Comments on You've Gotta Eat Sometime

I heard about this site. it's called Yelp.com.

Shoofly pie is the best thing to happen in my life ever.

Always the shoo-fly pie, never the apple pan dowdy.

Agreed, @1.

If you're trying to grow search engine traffic for local listings (which I fully support), a good place to start would be to have urls that look like this:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/the-other-coast-cafe-seattle-2

instead of this:

http://thestranger.com/seattle/Location?location=145220&srs

The latter looks like an internal site search result, which Google hates.

@1: That would be true if Yelp's ratings/reviews could actually be trusted. 90% of the reviews I've read are people bitching about shoddy service rather than the taste of food, and most of the best Yelp-user rated restaurants I've visited are awful. Yelp seems to be a highly capricious consumer gripe-fest with little to do with actual taste and substance.

I'm not saying that the Stranger's user food reviews are unimpeachable, but Yelp is hardly something I'd hold up as, "better."

@5: I agree as well.

The point I'm trying to make is that the Stranger's local directory should by all accounts be SLAYING Yelp. I, for one, would love to see that happen.

Unfortunately, as long as basic technology architecture mistakes persist, this directory is dead in the water.

Is Yelp perfect? No. Is it more comprehensive and useful than a small city's alt-weekly, half-assed, snark-filled site? Oh you betcha.

mmmm... Other Coast Cafe... Rajun Cajun Sub...