Study: Yelp has More Productive, Less Extreme Reviewers
When it comes to a review profile, balance is key. Having too many 1-star reviews or 5-star reviews isn’t believable. Consumers want to find balance; they want to see the pros and cons side-by-side and make a decision from there. Well, according to a study of online reviews last year, balanced reviews most often come from productive reviewers. In other words, extreme ratings (1-star and 5-star) tend to come from people who only write a single review. Have a look at this chart:
That’s from Anonymity, Social Image, and the Competition for Volunteers: A Case Study of the Online Market for Reviews by Zhongmin Wang, a study published last year that looks at the review patterns at Yelp, Citysearch and Yahoo Local.
The chart (it’s hard to read due to size, sorry) basically shows that extreme ratings are more likely to be found at Citysearch and Yahoo Local than at Yelp.
The proportion of 5-star ratings at Yelp (24.2%) is less than half of that at Citysearch (50.3%) or at Yahoo Local (58.8%). The proportion of 1-star ratings at Yelp (5.9%) is less than half of that at Citysearch (16.4%) and it is also smaller than that at Yahoo Local (6.9%). Correspondingly, Yelp has much higher proportions of 2-star, 3-star, and 4-star ratings than either Citysearch or Yahoo Local.
It makes sense if you think about it: The more reviews a person publishes, the less likely those reviews will be extreme in their praise or criticism.
The study also makes the case that Yelp is the place where you’ll find the most productive reviewers: 71% of Citysearch users and 56% of Yahoo Local users have posted only one review, compared to only 9% of Yelp users who’ve written one review. Yelp, the study says, has the most productive reviewer community and the most balanced reviews. It’s really an interesting study and I highly recommend the PDF download if this interests you.
I wrote about it in much more detail — including an analysis of how Google fits into all of this — on Search Engine Land this morning:
How Yelp Crushed Citysearch & Yahoo Local … & Why Google Is Stealing Yelp’s Playbook.
I think that this article shows something that I’ve noticed over the past few years. The only criticism that I have of the site is that a lot of people are using Yelp to develop an online personality (and I’m sure some still do), but that’s not really what I want when I look for a restaurant review! Great post!
This is a terrific example of why it’s very important to build an organic presence online. I think the biggest take-away for me from the is the importance of balance on these various review sites, something that can be achieved through organic driving tactics.
I specifically love Yelp as a review system. Its pretty accurate, but like the above poster said that are some online personalities that just make comments to make themselves more popular. It does a great job of monitoring spam comments as well.