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Is it raining outside? Then it may not be a good time to post a review on Yelp. That's according to new study that reveals bad weather can adversely affect online restaurant reviews.
The study was conducted by researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs who found that restaurant reviews tend to be more negative when the weather is either very cold or very hot, the New York Times reports. Here are some of the findings:
“Online reviewers posted most often in July and August, researchers said, but those reviews were more likely to be negative. And regardless of season, if the weather was uncomfortable, all the worse for the chef. The most negative reviews were written when it was colder than 40 degrees or warmer than 100 degrees, or if it was raining or snowing.”
To come to this conclusion researchers examined online data from websites including Foursquare, TripAdvisor and Citysearch (Yelp did not release enough data so it wasn’t included). The team tracked 1.1 million reviews of 840,000 restaurants over the span of a decade.
Among the findings is the fact that bright and sunny San Diego has more five-star reviews than rainy Seattle. Hmmmm..this is certainly food for thought!
Has the weather ever influenced your restaurant reviews? We want to know! Tell us in the comments below!
