Online restaurant review sites: TripAdvisor or Yelp or ?? Where do you post?
Sep 6, 2015, 7:33 am
#46
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Join Date: Oct 2004
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I post to TA and Yelp both. I tend to use Yelp in the US to give me a range of ideas, then look at other sites to get a better range of detail.
Sometimes I use a part of another app to get ideas then go to Yelp etc. to refine. For example, if I want to find nearby places with a good beer selection, I look at the "nearby bars" part of Untappd. Then I find that place in Yelp or Foursquare to get broader reviews.
Sometimes I use a part of another app to get ideas then go to Yelp etc. to refine. For example, if I want to find nearby places with a good beer selection, I look at the "nearby bars" part of Untappd. Then I find that place in Yelp or Foursquare to get broader reviews.
Sep 10, 2015, 10:53 am
#49
Join Date: Jan 2015
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May 30, 2019, 4:03 pm
#50
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2
Options other than Yelp?
I'm in the market for a new restaurant-finding app/service/strategy!
I'm getting sick of using Yelp for finding restaurants. I've been to many mediocre or bad restaurants that are rated 4 or 5 stars and many 3 star-rated places that end up being hidden gems. I feel like Yelp has gotten less accurate over the past couple of years.
What apps, resources, strategies, etc. do you use to find new restaurants (especially while on a trip in a new place)?
I'm getting sick of using Yelp for finding restaurants. I've been to many mediocre or bad restaurants that are rated 4 or 5 stars and many 3 star-rated places that end up being hidden gems. I feel like Yelp has gotten less accurate over the past couple of years.
What apps, resources, strategies, etc. do you use to find new restaurants (especially while on a trip in a new place)?
May 30, 2019, 6:11 pm
#51
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: San Diego, CA
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TripAdvisor surprisingly worked well for reviews last time I went to the UK. That was mainly because Yelp isn't really a thing there, however.
These days, I use Yelp mainly to find new places near where I live. I don't really look at the reviews themselves, at least until after I've gone to the business in question.
These days, I use Yelp mainly to find new places near where I live. I don't really look at the reviews themselves, at least until after I've gone to the business in question.
May 30, 2019, 9:11 pm
#52
Join Date: Mar 2015
Location: NYC (Primarily EWR)
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Posts: 9,005
It depends on where you are using Yelp. Using Yelp outside of the US is dicey given the low usage ex-US. If in the US, always filter out by Elites, and then trust Elites with high usage/review numbers and from a big city. When I go overseas, I usually rely on Google results and (occasionally) TripAdvisor reviews.
-Advice from a 10+ year Yelp Elite
-Advice from a 10+ year Yelp Elite
May 31, 2019, 4:00 am
#53
Join Date: May 2015
Location: South Florida
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Posts: 2,363
I don't like using Yelp as I find it is skewed to younger people. We have our regular restaurants and if a new one opens up in the area, I will try it out myself after a few weeks to let it go through it's growing pains first and knowing my wife's tastes will take her there later if I liked it.
May 31, 2019, 4:21 am
#54
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I find Yelp to be even more useless than TripAdvisor. It's full of people who judge a restaurant by its portion sizes (huge is good in their book, whereas it's the reverse in my book) and whether people acknowledged them within 2 seconds, and appears to have no correlation to the quality of food served or the atmosphere. In a world where things are either one star or 5 stars, it's difficult to find sensible reviews online but I find Google to be more reliable than the others, especially if you read between the lines of the 3 and 2 star reviews. Personally, I find buying the local Michelin Guide to be a good time-saving alternative.
May 31, 2019, 5:01 pm
#55
Join Date: May 2019
Posts: 2
It depends on where you are using Yelp. Using Yelp outside of the US is dicey given the low usage ex-US. If in the US, always filter out by Elites, and then trust Elites with high usage/review numbers and from a big city. When I go overseas, I usually rely on Google results and (occasionally) TripAdvisor reviews.
-Advice from a 10+ year Yelp Elite
-Advice from a 10+ year Yelp Elite
Jun 4, 2019, 8:05 pm
#56
Join Date: May 2017
Location: San Francisco
Posts: 20
I've never been a fan of TripAdvisor for restaurant reviews. IMO it's the lowest of the lows when it comes to crowdsourced content. I only use it as a last resort when traveling internationally since it's still probably in the most cities across the world.
Yelp has increasingly gotten worse quality wise too, and really only has enough content for the US. Internationally it's really sparse.
Today, I increasingly use a combination of:
Yelp has increasingly gotten worse quality wise too, and really only has enough content for the US. Internationally it's really sparse.
Today, I increasingly use a combination of:
- Google Maps because I find the quality of content on par with Yelp + I'm already using it to look up directions which makes it easy/convenient + it has content all around the world
- Michelin for major cities (especially the Bib Gourmand list)
- Niche sites like The Infatuation or Eater
- Foursquare occasionally when traveling internationally
Jun 5, 2019, 8:56 am
#57
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 3,839
I've never been a fan of TripAdvisor for restaurant reviews. IMO it's the lowest of the lows when it comes to crowdsourced content. I only use it as a last resort when traveling internationally since it's still probably in the most cities across the world.
Yelp has increasingly gotten worse quality wise too, and really only has enough content for the US. Internationally it's really sparse.
Today, I increasingly use a combination of:
Yelp has increasingly gotten worse quality wise too, and really only has enough content for the US. Internationally it's really sparse.
Today, I increasingly use a combination of:
- Google Maps because I find the quality of content on par with Yelp + I'm already using it to look up directions which makes it easy/convenient + it has content all around the world
- Michelin for major cities (especially the Bib Gourmand list)
- Niche sites like The Infatuation or Eater
- Foursquare occasionally when traveling internationally
Tripadvisor suffers from herd mentality and self-reinforcing rankings (people who like places that score highly on TA go to places that score highly, rate it highly and on it goes....).
To me, the TA ranking is almost solely based on friendliness of service at an establishment, to the exclusion of the quality of the product. Further, whilst I don’t profess to fully understand their algorithms, in large cities or places with lots of options, the ability of a simple 5 point rating scale to generate an absolute rank order must be questionable. This is exacerbated further when someone goes to restaurant x purely on the basis it’s rated “number 14 of 2,376” versus restaurant y rated number 92, for example.