This Infographic Explains How People Really Use Restaurant Reviews

Source: Yelp

Have you ever gone to restaurant after reading good reviews, only to have a bad experience? It happens to the best of us, making skeptics out of even the most die-hard review believers.

Thanks to the in-restaurant review tech company, Original Review, now we have a clearer picture of how people actually interact with online restaurant reviews. After analyzing data from a national survey of 500 men and women over the age of 21 who live within 20 miles of a major metro area, Original Review developed an infographic to illustrate their findings. Those polled had used a restaurant review site at least once, but if Yelp’s average of 77 million unique desktop visitors a month mean anything, it’s that people are using these sites regularly.

While 95 percent of respondents said they rely on reviews when trying new restaurants, nearly 70 percent of consumers are very skeptical of restaurant review websites. More than half of those polled stated they were wary of fraudulent review scandals, and over 70 percent expressed concern when they saw an establishment had outdated or few reviews.

According to the survey, all it takes is one bad dining experience for 92 percent of respondents to stop visiting a restaurant. That being said, roughly the same number of people said they’d return to that disappointing restaurant if they had the chance to speak directly with management.

Credit: Original Review

What’s your take? Would you go back to a bad seafood place if the manager promised not to give you food poisoning again? While there’s still a disconnect between real, imperfect human experiences and online reviews, hopefully surveys like this one will lead to more cohesion between the two.

You can check out the full results from the survey by heading over to PR Newswire.