I continually update this article based on new information. Check back or leave a comment to share your story. UPDATED 1/30/2013
LIKE me on Facebook for more YELP tips and news and to get notified when I update this or post more articles:
WHY YELP SUCKS
I used to be a die hard Yelper. I was one of the people who jumped aboard early, and was quickly on my way to being a Yelp elite.
So why am I now anti-yelp?
This article lists all the reasons as well as gives you insight as to the problems and what you can do to protect yourself because the way YELP is set up now, it is damaging to businesses and people’s reputations. Yelp has made the system impossible for businesses. Bad reviews are bad for your business which is good for YELP. This article goes into why.
The FILTER
The “Review Filter”. The dreaded filter, that Yelp defends. Reviews that reflect perfectly legitimate experiences getting filtered out by the “review filter’s algorithmic processes”.
This means as a reviewer you could write hundreds of reviews, and suddenly they are no longer showing because the filter decided, for whatever reason, you are no longer review worthy.
As a business you could suddenly be cheated out of your positive reviews, leaving only negative ones or none at all.
As a YELPER you often don’t know you have been filtered because when you are logged in, you can see your reviews fine. But log out and look at check and you may be surprised to find out that your reviews are not showing. NO ONE but you is reading your reviews. For those who haven’t figured it out, they continue to make reviews like jerks, thinking people can see it but lo and behold you are only talking to yourself!
This is what happened to me. For no reason I could see, my reviews were not showing anymore. It made the whole process of reviewing seemed pointless from then on out.
Yelp CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, insists that it’s automated system filters out untrustworthy reviews (there’s a program that can determine that?). But many find that this system is inconsistent.
I contacted YELP and also my local rep EMI about how I was being filtered. How can I continue to promote YELP as a positive tool for businesses in my workshops if I can’t use my own account as an example?
I prepared for battle. But when Emi contacted me, I was very annoyed at myself because I liked her. I didn’t want to. But it is hard not to. She is beautiful, charming, talented…all the things Yelp looks for in a leader. What is worse is I think she genuinely believes YELP is wonderful. She defended YELP not really addressing my concerns directly or about YELPS legal predicaments and seemed unconcerned that I was threatening to UN recommend YELP to the thousands of businesses I had previously convinced to join YELP in the first place.
You can hardly blame her, she has spent years building up her ELITE status and gets to go to all the parties. Its pretty hard to see the truth, when you are basking in the YELP benefits.
At the end of the day, nothing happened, my complaints were for nothing just like my reviews. But after that day my business listing could no longer be found in YELP searches. It is still there….but only if you have a direct link. And my positive reviews are all……well…..GONE.
Touche Yelp. Touche.
SO what does YELP say about the filter problem?
“We agree this can be frustrating”.
Yep. Frustrating not only as the Yelper but the business, who suddenly and conveniently has their legitimate reviews filtered, just to be left with the negative ones, often by people who are competitors, or out to intentionally discredit your business.
But Yelp has the answer for you!
You can claim your listing as a business, and add your own information and images. Of course, during the sign up process you are offered to create deals and advertise which allows you to control your account and in a sense, your reviews. Businesses desperate to repair the damage these negative reviews are doing, often give in and pay for these upgrades and advertising.
As seen in this recent report, advertising and deals is vital to YELP’s bottom line.
Yelp now denies that upgrading your account allows you to control your reviews, but upgrading your account does allow alter how listings appear on your page. (this has yet again changed, as time has gone by they have had to concede to public complaints)
Cats & Dogs owner Greg Perrault claims that Yelp offered to hide negative reviews if he advertised with them. He decided to not advertise with the company and a week later negative reviews that had disappeared mysteriously reappeared.
