Billion Dollar Bully: Can You Trust Yelp?

For over 10 years, we BELIEVED their reviews for great restaurants, and other cool services.

However, during last 3 years, people have been getting mad. And, they're louder by the day.

Stocks have plummeted on Wall Street, and a new documentary threatens to expose dodgy business tactics. Meanwhile the FTC reports that some 2,000 complaints have been filed against the review mammoth.

Here's how Yelp changed our reviews - that we posted.

 

1. Yelp Changes its Reviews

According to Forbes Magazine, Yelp discards 25% of all reviews. Yelp officials insist that the practice is legit, and it’s the consequence of a vigorous spam filter. But many small business owners disagree. Stories that follow a similar pattern have flooded the Internet. The East Bay Express reported the following:

“Six people told this newspaper that Yelp sales representatives promised to move or remove negative reviews if their business would advertise. In another six instances, positive reviews disappeared — or negative ones appeared — after owners declined to advertise.”

 

2. Here's an example!

Compare the following two reviews for the same establishment:

The first one was published, the second one was filtered out by Yelp.

 

 

The unfiltered review was written by a user without a name or a profile image. Is this review trustworthy? A quick look at his profile reveals he has only written one star reviews. His opening credentials read like a spam email. It appears to lack credibility, but it’s still up.

 

3. Restaurants Fight Back

Not all restaurants take Yelp’s monopoly lying down. Botto Bistro, an Italian restaurant in San Francisco, decided to fight back.

Owner David Cerretini claimed he received 20 harassing calls from Yelp in one week, demanding cash for advertising. Eventually he relented, and took the smallest deal available. But when he could no longer afford the payments, his good reviews vanished. Cerretini claimed once favorable reviews were now replaced with bad ones. This might stagger some businesses, but not Cerretini. He turned it to his advantage.

 

Read entire article:

http://phone.instantcheckmate.com/dialed-in/yelp-extortion