James Siminoff

Is Yelp’s success its demise?

I was a huge fan of Yelp.  Being a traveler who really dislikes chain restaurants I have been a Yelp addict for the last 2-3 years.  I remember last year I was on a business trip in Detroit and Yelp found us one of the best BBQ restaurants.   One that I would have never found any other way.

However in the last 6 months I have started to get less and less out of Yelp.  Then when I was in Palo Alto last week I loaded Yelp and it became very clear why my experience has diminished.  This is what you get when you load up Yelp in Palo Alto:

Too many reviewers and there are just pages of restaurants that are 4’s.  Nothing jumps off the page as the “hole in the wall” place.  And because there is so many reviews it is impossible to read through them to get anything out of that.  Basically as Yelp gets too popular in a city, it becomes more of a phonebook and in some ways less helpful then the old guy on the block, Zagat’s.

This is an interesting trend to watch, when consumer generated sites become too popular they look more like your average Google search.

In my frustration I have come up with a simple model that I think could be user generated and not have the popularity issue.  When I get some more time I will put up a post on it, maybe someone can build it.  Or does anyone know of something that is good to use to find these great whole in the wall restaurants?