Yelp denies that they every offered to hide negative reviews because they got in trouble for it, but Currently Yelp is involved in a class action suit for extortion. Those who have initiated the law suit have claimed they were told if they paid, that Yelp would remove their negative reviews. Yelp did offer this at one time, and have since changed this service. They now offer you the ability to control the reviews by featuring them or changing the order. (this has also recently changed)
Reports are still being made by companies who get calls from Yelp sales and imply that their reviews will be fixed or improve if they pay for advertising. If you read the comments in this article you will see several people say that they received these calls and a couple of people who actually bought advertising and the agent restored their filtered positive reviews.
WHY YELP doesn’t want you to encourage people to write reviews.
Recently Harvard Business School assistant professor Michael Luca release this report that has some very interesting facts. One I found particularly interesting was where he refers to Bayesian learning. He confirms through this model, that people are more influenced by Elite reviewers and he also find how significant a 1 star rating drop is.
A 2010 Nielson Report shows the huge influence reviews have on consumers. They also said
“People are more likely to leave negative reviews than positive.”
In fact specifically 41% were more likely to share a negative review online than a positive one. So if businesses encourage satisfied customers to post positive reviews, the need to market their business via more traditional methods (advertising!) is reduced.
So with these facts we can run a scenario:
There is an open review site with no one controlling it. Since we know Negative reviews would outweigh positives (based on statistics) a businesses would need to encourage satisfied customers to leave positive ones just to keep things balanced.
With balanced reviews, why would anyone need to advertise?
YELP knows this.
So YELP encourages mass reviewing to give their advertising dollar value. They cultivate Elite who support advertisers, and let the negative review statistics work its magic and then by controlling the businesses from preventing them from any kind of balance on the review system, they are able to spin things in their favor for advertising and deal revenue.
If a business complains about their unfair reviews or tries to do anything to attempt to encourage customers to leave good reviews, YELP will encourage the business to claim their listing (which promotes check in offers, advertising, and deals, all things that YELP benefits from) and here is my favorite…..”the best way to succeed on Yelp is by focusing on great customer service“.
Great customer service is commonly achieved by surveying customers and asking them for feedback. This includes reviews!
But really, it annoys me to no end that YELP is telling us how to succeed. As if somehow the fact that we are unhappy with our reviews means that we are lacking customer service skills. Our issue is fairness and balance. I think most businesses agree, they are fine with constructive negative reviews.
“Telling people this is all they need to do and the rest will take care of itself, is frankly, dangerous business advice. I’m not sure if it was Google who started that lie or someone else, but it time for it to die a painful death. It doesn’t matter how great your restaurant is or how awesome the experience you’re creating – if you don’t encourage people to SHARE the experience, if you don’t TELL them to share it, they very often won’t.”
Also inviting someone to try your business and leave a review (any review) is not the same as asking for a good review…if you are willing to take the good with the bad, what is wrong with that??
My issues with The ELITE Squad
The ELITE squad. These are Yelpers who have achieved ELITE status and whose reviews cannot be filtered.
There are ads on Craigslist from businesses offering to pay for reviews and even ads from the ELITE themselves who are offering to write reviews for your business….for a price.
Elites are not allowed to be business owners. Why? Because YELP knows that people who don’t own businesses can’t relate or care how damaging bad reviews are. YELP also does not want businesses to have any control or understanding of the inner workings of YELP.
This blogger does a great job at explaining how it used to be before reviews sites, that when someone was upset they came to your face and told you so and you could offer to make it right and all was well.
Studies I reference earlier show how Elite impact a consumer’s decision to buy. The Elite are the true driving force behind the Yelp empire. And they are carefully programmed and cultivated to follow that program which supports advertisers.
Yelp is hypocritical
- Yelp tells business to NOT encourage reviews. You are allowed to place one of their authorized YELP stickers on your business window, but they do not want you asking for customers to leave reviews or offer any kind of freebies or incentives as thank yous for reviews. Recently I got a popup asking for me to review the YELP app. I thought that was quote funny because YELP is a business…..and they are asking for a review….on their own site that tells me I am not allowed to?
