Yelp Extorting Businesses
When Mary Seaton received negative reviews on user-generated review site Yelp for her business, The Sofa Outlet, Yelp offered to help her out. But only if she paid $350 a month for a business account in which Yelp downplays negative reviews by moving some of them to bottom. However, while positive reviews may be scrutinized and removed, negative reviews are never taken off a business's page. Yelp's practice of extorting businesses that have been negatively reviewed on its website actually isn't a new practice at all. [via Eater]
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17 Comments:
I'm a Yelper and I'm not sure I'm ok with Yelp doing this...
ronzoni at 1:22PM on 08/05/08
Regarding the Razzberry Lips case, that case has been discuss elsewhere in SJ media. Yelp remove some of the positive reviews because they found the source of the reviews all came from new posters and from the same IP address. The owners later claim they setup a computer at their business and encourage customers to post reviews. This came out several months ago. Hmm interesting how no one mentioned that during this latest report.
gnomatic at 1:36PM on 08/05/08
Yelp is good for finding addresses and phone numbers if I can't find that kind of information via Google, but I'm suspicious of any and all reviews on Yelp.
Raphael at 1:46PM on 08/05/08
i'm with raphael. i'm generally skeptical about relying on online reviews - my experience is that while i try to do my reviews objectively and factually, not everyone does. more often than not, it seems those who take the effort to review are more likely to have an ax to grind about something. this doesn't hold true for all reviewers or all forums, it's just something i notice when i read reviews.
somewhat related: this issue reminds me of anil dash's post about how to identify a sociopath:
http://www.dashes.com/anil/2006/12/how-to-detect-a.html
j at 2:14PM on 08/05/08
This is completely lame.
zackola at 2:25PM on 08/05/08
So, the reporter talks to two people. One is apparently gaming Yelp! with practices that are questionable at best. The other seems to be a case of sour grapes. The proprietor seemed to expect that her business account would allow her to quash any number of bad reviews. Her Yelp! page is generally positive but there are a small number of very negative ratings. This is a feature, not a bug.
Yelp!, on the other hand, is offering businesses the ability to shape their presence on the internet. I don't know exactly how their salespeople are selling the feature. They may be making misleading or unreasonable promises. However, the feature that they're selling is clearly ethical and nothing like extortion. They don't move or remove reviews, positive or negative, except where the reviews are believed to be fraudulent. I suppose it comes down to an issue of credibility. The proprietors interviewed for the article both seem sketchy and I have no reason to doubt Yelp!.
Frankly, I'm disappointed at how this is being handled by Serious Eats. Even if you give more credence to the news report than I do, you can't ignore that this is a two-sided issue. Your screaming scare-title gives a bad name to blogging.
I actually reported a fraudulent review to Yelp! once. I knew the restaurant in question well enough to be certain that the review was a lie. It was actually racist, too. I was disappointed that it took so long for Yelp! to address the issue. Months. At least. It's gone now though.
I've used Yelp! in the past because the map implementation is fantastic. It was much easier to do a broad survey of restaurants in a given area using Yelp! as compared to Google Maps.
stu_spivac at 2:27PM on 08/05/08
Also, regarding the quality of reviews at Yelp!... Obviously, you have to take them for what they're worth. Unedited, quickly jotted notes from random strangers. They're pretty useless individually. Collectively, I think it's very valuable. If restaurant A has 1 bad review and restaurant B has 10 reviews, 8 good, then I think you can make a reasonable inference of relative quality. Of course, you'll be misled on occasion but it's certainly safer than walking down the street and picking a restaurant at random. And professional reviews aren't perfect either. Yelp! is just another tool. Personally, I get more use out of Serious Eats recommendations, local papers and Google but Yelp! is another tool and it may have its place.
stu_spivac at 2:35PM on 08/05/08
I've already seen enough odd Yelp things.
My local bagel shop has a big new sticker on their door that says "Yelp Users Love Us! Yelp.com" (or similar, I need to go back and grab a photo of it).
However, if you look up that same shop on Yelp (http://www.yelp.com/biz/bagel-basement-lebanon), you get a single negative review.
Can you feel the love?
(Disclaimer: I wrote that negative review....)
kaszeta at 3:25PM on 08/05/08
I'm curious what the actual rates are for those business accounts. If they are as high as that cbs5.com story claims then that gives the appearance that Yelp would allow owners/managers to manipulate reviews. Why else would a restaurant pay such an exorbitant amount? It isn't extortion but it makes me think that either the first story is bs or that Yelp's business model is really wacky and needs to be looked at closer. My money is on the former but who knows.
sloppy at 3:53PM on 08/05/08
"I'm a Yelper and I'm not sure I'm ok with Yelp doing this..."
