people that YELP are scumbags

background: 2 buds of mine started this site about 5 years ago.

Norberg vs Nordskog.

background: I hate chiropractors right now.

tbh i use menupages.com

Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0

Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site ... for a price.
By Kathleen Richards
February 18, 2009

The phone calls came almost daily. It started to get creepy.

"Hi, this is Mike from Yelp," the voice would say. "You've had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You've had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those."

This wasn't your average sales pitch. At least, not the kind that John, an East Bay restaurateur, was used to. He was familiar with Yelp.com, the popular San Francisco-based web site in which any person can write a review about nearly any business. John's restaurant has more than one hundred reviews, and averages a healthy 3.5-star rating. But when John asked Mike what he could do about his bad reviews, he recalls the sales rep responding: "We can move them. Well, for $299 a month." John couldn't believe what the guy was offering. It seemed wrong.

In fact, something seemed shady about the state of his restaurant's negative reviews. "When you do get a call from Yelp, and you go to the site, it looks like they have been moved," John said. "You don't know if they happen to be at the top legitimately or if the rep moved them to the top. You don't even know if this is someone who legitimately doesn't like your restaurant. ... Almost all the time when they call you, the bad ones will be at the top."

That article is in the East Bay Express.

That article is in the East Bay Express.

Are they commies or have some agenda? Seriously, I don't know if that matters.

On the other hand, Yelp is consistently lame - don't need a newspaper to tell me that.

the yelp scene is mad creepy and "entitled"

Wow, that's truly creepy and morally reprehensible on the part of Yelp. There's definitely reasonable grounds to assume Yelp creates bad reviews on its own, since it seems to think hiding bad reviews is a very profitable thing to do.

It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

"Are they commies or have some agenda?"

Nah just the usual New Voice Media bullshit.

Some more articles going backwards a bit...
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2008/11/is_yelp_extorting_san_fran_bus.php
http://sf.eater.com/archives/2008/09/19/yelp_wanted_9.php

there was a news story on this featured on fox 11 in l.a. last tuesday night, i think?

And more...
http://la.eater.com/archives/2008/08/19/yelp_wanted_dinos_pizza_victim.php
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus11-2009feb11,0,7767842,full.column
http://cbs5.com/wrapper_consumer/seenon/yelp.business.complaints.2.820867.html
http://cbs5.com/wrapper_consumer/seenon/Yelp.Internet.ratings.2.787400.html

chaki otm

this is so fucked

can a mod change this thread title to peope WHO yelp are scumbags?

people who are vegetarian and go to a (delicious, cheap, family-run Peruvian-style) chicken place and neg-review it for not catering to their diets are scumbags

a friend of mine was talking about how one of her friends turned into a hardcore yelp addict and just hangs out with other yelp people now. it does sound a little bit like a cult.

can a mod change this thread title to "people WHAT yelp are scumbags?"

Can a mod please change this thread title to, "WHAT, yelp scumbags are people?"

a couple of the yelp reviews for the place i work are the equivalent of someone complaining about not being able to order sushi at an italian restaurant

If Yelp is indeed asking for money to erase negative reviews, and Google "Do No Evil" is partnered with Yelp, and the allegations prove to be true, will Google in turn yank their partnership with Yelp?

Is Yelp actually erasing negative reviews? I kinda skimmed all the links, but it seemed more like Yelp is selling good review placement, something that Google most certainly does.

google does not sell search result placement.

Of course they do. I used to help buy it for the giant corporation I used to work for.

do you mean ads or sponsored listings?

Google used to have a special "boxed" ad atop search results, paid and placed. I get the feeling Yelp at least claims they're doing something similar.

http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/6008/picture2m.png

right, i was referring to the actual results though. google has always been very good, much better than any other search engine i think, about clearly demarcating paid ads and actual results.

You can make a case for Google clearly demarcating paid content from search results, but Yelp can probably make a very similar case, at least if their model is basically what's depicted above (which may not be the case, for sure). In other words, Google isn't going to kettle Yelp's pot based on the aforementioned evidences.

how much do they pay for good reviews?

Yelp has contacted me NUMEROUS times asking for money, claiming they can "really help the business" with their listing placement, but it's some absurd amount of money they want. Fuck you Salvador @ Yelp, stop bothering me at work.

libcrypt, maybe you should do a little more than scan the links that have been posted...? i am not trying to be rude but i'm sincerely confused as to how even skimming the links would give you the result that you are coming up with here.

you know, people pay good money to google to get their results higher up in a search. they most coitainly sell search placements. big business, man.

(this coming from my former corporate days)

ugh. that's not really how it works, burt, but whatever!

(this coming from my current corporate days)

Well, not exactly, they separate the results a little. keyword bidding or whatever.

seo maneuverings are not really similar to the issues at hand being thrown around about yelp, i wish this topic hadn't been brought up with that ridiculous "google do no evil" thing! learning yelp's partnering with google now really makes it extremely, extremely unsurprising that they're now engaging in leg-breaking tactics and shitty, godawful customer service. everything they f'ing touch!

libcrypt, maybe you should do a little more than scan the links that have been posted...?

Feel free to make corrections as you find appropriate, schef.

i mentioned it upthread a couple of times but the whole cultish aspect of yelp is extremely creepy

seo, my old nemesis.

Next thing, you'll be saying that the whole notion of "cougaring" is crepey.

Can someone explain what's cultish about Yelp? I've never really used it, but it seems hard to believe that cultish behavior could form around rating local businesses?

Next you guys will tell me there's a hopstop cult.

I should prob have checked yelp before we used that real estate broker. It might have saved me a month and a lot of mishegas.

yeah librcypt the thing about those links is that no one (well, few people) is questioning the practice of sponsored results or similar well-known practices. it's that yelp is aggressively phoning local businesses and the ones that refuse to pay or complain are suddenly seeing an increase in negative reviews + several establishments stating that positive reviews are being removed until they agree to pay the monthly fee to "sponsor." it's quite possible that these are just busybody business owners banding together to make yelp look bad too, but they all seem to be well-reviewed establishments (3.5 stars or higher averages) so i feel like that's a lot less likely than their stories being true.

i admit that i've never cared for yelp, tho i use it as a search tool! too much of what was said upthread, "complaining how they can't order sushi in an italian restaurant."

most people use it as just a review site, but there's a very definite community that is vv serious about yelp and getting freebies because they are "yelpers" and who basically try to get other people into it. it's maybe more pyramid schemey than cultish but it's probably a little of both.

and i think most people who have reviewed items for a site that has some iffy qualities would just shrug their shoulders, but people who are hardcore into yelp basically act like scientologists when confronted with aspects of the site that are a little "off".

Yelp isn't cultish, at least apart from the weird cougar cult that's associated with it, but it is full of annoying attention whores, insofar as which makes Yelp no different than YouTube or Pitchfork or whatever. (xp)

Is this true? I'd love to see some forum discussions by Yelp cultists.