- Businesses are discouraged from trading services for reviews. YELP does not condone this and its a violation of their policy. HOWEVER, Businesses sponsor YELP Elite parties where everything is FREE and the Elite review the business. Obviously the only reason the business does this is to get reviews. So isn’t that considered trading services for reviews?
- Yelp’s terms of service say that as a reviewer you are liable for your Content. If it contains material that is “false, intentionally misleading, or defamatory; violates any third-party right, including any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, moral right, privacy right, right of publicity, or any other intellectual property or proprietary right”. But if you complain to YELP about a review that is false the often don’t remove it and wont provide assistance in identifying the reviewer, so how can anyone hold a review liable?
And they continue to find more ways to destroy your business
Businesses seeing the impact of bad reviews on their business, have become desperate.
As I mentioned earlier, it is not a balanced system and businesses have been trying anything they can do to get a fair balanced profile for their business online. And Yelp continues to cut businesses off at the knees by changing the system to prevent this from happening.
So it comes as no surprise when ABC recently reported that Yelp is now playing private detective to find businesses paying for reviews and outing them publicly. By using a computer filter (yes , they are trusting your image to yet another computer filter!!) they are uncovering companies that purchase fake positive reviews, then showing the world its evidence. (full article here)
Yelp now found a way to scare businesses from planting or paying for reviews.
“One jewelry store was paying someone $200 [to write a positive review],” said Vince Sollitto, Yelp’s vice president of corporate communications. “It kind of shows that this is an ongoing cat-and-mouse game. People are always going to try to game the system.”
The computer filter that Yelp uses is so top secret the company will not talk about it for fear of giving away too many clues to businesses looking to post phony reviews.
“This is not acceptable behavior,” Sollitto said. “Frankly, it’s not just unethical, but it’s probably illegal. And we think we need to let business owners know you can’t go out there and try to mislead your consumers.”
Who gave YELP the right to police your business and report to your customers? They are not trained, approved government or state run organizations without agendas. This is a business, making money on this system and even worse, they are trusting these decisions to filters that they admit aren’t perfect. They create an unfair environment then call out people for trying to avoid the damage it creates.
He says there are a couple of ways to help spot the real reviews from the fake. Truthful reviews talk about physical space and use specific details like “floor” and “small,” while fake reviewers tend to talk about themselves and their companions more than the actual business. Words like “husband” can be red flags.
Really? This makes NO sense to me whatsover. Most reviews I read and write all discuss who we were with and what they did. “I want with my husband to so and so, or my mother had the hamburger and I had the steak”. Yet this is a red flag?
Below is an example of what will popup on businesses who are caught. Doesn’t the wording on this just seem immature and unprofessional?
This article that goes more into the companies who were busted.
Competitors can manipulate reviews to their advantage
Black Hat SEO people know how to manipulate the YELP reviews to benefit their clients in both Yelp and SEO and YELP is doing nothing about it.
Say their client is XYZ so they go to the competitors of XYZ and plant a negative review. They say something like “this person did a terrible job so I went to XYZ of XYZ company and they helped fix my issue”.
Then they go to their client’s page and say “Bob Smith of Bob Smiths Designs LLC did a terrible job so I went to XYZ and they fixed it”
What this does is manipulate the searches for both YELP and google, so when people search for Bob Smith, lo and behold XYZ comes up first in the YELP search. And if someone searches BOB Smith on google, XYZs yelp page comes up showing the negative comment.
How do you make it so that your competitors name doesn’t show on your yelp page? You guessed it. Advertising!
This is a big problem and Yelp needs to make a rule to prevent people from mentioning competitors in their reviews. Since we can’t control the YELP rankings its impossible for us to do anything about it.
YELP tips
For me, all this is just too much. As for someone who advises clients on ways to leverage their business online, I no longer felt right supporting YELP and I have since made sure to provide information to them, and of course warn them.
