Zomato has never reached the same level of balance as Urbanspoon had, even though they have improved a lot in the last year. Although I'm not a business owner, I'm not sure that Zomato is that good for business or for foodies who are not interested in being part of a social network. Yelp does a better job to pamper foodies and to create a Yelp community that is healthy and awesome, at least in its inception in Perth WA.
Zomato, nevertheless, is a great place to post or find reviews on restaurants and cafes, find recommendations and discover new restaurants in many countries. Generally speaking, this is the place where you will find the most foodies.
Zomato's website and app are great, very pleasant to the eye, very easy to browse, and very well organised, with many filters to search for restaurants by neighbourhood, type of cuisines, type of food, food by time of the day, and other features. They also have a few collections (listings) of restaurants, the most interesting being the "newly-opened" and "trending this week." They have a huge amount of photos, mostly contributed by reviewers, so you can see in advance which sort of food you are going to find, how the restaurant looks like and what you can expect.
Zomato has a stronger presence than Yelp on Google. If you look up the name of the restaurant, and Zomato and Yelp are in a given country, Zomato references will pop up first, sometimes way first, than those of Yelp. In that regards, it is better for businesses.
However, Zomato has been getting into my nerves due to a series of issues that don't favour any online platform. I consider some of them unacceptable. Let's spill the beans:
> Their website and app aren't always synchronised and some functionalities are great on the app but not on the website, or vice versa. For example, the search tool in the app does not allow you to search by neighbourhoods from your current set location, something that you can easily do through the desktop/browser version. Also, the search tool is not always accurate. I have found that a restaurant that I had bothered to list was already listed there but had not appeared in the look-up in the app and website. Also your own collections do not show in the browser but are recorded in the app.
> The place has been highly commercialised in a direction that I don't think benefits the site long term:
- O Recommended paid restaurants popping on the screen, as recommendations. Also you receive offers directly from the businesses when you bookmark a business. I remove the bookmark as soon as I notice. An offer is great, for sure, but if you go there with a printed offer or just mention it, their behaviour will change for you, the reviewer, so that you leave so happy that give them high ratings. This is understandable, but also very manipulative.
- O They are also offering takeaway from specific restaurants, which you can order through the Zomato app. I consider that OK per se, but a bad move for Zomato, as you can find specific takeaway websites and apps that do just that in many cities and countries. In a way, they want to cover so much that they are getting confused and losing their purpose. And, to be honest, I am not sure if these businesses are benefiting.
- O An Uber link appears now in the page of each single restaurant. If I wanted to take an Uber I would download the app and use it myself, without the need of having it "suggested" every single time I visit the page of a restaurant in the Zomato app. Can't we use public transport, please, which benefits Society in general and not a Google boosted money-making company that does not pay taxes in most countries? Wouldn't be more sensible having our city's public transport app integrated there?
- O The lists and collections used to be a lovely feature of Urbanspoon. They were made by locals who know their cities and their eateries inside out. The collections displayed on the Zomato's front page nowadays are those made by Zomato. The main criteria to be there is... unknown. The user would guess that these restaurants are the best in their category or they would not be featured, right? The answer is provided by Zomato itself. I you check Zomato Business they tell business willing to pay for a membership that they will be featured in the collections. So, basically, the lists are manipulative ways of reeling you in to believe what is never said.
> The restaurants rating system is not the best. Most people cannot differentiate what it is good from what they like. Put it differently, if you like a restaurant you consider it instantly good. But that is not always the case. Urbanspoon's ranking system was way better, as it was based on your like/dislike. Now we have a five point ranking system with half points possible, so it is like a 10 point system. 3.5 is a 7 for example. Yet, people will rate in the same way as they like/dislike. Rating is not liking, mind you. So you find restaurants which are just OK, bashed with poor ratings while hyped up cafes with OK food have really high ratings. That is misleading to the public, and does not favour any business who is not at the top. I would rather have no text and review by numbers, with categories: Like/Dislike, price, taste, freshness of ingredients, serving portions, ambience, quality of the service, tempo of the serving, level of comfort, time of waiting, that sort of thing and then make a total out of that and produce a rating. That would be way more useful and would offer more balanced ratings. More real ratings. But Zomato is not interested in that as they make money out of businesses, so it is an independent platform.
> Some reviews are terrible. Some examples.
1/ The sort of review that says, simply "yum!" Nothing else.
