In a new study that contradicts another recent study (and may as well have been commissioned by Yelp itself), a team of economists from UC Berkeley looked at 300 Bay Area restaurants and determined that as little as a half-star difference in a restaurant’s average rating on Yelp can affect their nightly bookings. Furthermore, there’s a lot of incentive for restaurants to pad their Yelp pages with ringers and fake reviews. [Gizmodo, Earlier]