Unfortunately because YELP can affect your business, Yelp isn’t just an option you can ignore — it’s a necessity at the very least to control damage reviews can do to your business.
So if your business is local, you need to curate and carefully monitor your Yelp page.
If your business has been around long, you probably already have a page; you’re just not holding the reins yet. You’ll want to step in and take control of it as soon as possible to prevent any negative word of mouth from hindering your growth and success.
Claiming or creating your Yelp business page is easy; just fill out a couple of online forms and answer a quick, automated phone call. It takes less than five minutes. Once you’re signed up, you’ll have access to tools. Add a photo, your link, some information about your business, a special, whatever you want. The important thing is that you control your listing. Anyone can add a business to YELP and you don’t want a listing that has negative or incorrect information.
You also will be able to respond directly (Privately or publicly) to any reviews that may already be on your page. I advocate responding publicly, in a positive and helpful manner to any negative reviews.
You can also report any reviews you think are in violation of the review policy or that you suspect could be planted.
After you have your business account under control, you can make the choice how involved you want to be with the YELP community. I personally have boycotted any further activity until they make some serious changes to their business practices, and get rid of that dreaded CENSOR, I mean REVIEW FILTER.
But that is just me.
Like me on Facebook for more updates on YELP and other things to watch for online!
My follow up articles on YELP:
http://www.bosshi.com/more-on-why-yelp-sucks/
http://www.bosshi.com/yelp-sucks-3-now-they-lock-your-business-name/
FOR A STEP BY STEP go here: tips from mashable
Great links that tell the truth about YELP:
- http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/yelp-goes-google/
- http://www.screenwerk.com/2011/03/18/is-yelp-too-rigid-with-reviews/
- http://www.raymondfong.net/misc/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-yelp-ripping-people-off
I too have abandoned Yelp. It’s not useful to a consumer either as a guide to local businesses, or as a way to share your experiences.
I’ve written several legitimate reviews which Yelp now filters from users. It angers me that I would take my time to offer something of myself only to have an algorithm decide I’m not worthy. If Yelp is not interested in my experiences, I’m not going to waste my time sharing them.
Moreover, knowing that my honest reviews have been filtered, I can only conclude that reviews for most or all other businesses have also been filtered. This renders Yelp useless as a guide to local business.
On WFLA Tampa, FL they showed a story about the Lone Star Tile and Grout Cleaning Company in San Antonio, TX. The show aired tonight and show said that the business had a five star review out of eight reviews and and two star review from one reviewer. Someone from YELP contacted the owner and said that he had written all the good reviews and his company was being downgraded to two stars.
After proving that he didn’t write the reviews I see his company is still rated two stars.
What is really interesting is that after proving he didn’t write the reviews a couple of months later a representative of your company told him that for $400 – $500 a month his five star rating would be be up.
Don’t believe me go to WFLA,1830 broadcast, 5 May 2013.
Where I’m from (NYC, Harlem to be exact) this is known as a shakedown. Shame on your shelf. I’ll never use your site again and I’ll post this on the web for all my friends to see.
Grazie,
Don YELP
It was an absolute relief to read your comments concerning yelp, since my experience reflects the exact scenario you describe. I have been in business for over 30+years focusing my attention on providing the best care for my patients. Recently we upgraded our entire website to reflect all aspects of our business, and of course to drive new patients in see us. So, you can imagine my chagrin and embarrasment when I saw how my reviews were manipulated resulting in the scenario you and others described. I was stunned to see the comments that first came up and i wondered what happened to all the hundreds if not thousands of more positive reviews? It became painfully obvious what yelp was up to, eliminating hundreds of positive reviews and leaving hysterical, crazy, negative reviews from non patients and disgruntled employees., etc. Yelp has succeeded in devising a way to suppress, filter, and manipulate the truth behind what a true patient experience is and instead, like a heat seeking missile go out and try to destroy what I have spent my entire life building. It feels like the classic David vs Goliath, and I have only just begun to fight. I have always stood for fairness, responsibility, integrity etc, championing the underdog, only this time it is personal.
