Why I don't trust Trip Advisor restaurant ratings
 

I follow with amusement the restaurant ratings on Trip Advisor in my home town of Naples, Florida. I know several people in the restaurant business here and have been alerted to a couple restaurants which have asked their employees to register and rate the restaurant (praising it) or rate a competitor (slamming it, of course). I once alerted the editors to a specific restaurant which was suddenly receiving raves from all brand new contributors and told them I knew as a fact that the manager had asked employees to register and submit the reviews. And I messaged one of those who ranted how she's eaten at every restaurant in Naples and this is by far the best, asking her what other restaurants in Naples she might suggest since she's eaten at so many. She screamed back at me that I needed to get a life, and next thing I know the editors prevented me from messaging other posters. Although they had promised to check out those bogus reviews, they still remain and I've never heard back from them.
Clearly, they are not interested (or don't know quite how) in stopping all the bogus reviews.

As an interesting side note, the one poster who raved about that restaurant actually posted two reviews. She also raved about another restaurant in town. This is the gal I asked about other recommendations and she screamed back at me. Well guess what -- the manager of the restaurant in question is married to the head chef at the other restaurant that reviewer raved about. Coincidence?

But suddenly out of the depths of the listings a restaurant catapulted to the top of the list as the most popular. Wow! Over a period of two and a half years there were 5 reviews of the place, mostly pretty positive and mostly from people who have numerous contributions. Then BAM. In a three week period there were 8 new reviews, ALL by first time contributors who registered to post rave reviews -- all giving it the top rating. Suspicious? What do you think? Naples most popular? Or Naples best organized staff?

very interesting. For restaurants.. which sites do you trust most? Chowhound?

TA, should be used with caustion IMO. I think Chowhound has the most action and input. But I have been burned by some recs there too.

It seems the disease is on Chowhound and Menupages in NYC. Both the criticism and the praise for many places seem out of proportion with the establishment. On top of that half the people do not know ow which they speak. There are some cuisines I know well but most I do not know well at all. And for the ones I know some of comments are simply bizarre.

Lincasanova

Go to Chowhound and worse Menupages and see what people say about tapas. You will be stunned by hlaf of the comments. You wll also find that about a third know tapas.

so.. where should we go? ( besides Fodors)

I agree that these kinds of reviews need to be read with a critical eye.

However, on a recent trip to NYC I got some good leads on ethnic restaurants using sources mentioned here and the reviews that come up when locating restaurants on maps.google.com. I placed more reliance on restaurants with many reviews than those with a few reviews.

These sources also helped me avoid restaurants with ear-splitting noise, tiny cramped tables, long waits at the bar, etc.

On more than one occasion New Yorker friends asked me, "How did you find this place?"

Maps.google.com is also often the only convenient source for reviews of restaurants in towns that are off the tourist path.

I don't use tripadvisor for food reviews. Zagat's is my go-to for restaurant reviews, even over chowhound.

Let's face it ... you can never trust restaurant/hotel reviews on any site, really. I just read everything I can about a place, try to sift the good from the bad, and still you can get stung. There's no reasonable way to prevent fake reviews, I guess. Patrick, I'm always surprised that the websites don't want you go call out the "fakers." They obviously don't really care ... :(

In most cases chowhound is fairly useless as people just discuss the same restaurants over and over again. But at least they are mostly locals, vs TA which is really useless for restaurants. I don't even look there.

Zagats big flaw is that they nominate the restaurants to be reviewed every year.

For finding local neighborhood spots, I use yelp, but read it with a critical eye, and usually see if the local newspaper has any reviews.

I know
I have lost confidence in Tripadvisor ratings lately also. While restarants(especially small market ones) have always been suspect, Ive noticed many more hotels now flooded with obviously bogus reviews.

Tripadvisor is excellent for hotel reviews (not rankings) but useless for restaurants for the most part. Zagat lost credibility a while ago but is still a useful tool along with other sources. Have a look at savoryny.com and urbanspoon.com

Are you home Neopatrick?

Tripadvisor has the same problem with fake reviews on hotels, too. It's especially bad on the Hawaii boards.

Jet Blue flies nonstop San Diego to Boston. All the other airlines seem to have a stop.

It is the situation even with AAA. Some of the hotels or restaurants they under-rated while others are over-rateed.
My parents travel and eat at nice places often, and while we usually agree, I don't always agree with what they say is outstanding. I always try to be open minded with yelp, aaa, ta, mom and dad, etc, etc.

Lincasanova-

Unfortunately you must go with the consensus from various sources. I think if you ask here, most NY'ers know their neighborhoods well and then some places elsewhere. I think if you ask specific questions you will get better answers.

So type of food, price, and if important neighborood.
And for certain cuisines, such as Italian there are very good regional choices or French where there are both bistro and haute. There will be of course some disagreemrnts but you can read why people like certain places and others not.

You will also see that tapas in NY has taken on a life of its own to mean small plates and not necessarily Spanish tapas. But there are enough places now emulate a San Sebastian, Gallego, or Catalan tasca, it is the Japanese and Moroccan tapas you must watch out for.

Neopatrick - I've rarely used Tripadvisor for restaurant reviews, but have used them extensively for hotel reviews while confirming with Fodors. What is your opinion of the validity of hotel reviews on TA?

Same with hotels, same with attractions...

And one of my reviews was never posted only because I typed how much I paid for it :) Oh, well...

I have also noticed a lot of fake hotel reviews on certain boards (Peru seems to have its share) but they are easy to spot. If the TA reviewer has only one post ever and joined the day they gave their one an only ranking, I will ignore if it is one-sided. A very small inn, say 6-10 rooms, looks suspicious to me if there are proportionately way too many reviews. Because TA includes the number of reviews as well as the score in calculating rank, there can be some very odd results for the #1 rankings in popularity. I always check the lowest ranks, just in case someone has posted a "WTF" review.

Here's why I'm also leery of Tripadvisor ratings ... someone asked for a restaurant recommendation in Crested Butte and we recommended an excellent little restaurant we've eaten at several times, surely the best meals I've had in Colorado.

They emailed back and said "Are you sure? It's only rated # 14 of 34 restaurants in CB!"

Curious about why (and how) this could be so I looked at the TA postings. There were five reviews and the most recent four were all for the highest possible rating, comments like "splendid", "best food in the Rockies", "incredible French food", etc.

The fifth rating was several years old and for one star, which was enough to drag the overall rating way down. The poster said he had eaten there several times and thought it was great but on his last trip to CB he tried calling while in transit to make the reservation. Because it's a very small restaurant with just a few tables they require a local phone number (like your hotel) or, if that's not possible, a credit card #. This guy didn't know the hotel phone # and wouldn't give his cc number for security reasons and got so angry that they wouldn't take his reservation that he gave them the lowest rating possible just for spite.

While an experienced TA user might read the reviews and 'read between the lines' if there is a single vindictive posting, if a place is ranked half way down the list most people would probably skip the reviews for that restaurant completely.