Here’s a post I recently saw on Reddit:
“With DuckDuckGo seeing a boost, and we already kind of talked about this, is Yelp getting even mildly interesting? I’ve avoided most things Yelp beyond, most things Yelp beyond a free profile because, well, it both feels like hot garbage in terms of UX and their pricing model makes no sense.”
So we’ve already, I think, given him his answer on how small of a market share DuckDuckGo has. He’s not really going to get any kind of a meaningful impact from it if he were to go full bore and invest into his Yelp profile. Even though they pull from an antiquated thing, which I would probably argue Yelp’s a little antiquated at this point.
Like, it’s big, it has good domain authority, but really, I don’t think you need to do much beyond their standard listing. Yeah, Yelp is huge in California, and they’ve tried to act like they’re huge everywhere else, but the truth is they’ve kind of built their platform on a very gross model. And I say it like that on purpose, because number one, if you’re a business who wants to advertise there, if you’ve done any work with them, they are basically proud of the fact that they will just hold you hostage and show bad reviews.
You click on your profile and your competitors’ ads show up before your name does. They’re just kind of nasty. Like they don’t even feel bad that they will absolutely take any value you add to the platform and sell it off. And the only way to keep them from doing that is to also pay them.
Yelp users, in my opinion, are the biggest Karens and Darrens in the world. They use it specifically just to complain. I mean, we’ve had clients, multiple restaurants that have said, oh yeah, we’ll have Yelp users that they’ll eat and they’ll say, hey, I’m leaving a one-star review if you don’t give it to me for free. The most human trash that I’ve ever met.
So, and obviously there’s probably some that are like, hey, I’ve never done that. But unfortunately, I’ve had so many experiences that, yeah, like I feel like Yelp and their users, there’s a special place in hell for all of them. It’s pretty rare to go out of your way to just like go to Yelp for a positive customer experience. I don’t think that really happens.
And I feel like most people feel that way, and they’re not going to Yelp to get good, positive reviews for recommendations. They’re going there to see what’s wrong with this place. I’ve never used Yelp for a review. If you’re a business…
Just screw Yelp. Don’t worry about them. Even on their paid search part, we’ve had a number of clients that have tried to run ads through Yelp over the years. I don’t think a single one has seen any kind of a meaningful return from it. Yeah, some of them were paying thousands, and then we killed it back to like $5 a month, and nothing happened. It was a shocker. In fact, their revenue did better.
So, in short, personally I would just invest in a basic Yelp profile. Things could change, but that’s how it stands right now.
