How fake Yelp reviews are influencing your dining experience
When was the last time you and your friends picked a restaurant to dine at without checking some Yelp reviews first?
Foodie culture has seen a shift over the past few years with the increase of technology and social media use, thus leading to millions of people flocking to/ relying on food review sites for photos and a prognostication of their future dining experience.
With all of these active users, have you ever considered how legitimate these reviews are? While technology has made things easier in some aspects, it has also complicated others.
Yelp recently announced that they’d be cracking down on fake reviews. NBC New York reported on this and called out Baby Brasa, a popular west village restaurant serving Peruvian cuisine. Yelp had posted an alert on Baby Brasa’s yelp page warning yelpers that some reviews for their restaurant might be fraudulent.
Restaurants lose their credibility by getting flagged making them seem suspicious and hard to trust.
When Baby Brasa owner Franco Noriega fired back, Yelp told him that several reviews were posted under the same IP address. But Baby Brasa isn’t the first restaurant to be flagged. NBC New York reported that over 150 other restaurants had fallen to circumstance.
It may sound harmless but fake Yelp reviews aren’t doing anyone any good. For example, if you were to read a number of positive fake reviews thinking that a restaurant was better than it actually was, you might spend your hard earned money only to be disappointed later on. Aside from that, restaurants lose their credibility by getting flagged making them seem suspicious and hard to trust. Fake negative reviews also deter new customers and cost businesses money.
While technology has made things easier in some aspects, it has also complicated others.
If the idea of being catfished by a Yelp review is unsettling to you, fear not. NPR published a list of ways to spot fake reviews. They include tips like looking for a trend of positive or negative reviews as those tend to be authentic versus reviews that are unprecedented, reviewing other sites, and focusing on verified reviews (Yelp marks some reviewers as “elite”).
Overall, use common sense and good judgment. If something doesn’t sound right or seems to be written with scorn then perhaps take that review with a grain of salt.
So maybe next Sunday when your friends ask you to pick out a brunch spot and you’re desperately trying to find the best bottomless mimosas in Williamsburg, you’ll keep an eye out for authentic reviews and save everyone a lot of headaches...aside from the Saturday night hangover.