Please sign this petition
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-yelpcom-destroying-small-businesses/svPrcjb1
I am 60 years old. I have owned and run my own business for 30 years. I have always worked very hard to give my customers excellent service. I didn’t pay much attention to Yelp until recently. I knew that it is usually mad people who yelp and felt that as long as I did the best job I could, my business would do well. This economy has hurt everyone in my line of work and it has been a struggle to survive. A competing business opened 5 months ago. They have twenty five 5 star letters – all of them quite long and involved – on their yelp site. Wow, nothing suspicious about that huh?! I looked at my site and realized that three 5 star letters had been “filtered” in the past 3 months. I wasn’t even aware they had been written but I did recognize the names. They are all wonderful people who just wanted to write and say something nice about my business. These were honest reviews. Available however right at the top are the few reviews from truly disturbed people and negative reviews from years ago. I don’t expect all reviews to be wonderful – no one does. But why are less stellar reviews from years back kept up and good ones “filtered”? Additionally they have for years kept up negative reviews from people I know are unbalanced. Now I have to wonder. Are these crazy people yelpers?
Who are Yelpers anyhow? I didn’t even know they existed until tonight. Why would someone’s opinion be worth more if they have nothing better to do than sit around and write yelp reviews. Their interactions with businesses would not even be honest. If Yelp was for real they would want reviews that are for real. Yelp has offered to fix the order of our reviews (why the heck are they just not chronological) if we pay them $500 per month. Not only can I not afford that but extortion is against the law. It’s no different than paying protection money to bad cops.
They are destroying small businesses in this country at a time when we can least afford to have that happen. Who is behind Yelp? Why can’t they be stopped or at least be given some rules they have to follow? I just don’t know how it keeps on going when I read complaint after complaint that is exactly the same as mine? There must at least be hundreds of thousands of us if not millions.
Yelp is destroying small business in America. Something our country is dependent on. The worst thing is. When a small new business is first trying to adjust to master there concept. Here comes Yelpers trashing these places before they have a chance to be open for a month are so and make needed adjustments. If you believe in America like I do and want to do it a favor. Stop clicking on yelp ads and it will shut this company down This is just my opinion.
check out below, copied and pasted from Edmonton, Alberta Canada Yelp. The reviewer admits to taking a ‘bribe’ from the restaurant even though he allusions it as working as marketing, he nonetheless is still working for the restaurant as an employee then he goes and writes a four review for the restaurant which then gets the restaurant the coveted Review of the Day!
As well, on the Edmonton Yelp Discussion One review for Arc En Ciel Restaurant
Search Reviews
Sort by: Yelp Sort | Date | Rating | Useful | Funny | Cool | Total Votes | Friends’ | Elites’
Matthew L.’s Review
Review from Matthew L.
Elite ’13
80 friends
408 reviews
Matthew L.
for the love of bread
Edmonton, AB
Compliment
Send Message
Follow This Reviewer
1/30/2013 1 photo ROTD 4/13/2013 First to Review
I will start off this review with a few caveats:
1) While Arc En Ciel Restaurant is not paying me anything, I am volunteering my time to help the restaurant with its marketing efforts.
2) Because of this, the restaurant has fed me some food on the house.
3) I would not write this review if I could not vouch for the tastiness and preparation of the food.
And now for a review:
Arc en Ciel means rainbow in French, so with a name like that you’d expect French food – it’s not – the menu offers an assortment of Vietnamese and Chinese Dishes. and Answer, an Elite Yelper called Violet was quick to call out this review as ‘coercion’ and you need to go on and see the rest or most of the other responses in support of their ‘buddy’ or ‘friend’ matthew who wrote the review and got the free food it is disgusting to see howcthey defend their friend’s bribery set-up review.
