Can You Really Trust Online Restaurant Reviews?

The New York Times published its first restaurant review in 1859. "I had Veuve Clicquot at the Astor House and finished with Clos Vougeot at Delmonico's and then went home to begin the writing of my reflections," wrote the critic, who was only listed as "the Strong-Minded Reporter of the Times" (via the TimesMachine). Over the following century, the newspaper hosted a parade of big-name food critics, such as Ruth Reichl and Craig Claiborne, garnering trustworthy acclaim for its restaurant reviews.

But what happens when Reichl isn't available to comment and a hungry prospective diner is left with only Josh B.'s opinion on Yelp? Unfortunately, there's no single way to tell whether an online restaurant review is trustworthy or not, but there are some ways you can filter helpful information from the bottomless pit that is the internet. The basics are essentially the same as evaluating anything else online: Who created this and why, and is it relevant for me?

One of the best ways to filter the abundance of restaurant reviews is to look for professional critics with a large body of work. Food critics constantly visit restaurants, even if they don't write about them all, so they are able to put eateries in context, often writing for newspapers or magazines. As print journalism declines, though, they're moving to alternative outlets. Longtime critic Ryan Sutton in New York City, for instance, now writes for his own website called The Lo Times after a tenure at Bloomberg and Eater.

It's not always possible to find good food reviews from an established critic, and even more importantly, the hungry American public is increasingly looking toward social media (not newspapers) for restaurant reviews. But social media doesn't have the same editorial standards and procedures traditional journalism does. Influencers create content ready for your feed, but they're often paid by restaurants for the feature. That's not inherently a problem but take note if it's a reviewer or paid promotional partnership.

Sites like Yelp or Google Reviews offer the opportunity for anyone to share their opinions, but with that freedom comes the hazards of misuse. One of the secrets of Yelp is around 16% of reviews posted there could be fake, according to a 2015 study from Harvard Business School. Some clear red flags of fake reviews are generic posts that offer no real details about the restaurant or food, overly negative or positive reviews, and reviews posted by profiles that haven't made any other posts.

Sometimes, businesses will get a deluge of excessively positive reviews all at once, and often they'll contain similar words or phrases. If they sound strangely similar or contain really specific language you wouldn't typically use — think ad copy like "romantic ambient mood lighting" or "freshly tossed salad bowls" — they might have all been written by the same person. Consider the same for influencers, too: If they're all talking about the same exact points in their videos, they might be promotional rather than true reviews.