Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

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.

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

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.