I find TripAdvisor a real pain, and hate how Google searches for restaurants in a city immediately redirect you to TripAdvisor entries. The combination of infrequent traveller reviews from people with bizarre expectations and a policy of heavy moderation/editing makes me stay away from the site. The fact that so many reviews are clearly bunk does not help.

As I recently posted in the New Member section, I recently went to Denmark. I was doing business in a small town in the North. My fellow employee back home told me there are 11 restaurants there according to Trip Advisor, so I'll have no problem finding a decent meal.

So I went through trip advisor's listings:
1 was a legitimate restaurant,
1 was a supermarket,
4 were takeaways/kebab shops (not what I or anyone would call a restaurant),
1 was over 11 miles away,
1 was a McDonald's (I suppose this somewhat counts as a restaurant),
1 was a bar that only served food at midday (more of a Cafe really)
2 didn't exist anymore and hadn't existed for some time.

Just my recent experience...

How was the one legitimate restaurant? ;)

Haha, fantastic. Beautiful food, incredibly expensive (made more expensive by my unpleasant exchange rate), the cheapest meal + a 500ml beer was £20 but covered by expenses after I put forward that going to McDonald's for two weeks was hellishly unfair and not reasonable, so they happily accepted that I go to the only genuine restaurant. Beer was lovely as well (I tended to have more than one although we'll say the rest wasn't on expenses :) )

The lamb fillet was fantastic! One of the best meals I've ever had abroad and I went Venice earlier this year on holiday!

I posted a review a few weeks ago. Got the email that I would be advised when the review was posted. The next day, I had 2 messages from people asking follow up questions to my review.

Two days after receiving those messages, I got the email from Tripadvisor that my review was published.

I get the feeling their review audit process has changed or is non existant.

Agreed. Expedia owns (or controls Trip Advisor). Lately there have been many TV commercials shown in Toronto basically showing a bad room booked by people who had not checked out Trip Advisor rooms and much nicer rooms by people who had - many different cities are featured. The difference in the rooms I am sure is due to price. Certainly 3 star hotels can differ greatly in terms of comfort but Trip Advisor - at least in the commercials appears to be showing a 2 star room versus a 4 star - as booked via Trip Advisor reviews.

I've noticed that too. Earlier in this thread, I mentioned that TA had a practice of rejecting reviews in which I provided the proper addresses and phone numbers of restaurants or announced that they no longer existed. Now they let these slide easily.

I think this is a good synopsis. You can often tell the fake reviews. Too much gushing on the one side, and competitors or people with an ax to grind on the other. It's important to read the reviews vs. just going by rating.

Some observations:

I post my review quite a bit on Tripadvisor.

I would normally post both the good and the bad. I don't think I have came across a hotel, restaurant or place that rated a all good, or all bad.

The rating system tends to be misleading, because ultimately I believe it's about value for money.

Example: If I was staying in a simple B&B (low cost), with no major amenities but great service and breakfast. I would rate it pretty high, cause the rating is based on what I paid for.

On the other hand if I was staying in a high end hotel, or having dinner at a really fancy restaurant. My expectations would be a lot higher, due to the premium I need to pay.

While it may not be practical, I would prefer that all posters have to say something. A 1* or 5* rating (heck, any rating) without any text is useless to me. I know people are lazy, but they have, after all, taken the time to log on to TA and click a few buttons to make a rating. The system could not show any star ratings in the absence of saying "why", in whatever language.

I stayed at a place the weekend before last, now I'm constantly getting emails from them "reminding" me to submit a review on TA. The place was a little disappointing, I didn't expect much but it really doesn't even warrant two minutes of my time to write a review. However, one more email from them and I think that I just might, and it will consist entirely of the annoying spam that I've been receiving from them.

If I were to submit a review based on the place it would consist of three words: "rundown and sad".

I looked at a hotel I stayed at on holiday a few times. Overpriced and not the greatest hotel but the location is the best. This is why I stayed there. Looking to go to the same area I browsed the newest reviews. All incredibly positive. I looked at the reviews rated 1 or 2. There were hardly any. When we first stayed there, 6 or 7 years ago, we put a review on. Then there was a reasonable amount of reviews in every category from 1 to 5 as you would expect. So why are there fewer bad reviews now than there were 6 or 7 years ago. Do people remove their own reviews or is there something else going on?

Tripadvisor has started some really questionable (imho) practices. A certain hotel in my city is number 1. 42 out of the last 50 5* reviews are from first time posters, who joined TA simply to review this hotel. I think everyone here can see around this, as blatant review padding. Today I noticed this little "blurb" under all these reviews....

"Review collected in partnership with this hotel" then when you click on it, it continues with.... "This business uses online tools and resources provided by TripAdvisor to encourage and collect reviews (including this one) from its guests."

I have always defended TA reviews as being semi accurate, with weeding out the few bad ones necessary. I now think TA has crossed the line. I am wondering, did TA provide the hotel with an online kiosk of some kind, so that they could send their guests over to it, to review the hotel?

Just to add....
I have always weeded out the 1 post wonders on TA, not really taking them into account. With this new "online tool" that TA uses for reviewers, it is almost impossible to do that. For instance, the hotel I was looking at, you have to go back 5 pages to get 4 legitimate reviews from long time TA users.... Then another 5 pages to get another 4.

This makes TA reviews useless imho.

If you find yourself in a strange city and want to eat, TA is still a useful resource. BUT, as I and one other poster have noted, restaurant listings in small cities tend to be highly inaccurate.