This fall, Yelp is celebrating its 20th birthday. The user review platform launched in late 2004 and has now accumulated almost 300 million reviews worldwide. It’s the biggest source for restaurant reviews online, though you can find critiques of almost any public facing business you can think of.

Yelp helped to set us on the path to the star-saturated reality we now live in. More than 90% of consumers consult online reviews before making a purchase or visiting a business for the first time. Still, only a small share of customers actually take the time to write them. Richard Propes has written more than 1,700.

“I think I’m one of the first Yelpers who figured out there was a word limit,” said Propes, who has been a Yelp Elite member in Indianapolis for 11 years. It’s a designation for the most prolific and insightful Yelpers.

He mostly writes about restaurants, but also doctors and medical services.

“Because I am somebody who’s a very active wheelchair user, I do kind of feel a responsibility to review as much as I can,” he said. “Because, you know, obviously people in wheelchairs want to get out too.”

Propes said including accessibility in his assessments is the kind of thing you might not find in your average newspaper restaurant review, and he appreciates platforms like Yelp can help to elevate businesses that are off the beaten track, like Futuro Pizza a few miles away.

Restaurant owner Luke Tobias started making pizza in his own Indianapolis home during the pandemic and said Yelp was instrumental in communicating with customers and getting their feedback once he moved the operation into an actual restaurant in early 2021. 

“I mean, you couldn’t even go into a restaurant at that time,” he said.

With a tiny staff and a new baby, Tobias kept limited hours and asked customers to order a day in advance. Still, online reviews helped grow the business.

“People started finding out about it and people started really talking about, kind of the quality of the pizza,” said Tobias.

This year Yelp named Futuro the No. 2 pizza place in all of the Midwest.

But the fact that reviews can be so powerful has also created a strong incentive to manipulate them, said Dina Mayzlin, a professor of marketing at the University of Southern California.

“At pretty much the same time that reviews became a phenomenon, it also was very clear that they could be easily faked,” she said. Her research has found about 10% of online reviews are fake. Now artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT have made forgeries easier.

Yelp, like many platforms, says it uses a combination of user reports and algorithms to detect fake or solicited reviews so they don’t factor into a business’ star rating.

But even when reviews are genuine they can be pretty noisy to interpret.

“You’re being lied to by the five star system,” said Freddie Wong, a YouTube star and competitive gamer.

A couple years ago his advice for finding authentic Chinese food went viral.

The formula is based on Wong’s theory that cultural differences in expectations can result in reviews being very polarized. A restaurant might have great food but lack the kind of touchy feely service many American consumers expect.

“Some people think service is very important. For me I don’t care,” said Wong. The same goes for things like parking, ambience or portion sizes. Thus, the sweet spot of 3.5 stars. 

Lately though, Wong said he’s given up on online reviews. 

“I would rather have a human being tell me, ‘Go to this place. This place is interesting,'” Wong said. ” I trust that more.”

But to Richard Propes in Indianapolis reviews are more than their star ratings.

“It’s about local, it’s about good people figuring out how to make the community better,” he said.

His latest 5-star review just posted — for Luke Tobias’ Futuro Pizza.