One review for Arc En Ciel Restaurant
Search Reviews
Sort by: Yelp Sort | Date | Rating | Useful | Funny | Cool | Total Votes | Friends’ | Elites’
Matthew L.’s Review
Review from Matthew L.
Elite ’13
80 friends
408 reviews
Matthew L.
for the love of bread
Edmonton, AB
Compliment
Send Message
Follow This Reviewer
1/30/2013 1 photo ROTD 4/13/2013 First to Review
I will start off this review with a few caveats:
1) While Arc En Ciel Restaurant is not paying me anything, I am volunteering my time to help the restaurant with its marketing efforts.
2) Because of this, the restaurant has fed me some food on the house.
3) I would not write this review if I could not vouch for the tastiness and preparation of the food.
And now for a review:
Arc en Ciel means rainbow in French, so with a name like that you’d expect French food – it’s not – the menu offers an assortment of Vietnamese and Chinese Dishes.
You will love this.
According to YELP, you can get free things and its ok if you admit it.
From YELPS FAQ
Does Yelp mind if I get a freebie in exchange for my review?
Please don’t write a five-star review of your local watering hole in exchange for a free drink. That said, if you independently luck into a free drink or two because of your charming personality, by all means, enjoy the largesse but don’t forget to mention the free perks when writing your review.
HOWEVER, It is a shady that he mentions he is helping with their marketing, because whether he is getting paid or not, he admits they give him something free in “exchange” for help, he did not just luck into a free meal. This is a major conflict of interest. If you are doing a companies marketing, there is no way to be impartial and you are considered working for them. I am sure he flashed his YELP elite badge, and the restaurant fell over themselves trying to please him. SO of course he got excellent service! YELP elite love to get free stuff and they don’t luck into anything.
You should flag this. He tried to look impartial by giving four stars but fact of the matter is, this is the companies first review and its from an Elite so it helps. I am sure he will be watching their reviews, asking fellow Yelpers to also review and making sure there are no negative reviews. After all, he is doing their Marketing!
I was at a Ramen place once, when I over heard an Elite telling the waitress she was YELP elite and if there were discounts for YELP reviewers. I laughed out loud when the lady, who could barely speak english, asked what YELP was.
I had a weird yelp experience: I left a 4 start POSITIVE review and yelp removed it and sent me this message:
Yelp HQ
To khandrola@yahoo.com
” Hi Khandi,
We wanted to let you know that we’ve removed your review of Central Self Storage. Your review was flagged by the Yelp community, and our Support team has determined that it falls outside our Content Guidelines (http://www.yelp.com/guidelines) because it lacks a substantive first-hand experience. When reviewing, please describe your actual experience with a business.
We hope you will continue to provide great reviews, while keeping in mind our Content Guidelines. See you on Yelp!
Regards,
Bruce
Yelp User Support
San Francisco, California”
I had a space here for 18 months so I fail to see how I lacked “actual experience” with them.
Yeah this is common. They will remove posts if they feel you violate review policies. The biggest offender is people ranting but not actually talking about their specific experience. Another one is hearse. If your review contains too much of what you “heard” from others, they will remove your comment. I would like to see your review. Did you save it?
That idiot Steve above is a main part of the problem as he has zero clue how Yelp’s business model works, and their evil (what should be illegal) tactics, and so is just another ignorant Droid being used to continue the charade! Yelp needs to be taken down and out and as soon as possible!
It is common for the Elite and Yelpers to repeat the same arguments. It proves my point that if they had their own businesses they would get it.
No, I’m one of those business owners they tried to blackmail to advertise and I refused as we had a great rating – so now only the bad and fake reviews are on my site (28 left) and all 45 of my 5 star reviews have been filtered.
Thanks for this…I own a business and 3 of my positive reviews have been filtered for what reason? An ex employee with no kids (we are a mostly kid oriented business) left a review and that remains. I contacted Yelp to remove it because he is bitter and NEVER worked inside my business, just at outside events yet it remains. MAKES NO SENSE. Now my instincts were correct. Smelled scam from the beginning.
