We first went to Al Watan, a great Pakistani restaurant by the airport, in June of 2009. By then, it had been reviewed 34 times on Yelp. It has since been reviewed another 60 times. As it happens, not only was I in the first wave of Yelpers to visit Al Watan, I visited right before it really took off.
weeks between reviews
As the graph illustrates, Al Watan was very popular among Yelpers who wrote reviews from July through August of 2009, in October of 2009 and then again from January through March of 2010. (I’ve noted that it was highlighted on yelp.com/la in a “Review of the Day” on January 5, 2010. You can see that this led to another increase in the frequency of reviews.)
I don’t think my review was the turning point that helped Al Watan become popular with Yelpers. But I also don’t see any evidence that it was a review on Chowhound or by Jonathan Gold that set off the Yelping frenzy as those non-Yelp references date back to 2006.
(In fact, when I made up my mind to first do the one-hour r/t drive to Al Watan, I did it on the basis of reviews on Zabinah.com – “your guide to Halal eating” – which recommended it for wedding catering, a hallmark of authenticity in my book.)
Perhaps, Yelp has data which would help me determine whether it was a particular user’s review that set off the Yelping frenzy. Perhaps, they know which reviewers have the capacity to make or break a restaurant – at least in terms of buzz on Yelp. That would be something to know.