Is Yelp extorting businesses to advertise?
Interesting article regarding the online review site, Yelp. This goes to show if you take control of your online reputation, you shouldn’t have to worry about sites like Yelp.
Critics Prompt Change In Yelp Site’s Reviews
Business-review Web site Yelp has altered some of its features in the wake of several lawsuits that accused the company of extorting businesses to advertise.
The company will no longer allow businesses that advertise with Yelp to place their favorite review above other comments. Users, meanwhile, will be able to see reviews that have been removed by Yelp’s “review filter,” which is designed to help prevent business owners from posting malicious reviews of competitors or glowing reviews of their own company.
Three suits filed this year allege that Yelp pressured businesses to advertise and retaliated against companies that didn’t by negatively skewing their ratings. The suits are still pending.
Yelp has denied the allegations and blames them in part on “conspiracy theories” and confusion about Yelp’s system. In a post on its official blog, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote, “Despite our best efforts to educate consumers and the small business community, myths about Yelp have persisted.”
Mr. Stoppelman wrote that the “favorite review” feature “led some people to the wrong conclusions” about how much control advertisers had on their page and that because of this, the feature is being eliminated.
Yelp, which allows users to review local businesses such as restaurants, has been attempting to explain how and why it uses a review filter and recently posted a video on the subject. The site now includes a link to filtered comments at the bottom of the list of reviews on each page. The filtered reviews include those from people with only a couple of reviews to their name and those who write reviews such as “wow, i have been there” or “good.” Some reviews that have been filtered mention other businesses specifically, while others are indistinguishable from many positive reviews already on the site.
In his blog post, Mr. Stoppelman said the change will allow users to see that “Yelp’s review filter works just the same for advertisers and non-advertisers alike.”