Yelp’s Frequent Users Defy Online Review Skepticism
Key Takeaways
One-quarter (25%) of consumers say they don’t trust review sites, likely because fake reviews and manipulation by brands and sellers make shoppers second guess reviews.
Yelp users follow a different pattern. 74% of people who use the review platform at least weekly say they trust it.
Yelp’s frequent users are driven by a desire for connection and status: being the “in the know” person in one’s social circle and among Yelp users is an effective way to achieve that goal.
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Online reviews govern so many decisions we make. Yelp’s entire business is built on our need for crowdsourced recommendations and watch outs, and they’ve cultivated a powerful user base that relies on their platform for guidance on everything from restaurants to medical professionals. They’re doing more than just reading too, they’re also contributing reviews of their own.
Consumers put enormous weight on the opinions and experiences of strangers, but we can’t always trust what we read online. Fake reviews are rampant and skew the ratings for products on e-commerce marketplaces, medical professionals on Google reviews, and all across social media. Per Tripadivsor’s 2023 Transparency Report, 1.3 million fake reviews were removed from the platform (out of 30.2 million review submissions).
So, it’s no surprise that in a recent Morning Consult survey 25% of U.S. consumers said they don’t trust online reviews. Healthy skepticism is necessary to decipher the truth among suspiciously positive and negative reviews, despite the efforts of brands and platforms to improve the veracity of reviews on their sites. But the most frequent users of a key online review platform, Yelp, are much more trusting than the average consumer.
About one-quarter of consumers do not trust online reviews
Despite our collective dependence on reviews, about one-quarter of consumers don’t trust them. Roughly two-thirds say they do, and the remaining 10% don’t have an opinion either way. These skeptics are better attuned to the strong incentives that exist for review fraud — strong, positive review scores can make or break a product on a marketplace or a local business. Review fraud can take the form of people being paid to use their real accounts to write reviews of businesses they’ve never visited, account hacks or bots. Sometimes these reviews are easy to spot, but they can sound real and include elaborate stories. The advent of generative AI only makes it even easier to write fraudulent reviews, now the writers don’t need to take on a creative writing exercise.
Millennials and high earners put the most faith in online reviews
Millennials and higher earners are least skeptical about online reviews. They have a higher propensity to make purchases online or through social media, so they’re more dependent on reviews before buying product sight unseen. That frequent usage (and presumably high satisfaction with their online purchases) reinforces trust in reviews.
Yelp’s frequent users put a lot of trust in its platform and community
Yelp’s review platform is a go-to hub for reviews for all kinds of businesses, and that success relies on maintaining user trust. High-frequency Yelp users (those who use the platform at least weekly) put enormous trust in reviews on the platform: 74% say they have “a lot” or “some” trust in Yelp. The demographics of those frequent users are similar to the profile of consumers who trust online reviews: namely, they over-index among millennials and high earners.
They’re also more active online in general, with outsized usage of other social platforms that provide community like Reddit, and product recommendations and wish lists like Pinterest. That high online activity extends beyond social media too. Frequent Yelp users are more likely than the general public to shop online, through social media and make restaurant reservations online (Yelp also offers a restaurant booking feature).
Yelp users find community and convenience online
For their part, Yelp enhances their user trust by featuring reviews estimated to be more reliable. In 2021, Yelp’s review tools identified 22% of reviews on the platform as not recommended, meaning they were deemed questionably reliable and pushed to the bottom of review pages. Yelp’s frequent users benefit from this review vetting, and trust the platform more as a result.
Yelp’s frequent users seek out novelty and status
Those who read and write reviews on Yelp have a distinct psychographic profile: they’re more trend and status oriented than the average consumer. For example, frequent Yelp users are more likely than the general public to agree with statements that they’re early adopters of new technology and always on the look out for the latest trends. Plus, they also place more importance on achieving high social status and a place in the popular crowd, in addition to feeling connected to their community, than the average adult.
Weekly+ Yelp users are connected social strivers
Yelp enables that feeling of connection and status through their “Elite Squad” of reviewers that earn a profile badge, indicating their reviews are consistently reliable and trustworthy. The cache that comes with being an arbiter of taste and in the know about trends is an effective status driver. These savvy consumers have to trust the recommendations they read online, and have to assume that others will trust their own reviews — after all, their reputations depend on it.
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