I got an e-mail from Kathleen Richards, managing editor of California’s East Bay Express, yesterday alerting me that she’s posted a follow-up to her recent investigation into allegedly shady Yelp sales practices. This time, she notes, all the allegations are made by sources who spoke for full-name attribution, including this one from right around these parts:
“Nicholas Paul, an instructor at an art studio in Chicago (which did not want to be named for fear of retribution) and who handles the studio’s advertising, said that Yelp approached him to advertise starting in July of 2008. After he turned them down, ‘then all of a sudden three of our positives disappeared and then we got two negative ones,’ he said. Of the original thirteen reviews they had, only eight now remain, four of which are negative. Paul says the sales rep told him he could control that. ‘We could basically adjust the way our reviews are read,’ Paul said the rep told him. ‘We could highlight the ones we wanted and put the ones we didn’t want on the backburner.’”
After Richards’ first story ran, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman pushed out a damage-control blog post that failed to answer all of the allegations (several of which also were attributed to fully named sources). He hasn’t yet posted about Richards’ latest piece, but he might want to conduct a thorough investigation of how the company’s actual sales practices square with Yelp’s stated policies before doing so. After all, the CEO recently had to issue an apology post when his claim that no reviews from free Yelp-sponsored events get posted to the host business owner’s page proved false.
Here’s what Stoppelman had to say in his “mea culpa“:
“After my last post discussing how we handle Yelp Elite events, I closely scrutinized a handful of business pages to make sure no reviews for Yelp events had slipped through and ended up on a hosting venue’s page (admittedly I should have checked more thoroughly before publishing). Unfortunately, I found that in a number of cases a handful of event reviews were in the wrong place. The vast majority of Yelp Elite event reviews are on the event’s review page, but any Yelp event reviews on a hosting venue’s page flies against our goal of ensuring (to the greatest extent possible) that business reviews on a given page are objective and unbiased.”
So now we have a case of many business owners alleging shady Yelp sales practices in outlets ranging from the East Bay Express to the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, while the Yelp brass continues to say it just ain’t so. Given the CEO’s about-face on how Elite event reviews were actually handled, how does the company expect its trust level to hold up by issuing blanket denials in the face of a mounting number of complaints on the issue of unsavory sales tactics and review manipulation from seemingly credible business owners?
An East Bay Express source explains how Yelp could actually stop the PR bleeding:
“Jo-Ellen Pozner, an assistant professor in the Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, believes the best thing for Yelp to do in the wake of this controversy is to increase its transparency. In other words, Stoppelman should publicly apologize for any potential wrongdoing, explain how the behavior might have occurred, and then outline the steps the company will make to avoid future wrongdoing. ‘That would be easy for Yelp to do,’ she said.”
Actually, given the hole they’ve dug so far, it might not be that easy for Yelp officials to take such a step. But I bet they’d ultimately be glad they did.
For more on Yelp, read “Is Yelp’s lack of transparency coming back to bite it?,” “Business owners accuse Yelp of Blago-style pay-to-play tactics,” “Night of the roundtable,” “The critical condition,” and “Amateur hour.”
Add us to the growing list of people with businesses who have been dissapointed to discover that : 1. Yelp insists on removing verifiablly positive reviews. 2. Yelp refuses to remove verifiably untruthful reviews. 3. Yelp promises to rearrange/remove reviews to benefit a business in exchange for monthly advertising money. 4. Yelp requests free food, liquor, and venues for their company parties in exchange for positive reviews. We don’t see how anyone can put any trust in Yelp representatives or Yelp reviews.
I hate to disappoint the “yelpers” but the blinders have to come off.
Since when are small business owners your enemy? We are the foundation of your community, we employ your sons and daughters, your retired grandfather, and you think that just because Yelp is being criticized, called to the carpet that this is some master plan to censor you or that we, the small businesses are just whining? Not true. This is about fairness and public practices. Yelp deceives the public, and “yes” Yelper fans, they are deceiving you as well. This may come as a surprise but you ARE being censored. As a small business person in Seattle I want the reviews, I have all good reviews and one poor review. That said, they DO sensor your reviews. I started out with 12, 5 star reviews, then got one bad (bogus) review. “Ok” I can deal with that but when I refused to pay to be a sponsor, suddenly that BAD, outdated review becomes the billboard review on my review page, the very top. Good reviews have now dwindled down from 12 to 9 reviews. Then a call again to be a sponsor from Yelp. I politely decline, feeling like a hostage and that their promise to move the bad review if I paid was extortion, the thought of paying felt worse than the review. My reviews dwindle down to 8, 5 star reviews, the outdated one bad review still at the top.
Finally I write Yelp a letter, mail it, sprinkled it with some legalese and a week later, the bad review is removed, as it should have been because it violated all their policies which they seem to ignore. But my 5 star reviews are still dwindling, now down to 7 reviews. With each refusal to be a “sponsor” my stars shine a little less on Yelp. And perhaps even your review my friend has been removed. How is that an honest review page when Yelp is stacking the deck? Good reviews are not always posted and obviously at times even removed. So in a way, you, the Yelper are censored and I the small business person am being cheated also. And by the way, Yelp IS a business too so if you really want to “stick it to us”, the small businesses community, Yelp should not be excluded.
Why don’t all you small business owners just shut up and hope for a bailout!
Nish
I thought I was the only one experiencing this problem with Yelp.It helps to see that others are going through the same thing.I have been in business for years and years and have had great reviews from all other website until yelp came along.I was shocked and discusted with this website and all the false negative reviews I received for my popular business.This caused me much damage.I also felt I am being held hostage with yelp.They call and call and don’t let up.Basically you feel like you are being black mailed if you don’t become a sponser.When you don’t do it,many of your best reviews disapear and negative reviews surfice.I know personally of several customers that wrote positive 5 stars reviews.They are now gone.They do not play fair and they are hurting small businesses.I hope someone investigates them because if they can do this to me,I know they are doing this to others.