I just set up our company yelp page, and I have get calls from Yelp for 2 days. since I google it. ppl say it just advertising so I didn’t pick up the call. Not sure will they call again tomorrow.
This is a very interesting article, however, I have to take exception to your claims.
“Elites are not allowed to be business owners. Why? Because YELP knows that people who don’t own businesses can’t relate or care how damaging bad reviews are. YELP also does not want businesses to have any control or understanding of the inner workings of YELP.”
So, your assertion is that once someone attains Elite status, they can no longer understand crappy service? I’ve been nominated Elite for two years in a row now and I’ve not been paid anything. I don’t accept “gifts” from businesses, and I often find myself unable to attend Yelp events, yet I still review businesses, and I write positive and negative reviews based on my experience and nothing more. So finally consumers have a way to express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction and businesses only complain when they have a bunch of unhappy customers. Rather than wonder why revenue, profits and return customers are down, you want to blame some third-party forum? How lame. Here’s a thought – put some energy into figuring out how to make your product or service better than the next guy and you won’t have to worry about Yelp reviews.
Sure, there will be people that abuse Yelp and use it for their own personal bashing site, but that hardly means that ALL reviewers are BS.
Thank you for your comments.
No that is not what I was saying. I was pointing out the reasoning behind Yelp not allowing Elite to be business owners.
As someone who went from reviewing someone as a non business owner to becoming a business owner, I know first hand the difference in how you review. You start to look at the review process a little differently and a little more maturely and objectively because you understand how damaging reviews can be. Running a business is hard. There are many good decent businesses out there getting bad reviews because of the most ridiculous things. Things like the 365 day promotions or other challenges that encourages mass reviewing to increase their numbers and it brings out the worst in the reviewers.
Of course there are exceptions and I am not so much slamming Elite as I am Yelp for how they use the Elite to drive Advertising that damages businesses reputations. They hand pick Elite who are in a certain demographic. There are some great Elite reviewers, but there are more who are very immature ones that have no idea about the real world and one day when they pour their blood and sweat into their dream of having their own business, they will look at things very differently and not be so quick to annihilate a business.
Your comment about using the reviews to improve your business is a valid one. But it is also the same tired rhetoric that Yelp uses to defend the bad press. You aren’t addressing the real issue and that isn’t that people have a problem with review sites or bad reviews, is is that the reviews are not balanced. YELP’s system is flawed and produces unfair and unbalanced reviews. There is plenty of facts out there that prove this, not to mention the thousands of businesses experiencing it first hand.
The argument is for a balanced and fair review system. And until that happens this conversation will continue.
Is there any lawsuits yet concerning yelp’s coercion . They force you to do business with them or they ruin your business.
I have a negative review which I do not agree with on yelp.Others have left positive reviews and they are GONE!! Leaving only the one from the crazy lady,who is full of shit.Where is the balance here?Yelp is a farce.I think they are full of shit too.
This is the main issue businesses have with Yelp. Expect a sales call soon.
this was interesting. I have heard that yelp charges the business owners to HELP them increase the positive reviews but this will cost a lot! I know a lady owning and managing a restaurant who ended up paying $800 for a month in order to increase the positive reviews but of course this was only enough for one month!!!!
the elite members are the filter, the paid scum of Yelp, how can we show they are making a profit from the negative remarks by forcing
a group of targets to advertise with yelp, so they can claim a portion of the profit
Are you saying that Elite get a portion of the profit of advertising? I have never heard that before. I know a few Elite and they aren’t getting anything like that. Where did you hear this?
Anyone notice that Yelp’s recently released YouTube video, in which Jeremy Stoppleman defends the Yelp filter, doesn’t allow comments or ratings? How ironic.
Ha! Yes I saw that. Of course he doesn’t want people “reviewing” his comments. More Yelp propaganda.