2/ Or "I loved the food, 5 stars! (mind you I love Hungry Jacks, this does not mean that their burgers are deserving of a a 5).
3/ Or "I don't like the cuisine of this country but I went there anyway and I don't like it and it is 2 stars from me." (Would you, a vegetarian, go to a steak house to trash the use of meat or how they cook it? Or vice versa? I am sure, you would not. Why people think that doing this is normal? I guess they are sub-normal).
4/Other reviewers will tell you that they went there and had a great time with their pals, blah blah blah, they tell you their life (I don't care about your life sweetie) but do not mention anything relevant about the food or the service.
5/I've come across a moron who only rates high Chinese and Asian-Chinese restaurants with very low ratings for anything else; her reviews are like bad in content and writing, her photos are terrible. She defines herself as writer and photographer. She is a pathetic moron. Her reviews have a level of stupidity that unnerves me, and the worst thing is that she has a ton of followers, one of the top people in her city. I guess stupidity is the new way to become popular, the stupider the more followers. Good on her. She certainly has the crown. I feel for the businesses, some of them great restaurants, that have to stand the crap coming out of her mouth.
So many brainless people, like this one, are commenting on nothing, producing crap every time they write a review an open their mouths. This is not specific of Zomato, of course, unfortunately. However, ratings is what matters to most people. They create a trend. Trends matter these days. Most people nowadays check the reviews online for anything. You decide to go to a restaurant and check how many stars the restaurant has because you don't want to go to the crappy ones, right? Many people don't bother to read anything. Yet, ratings based on nothing, are still counting.
> They have tried, from the beginning, to increase the social network. The network existed before, but was not promoted. Now you have a "follow reviewer so-and-so" suggested by the fives in every page you visit. You wonder why the social network is imposed and forced upon us these days. Which interests lay beneath this interest to force us to be in a social network to do anything instead of perhaps creating a social net made of human beings face to face. Why do we need followers or to follow anybody to post a review on a restaurant? Why do we need to be part of dumb herd? I would be OK with the "follow" shown in the profile of each member, not suggested every single time. Otherwise, they are feeding a monster as they are not thinking about the Community they want to create, they just want a huge Community.
> The point system to generate foodies' rankings could be better. The point system is clearly mentioned and clearer and more explicit than in Urbanspoon or Yelp, but they don't consider a few factors in the ratings, or don't give points for: number of kingdoms in a city, number of cities where you have reviews in, number of countries, if a town has less than 10 restaurants to get the kingdom or not, etc. Of course, all of this is utterly vacuous, I am the queen on my planet, like everybody else on theirs, it is just a matter of fairness and making those ratings believable.
> Closing your account can take up to 30 days. Why? Why? Why?! I want to close it, push the button, do it automatically. We live in the computer age, you don't need to go to a building, look for a folder and put it in the coal-fed fire and wait until it becomes ashes. Software just does that in a microsecond, if you want. The answer is simple, the people who benefits from your photos and reviews is Zomato so they don't want you to go, even though they sell that the site is great for you to stay.
UPDATE
Well, they have make difficult to use the website desk on the smartphone as photos are not displayed so you are forced to download the app. Yelp has a similar promotion of their app but you can search their site on the phone without being pushed out of a cliff.
> The point system to generate foodies' rankings could be better. The point system is clearly mentioned and clearer and more explicit than in Urbanspoon or Yelp, but they don't consider a few factors in the ratings, or don't give points for: number of kingdoms in a city, number of cities where you have reviews in, number of countries, if a town has less than 10 restaurants to get the kingdom or not, etc. Of course, all of this is utterly vacuous, I am the queen on my planet, like everybody else on theirs, it is just a matter of fairness and making those ratings believable.
> Closing your account can take up to 30 days. Why? Why? Why?! I want to close it, push the button, do it automatically. We live in the computer age, you don't need to go to a building, look for a folder and put it in the coal-fed fire and wait until it becomes ashes. Software just does that in a microsecond, if you want. The answer is simple, the people who benefits from your photos and reviews is Zomato so they don't want you to go, even though they sell that the site is great for you to stay.
***
Zomato is still a place I look up for restaurants on a weekly basis, every time I go to eat out basically, as it is the best place for that. Yet, you don't need to join, or get the app, you just need a browser and browse without getting involved.UPDATE
Well, they have make difficult to use the website desk on the smartphone as photos are not displayed so you are forced to download the app. Yelp has a similar promotion of their app but you can search their site on the phone without being pushed out of a cliff.