I too have a small popular business that one disgruntled client has besmirched and libeled. I’ve tried to contact YELP and no one has responded via e-mail. I tried to call and no listing. I went to their offices and you are not allowed admittance.
I am seeking legal recourse.
I have been a believer in City Search although many have also issues with them, but at least you can call and talk to your ad rep and get resolve ! I was bashed on Yelp by a Carlos D, who is this guy? We are an automotive related operation in Portland Or. We have stellar reviews through all the info sites, major search engines & City Search. This individual left a thorough bashing on Yelp about us. So I went to our scheduling data base and what do you know, this guy was never here…ever. This was either competitor rigged or his just did not like all the positive activity and needed to be a spoiler. I attempted to contact him through Yelp and he spit back what you see now in our feed back area. He also pulled down his profile picture the next day. He would not give me his last name, type of car, date he was in or any pertinent info that related to his as a customer, this is a true sigh of deceitful guilt, but Yelp would not respond. I said in my post to him that if you were a legitimate customer and I can locate you in our books I would let this rest. He basically said he controls the media and I have no choice. About a week later, 5 positive reviews just disappeared from our feedback content area. This is a shoddy media group at best as the main function is to have CONTROL of everything regardless of ETHIC. They can expect to see law suits build over the next year as this monster will only grow as a problem for business owners. I will be one of them pursuing a lawsuit.
I did a good review for a place that was not a sponsor to Yel. It was quickly removed. There was nothing in there againt their policy. I think they use their policy to censor to their own advantage. To remove the review that do not bring them money by extorting the business owners.
Sorry I misspelled the name Yelp. The company’s name is yelp. However your spell yelp, it does not matter. Yelp just likes to remove good reviews. Yelp keeps the bad reviews. Yelp does not verify if the person actually used the product or the services. Yelp is in it for the money. Yelp does not really care about reviews.
You can add me to the sorry list of people that had about 15-18 positive reviews reduced to 2 after several attempts by Yelp salespeople to get me to pay for advertising. This same thing happened to the business next door and a few other friends I know that run businesses. Yelp and there sales team are complete idiots, a websites PR is nearly everything and right now they have shot themselves in both feet…
It’s illegal and dishonest!
John’s exact same scenario happened to us. Our company was offered an “advertising opportunity” - pay $299/mo and we will minimize the placement of negative reviews of your business.
Curiously, at the time of the “generous” offer, our business DIDN’T EVEN EXIST ON YELP.
This outrageous sum is way out of our “wildest dreams” budget.
Sure enough, Yelp added our company’s listing shortly after the offer was made - and the next thing we know BAD REVIEWS are showing up.
Illegal? Can it destroy a business? Probably not. But can it make a business’ competitors lives easier? You betcha. They probably paid the extortion money. In every normal country in the world Yelp.com would be named a Shakedown.com
My business is listed on Yelp where few of my regular clients posted 5-star rating and great comments for my business. This summer Yelp called me several times aksing if I would like to advertise with them. First of all they started asking me how many clients do I see per day and how much money do I make per week in avarage! (I do skincare and massage therapy). When I asked how come these questions are relevant to the subject, I was told that this will provide the best plan for my business. Ofcourse I was shocked by all those questions. What’s their business how much do I earn! Based on all my answers, they gave outragous price for the advertising with them. So I turned down their offer. After that all my 5 star comments disappeared and I was left with one 4-star comment.
I too have experience with Yelp.com not doing what they say they do. I had 8 verifiably positive reviews, and Yelp has removed 7 of them. When I wrote to them asking why this is so, I got 2 automated responses that said the same thing: Thanks for contacting us about the reviews of your business.
We can all agree that some reviewers are more credible than others. For the most part, users can decide for themselves which reviewers they trust the most. We remove some of the guesswork by screening out reviews that are written by less established users. The process is entirely automated to avoid human bias, and it affects both positive and negative reviews. Since users can become more or less established over time, their reviews can disappear and reappear over time, as well. Either way, we never actually delete these reviews, and they can still be found on the reviewer’s personal profile page. It is important to note, however, that we cannot manually restore these reviews to your listing.
This system proves frustrating for some because it sometimes affects perfectly legitimate reviews. The flip side is that it helps protect against fake reviews from malicious competitors and disgruntled former employees. We think we’ve struck a balance that works well for business owners and consumers alike, but we welcome any thoughts you might have about how to refine the balance further.
????????
same thing happened to our small business. we refused to advertise or pay whatever it was and within days half of our good reviews were gone.
If any of our customers go on to review us on yelp and don’t have multiple reviews of other businesses, the review gets taken down in a day or two.
BOYCOTT YELP!!!
I have posted negative reviews about a restaurant called Zyggyz in Champaign Urbana. Curiously, they have disappeared. Zyggyz advertizes on their site that they have “4 stars” from Yelp!! So Yelp helps them by removing negative reviews. Sorry yelp and Sorry Zyggyz, this shady business would just not do !
Yelp should lose their internet power to list your business negatively in the searches. I am going to report them to the search engines as slandering businesses across the nation. They called me for advertising and then placed a bad review when I refused to pay them. Now it comes up under my business name search. Why can’t we place a negative yelp review on yelp? What’s good for the goose should be good enough for the gander.
I just checked out yelp site. There are several “serial” bloggers all they do is blog 8 hours a day about all kinds of businesses they supposedly visited today. (I guess while blogging) It must be yelp itself doing the dirty work or paid bloggers who are slandering businesses. Isn’t slander and liable illegal in the US?