What.... you're NOT OK with extortion and fraud???
Pointy at 5:32PM on 08/05/08
Yeah, okay. I'm not a huge Yelp supporter. I think their claims of being able to move reviews around are worthless as it's easy for a user to filter search results by rating and date (and probably some other factors). However, one of the two individuals who were interviewed have been airing their grievances about Yelp publicly for months now and while they may have some valid complaints, they both come off as the types of entrepreneurs who view any negative criticism as hate speech. Perhaps if these ladies paid more attention to their own customer service issues they wouldn't have as many one-star reviews.
dantsea at 6:24PM on 08/05/08
There are obviously issues with the whole review format as it currently exists. Our view is that reviews will always be important but down the road people will use is as a secondary tool to video. This is part of the thesis behind jippidy.com. More importantly we give every business owner a voice.
master1980 at 10:21PM on 08/05/08
i'm sort of surprised by this headline. i consider serious eats to be pretty balanced, but it seems like you took two complaints - from business owners who don't have great reviews of their businesses - and created a very inflammatory headline.
if these allegations (that yelp claimed they would remove negative reviews in exchange for advertisting revenue) were true, then every business that advertised would have stellar reviews. this isn't the case. the complaint of these business owners seems to be that they *believed* that by advertising, they would be able to get rid of negative reviews, which simply wasn't the case. it seems they also tried to game the system by soliciting fake positive reviews. so exactly how is the problem yelp?
i personally found yelp useful well before i became a member over a year and a half ago and i continue to do so. sure, sometimes i find that a business others find appealing isn't to my liking, but that's the case with reviews of any product or service. (just because rotten tomatoes gives a good rating to a movie doesn't mean i'll like it.)
i will add that yelp is an online and offline community and being a part of it increases my ability to filter reviews that are by people i know, trust, and who have similar likes/dislikes, making it more useful for me. yelp may not be for everyone, but real reviews by real people are an important resource and the site that seems to be working well for milllions of people and thousands of businesses. in my view, if bad reviews upset business owners who can't satisfy their customers, then perhaps they should be rethinking their business management skills rather than blaming yelp.
sparkles at 5:29PM on 08/07/08
I'm going to follow up on my previous comment... All the negative Yelp reviews have now disappeared for our local bagel joint. They aren't completely gone (if I go to my profile, it still shows up), but they aren't showing it (the bagel basement yelp page says "0 reviews available").
Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that if my review was positive, it might become available?
kaszeta at 1:27PM on 09/05/08
i write negative reviews sometimes if the buesiness deserves it. what's the point if they are taken down?
might as well go somewhere that I'm appreciated. Heard that Yelp's not the only site around...and they are paying too...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090225162712AAoCqYF
deesandra at 8:47PM on 02/26/09
The whole yelp thing seemed really fun and cool to me until I joined and found they were suppressing some of my reviews. Even worse, they deceptively make you think your reviews are all still there – the deleted reviews still show up when YOU look at the particular business (when you are signed in)... so you don't know it's not showing up to others unless you check without being signed in.
Their "user support" people are no help at all. If you have a question about why your reviews aren't showing, they just refer you to their TOS, which is very vague. My deleted reviews seemed to comply with their TOS, but were still deleted.
Now I hate yelp. It's some kind of popularity club where they don't let you know REAL rules.
cooldrifft at 9:52PM on 04/01/09
I have problems with yelp too.
I am a business owner, and I must admit, I guess i am a little bit neurotic about reading my reviews. For over a year now i have been checking my reviews like once a week. I have not paid yelp ever.
I have inquired about the following things to my 'rep" (or whatever they are) and they have NEVER answered. (except for a 'cute' canned response)
The most reviews i have ever had at one time is 8, although there are many, many more positive reviews of my business that simply appear, disappear, and reappear again from cyberspace throughout the span of a few months. I am not sure why some other businesses have as many as 30 reviews or more, when i know there are SO MANY more POSITIVE reviews for my biz. that just float in and out. (some have perhaps been removed)
The negative ones, however, DO NOT MOVE. They do not disappear, as do the positive ones: they stay there. Therefore my number of stars is drastically brought DOWN by the fact that the negative ones stay!!
This smells funny to me. I would love more feedback on this issue.
vegangirl at 12:03AM on 04/05/09