Do You Believe Yelp Ratings?

By Trisha Torrey, About.com GuideApril 28, 2011

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Don't.

If you aren't sure what Yelp is (because it's not found in every location): Yelp is a website where people can rate things: from restaurants to dry cleaners to plumbers to doctors. Customers (or patients) go to the site to talk about their experiences with all those kinds of services and products. Then others can go online to check out the ratings to make decisions about whether they want to eat in those restaurants, get their suits cleaned by that dry cleaner, or have that plumber repair their pipes.

Awhile ago I had written about Yelp in regards to doctors' ratings. Here's how I think their business model works: You, as a consumer, go online to review something - say, a local restaurant. Maybe you had a horrible experience with the taste of your food, or a waiter, or a mouse in your soup. Yelp looks at your bad review, then it goes to the restaurant's owner and says, "hey! For $xxx we will remove that bad review from our website!"

Here's why I think that's their model: Yelp! and Zagat - More Cautionary Review Tales - about the fact that Yelp had removed negative reviews about a doctor in the San Francisco area.

Now - that article was published more than two years ago. I had pretty much forgotten about it, until I happened to read this notice in a blog I read on occasion about local things (I live near Syracuse, NY) about a new burger place that has opened. In the review, I noted:

By the way, I found this pretty interesting. It seems that there were some bad reviews written on a site called Yelp that almost magically disappeared, being left with only one pretty good review.

Oh really? More reviews disappeared from Yelp?

So why do I bring this up on a patient empowerment blog? Because we're hearing much more these days about using doctors' review or ratings sites - and I just don't believe they can be helpful. A doctor's competence cannot be measured by how long a patient waits in the waiting room. And whether or not the staff is friendly doesn't tell much about how accurate a surgeon is.

• Here's more information about doctors' ratings sites and how to use them.

• Here's how to research a doctor's background - information far more accurate and objective.

• And for the purists among you - here's how to choose the best doctor for you.

Unfortunately, I can't help you with ratings for burger places or plumbers. But if you can find the best doctor, then you'll be well enough to do all that on your own.