Indian Style street food. Join me for some fabulous samosas, the thali special, and dosas. No RSVP required, but please comment or @ me so I know how many beer infused treats to bring. Every celebration needs something with booze. Bonus points if you show up in traditional Indian style dress.

Original Review below:

Best Samosas so far. I had a hankering for Indian Food today, and I decided to introduce myself to Swad. I ordered the samosas (2.95) and a poori (1.00), as I was saving room for more food later on. The poori was light, fluffy, and amazingly delicious. Think of it as a fluffy, fried flat bread. I think I devoured it all within 36 seconds.

The samosas were the biggest I've seen so far. They were about the size of my fists, which aren't small. I have big piano playing hands. I had to cut them in half. Crunchy and firm on the outside, hot and spicy on the inside. They were so spicy that I literally started to cry in the restaurant. *sniff sniff*munch munch munch* sniff sniff* tear* These samosas absolutely wonderful.

I think I'm in love with those samosas. They make me want to put on my choli and lengha, and dance around barefoot in the backyard. I'll be back for more. See ya soon, Thali special.

A Night at Trio

Prime Beef Sashimi

It is no secret that I love TRIO. The food is fabulous, the view is gorgeous, the service is just fantastic. What's not to love? After the last food blogger event, I was in heaven. My review is here. I thought there was no way TRIO could out do that event, but they made a liar out of me. A big thank you to Paul, Mark, Camile, and Susie for making the evening absolutely phenomenal.

A group of ladies had Happy Hour at TRIO at the Four Seasons on a Monday night - organized by Allison. Just to show you how far TRIO went to make sure our evening was heavenly, not only did the staff expect us, they recognized us. If I didn't already have a lustful relationship with TRIO, I would have thought that they were stalking us. I started by a visit to the bar (I had chit chat with my favorite bar tender, Susie) and a glass a Reisling. When we got to the table, Allison and Jaye let the cat out of the bag. We were all presented with gift bags containing a $50 gift certificate to their spa services (can we say bomb diggity awesome??!!?) as well as some lotion and soap.

Baked Gulf Oysters, Shrimp, Bacon, Shoestring Potato

After the ladies had some drinks and eats, we were given a tour of the spa facilities by Paul. I'm a woman. Women like spas. The spa had large floor to ceiling windows that literally brought the outdoors right inside. Imagine getting a massage with a beautiful view of Lady Bird Lake and flowers. Eh? You like? I like. Also, available was cucumber water and granola bars. All spas should be like this.

Artisan Cheese Plate

Following the tour of the spa was a tour of the kitchen. Um...... yes. I love food. Need there be more words? Really.... Jennie in the Kitchen is a Happy Jennie. Oh, and I spotted a gigantic jar of Rooster sauce. *Insert rauncy joke here* After the kitchen tour, we are taken to the pool area. On the way, we pass by a chimea, and Paul tells us that they do smores with the kids out there on Friday and Saturday nights. Whoa, Stop. Smores at the TRIO? The ladies get excited. Is there an age limit on being a "kid?" We all want a part of this! Paul must be a ladies' man because he senses our adrenaline rushing. Paul insists that they build a fire and bring out smore ingredients. The ladies cannot resist, and we are all grinning like Chershire cats.

We finally get to the pool, which is absolutely paradise. Sunblock in pump dispenser, big fluffy white towels, and lounge chairs were all at pool users' disposal. Paul also told us that frozen grapes and Evian water spritz (to mist your skin) is offered every half hour. I think Allison nearly passes out from glee.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

The party moves back inside to order our last glasses of wine before paying our check, and Paul walks us and presents us with $25 gift certificates. He then proceeds to build a fire in the chimea while wearing his suit. I've decided that TRIO doesn't want to impress us, they want us to all marry Paul. Allison and I are taken, but the other six lovely ladies are still available.

We ended our happy 5 hours with smores on the gorgeous backyard of the Four Seasons over looking Lady Bird Lake. You're tired of reading text, you want more pictures. Makes you kind of mad that you skipped out, doesn't it? If you're a man, you're probably wishing that you were Paul.

Look at that Excitement!

Paul and Kris roasting marshmallows.

I'm happy. Jessican and Kris are happy. Are you happy?

We look like cheerleaders.

*Note: We didn't eat all the food pictured. Those pictures are from previous TRIO visits.