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The news of Google’s acquisition of Zagat made us wonder: Is the search giant going after Yelp? Besides buying actual content in the form of Zagat reader reviews (steering readers to what’s good or bad, instead of merely facilitating searches), Google gets a tool for increasing local coverage.
CNET’s Larry Dignan traces Google’s prickly recent relationship with Yelp, after the company was accused of importing user restaurant reviews on its Google Places page without linking. But does Zagat, which has a reputation as an old-school authority—the kind of source your parents turn to when deciding whether to hit up Morton’s or Ruth’s Chris—really fit Google’s younger, more tech-savvy image? Doesn’t Yelp, and its user reviews peppered with exclamation points and OMGs, have more of the coolness Google would want in a review site?
As more than one commenter observed on the New York Times DealBook blog today, Zagat’s image—framed in pay walls and quoted snippets—is stuck in the 1990s. One commenter (San Francisco’s Cornholio) likened Zagat to Antiques Roadshow. Ouch.
But is that fair? We compared user reviews on both sites for The Spotted Pig in New York City. Though the Zagat site looked a bit more dynamic than we remembered (not to mention easier to navigate), the overall impression was of a contributor base that skewed heavily suburban and slacks-wearing. Zagat’s 1,815 reviews were heavy on complaints about the Spotted Pig’s infamous waits for a table—one guy from Jersey complained that he was forced to sit on a “milking stool” while he waited. The word sublime showed up at least twice in two pages of reviews, and the grumbling asides sometimes had the ring of stuff your Uncle Morty says (“I thought the waiter was just some guy hanging out but he turned out to be the waiter”).
Yelp’s 882 reviews of the Spotted Pig careened all over the place, date-wise (a review from 9/6, followed by one from 8/26). There was a lot of uppercase breathlessness, of course (“first time EVER in the village”), punctuated with enough “awesomes” to pack a Tumblr dashboard. Yelpers, too, griped about the waits, but it tended to be a footnote to giddy praise of the food (“Best burger of my life!”) and the kind of judgments unlikely to make it through Zagat’s rather murky editing process (“I'm pretty sure the interior of The Spotted Pig is exactly how I want my brownstone to look when I become rich and insane”).
All of which makes us think: If Google thought it was buying relevance with the Zagat purchase, it might want to consider enlisting a different demographic of user reviewers.
So, "Conservative" meaning "reserved/old fashioned" or "hates poor people"?
I'm not impressed with your snarky tone,whippersnapper. I'm over 50, and still damn cool and relevant. I'll be in the bar throwing a few back with Uncle Morty if you'd care to say it to my wrinkled face!
Lemons, it would be fun to know which cities are the tough graders and which ones give an easy a. Just a wild guess but I'm betting san fran grade on a tough curve.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to spot planted review comments on Zagat sheets, especially if a restaurant decides they should place...well, it depends on the size of the city being covered, but let's say they end up being maybe 5-10% of the total number of comments on that restaurant. The local editors go over the written comment sheets. It's not difficult to find similar handwritings,...+READ
You'd be surprised how easy it is to spot planted review comments on Zagat sheets, especially if a restaurant decides they should place...well, it depends on the size of the city being covered, but let's say they end up being maybe 5-10% of the total number of comments on that restaurant. The local editors go over the written comment sheets. It's not difficult to find similar handwritings, "interesting" addresses, high marks for one and terrible marks for their rival, and so on. The NY offices employ a gaggle of folks to do even more of that for the online comments. While the respondents do tilt more towards upper-middle class eaters over 30, Zagat cannot control what segment fills out forms or goes online to comment. It's obvious that some Zagat cities are easier graders than others if you look at several books.-COLLAPSE
Wow, the comments about relevance and demographics is a little chilling from Chow in terms of what it might expect from Chowhound.
IMO, the reason zagat was never ... never ... relevant was because it is a shill machine. It never edited out friends and owners of the restaurant.
In short, there were never reliable reviews on zagat, even ith the golden age, so to speak, of the 80's and 90's,...+READ
Wow, the comments about relevance and demographics is a little chilling from Chow in terms of what it might expect from Chowhound.
IMO, the reason zagat was never ... never ... relevant was because it is a shill machine. It never edited out friends and owners of the restaurant.
In short, there were never reliable reviews on zagat, even ith the golden age, so to speak, of the 80's and 90's, I was burnt too often by zagat.
It was also only a popularity machine ... the problem with all star ratings.
Everytime I drive into a KFC and see the zagat sign, it just makes me think of a company that has jumped the shark. Of course, KFC would get the most votes, it has more stores than any other place.
None of the other restaurant sites have that specific problem. Yes, they award stars, but then the votes aren't tabluated into a top ten list. So the unknown mom and pop can be a 5 star joint just like the publicity pumping big super restaurant players.
What makes a restaurant review site relavant is the reliability of its content.
What makes a site survive isn't style ... old school/new school ... but good food/bad food. That is what is about.
For all the attitude on yelp, you can usually get a fair idea of whether a restaurant is good or not ... if you are aware of the red flags. Restaurants hosting yelp events often getn 4 and 5 reviews, so you can count those out. There are other things like that.
With Zagat you could never really tell ... from the beginning.
Citysearch shot itself in the stomach by the shilling also. That along with horrid, slow, unreliable software. Where Have I heard that before?
Had Citysearch not screwed up so badly ... had it kept the same vibe it had when it was Sidewalk.com ... it probably would have buried yelp.
While I rarely used zagat for the reviews (only if there was no other source on the web) they do have a good free weekly newsletter. I get lots of leads from there. I hope they don't end that.
I never knew what it was about Chowhound that made it a success ... the type of site that attracted the likes of the NY Times and a base of intelligent but fun posters.
One thing was that like Yelp, Chowhound made the average preson feel like their opinion was as important, if not more so than any professional reviewer. It just did it in a way that isn't as sophmoric as yelp.-COLLAPSE
well it will get up to date in no time now.
Judging Zagat as stodgy because its reviewers do not use the term "awesome" doesn't make you hip and up-to-date.