Have to agree with other commenters here and point out that this has never been proven. Nor has it ever been claimed by anyone other than a disgruntled business

Have to agree with other commenters here and point out that this has never been proven. Nor has it ever been claimed by anyone other than a disgruntled business owner. I have no stake in Yelp - I actually abhor some elements of their product - but I detest uniformed opinions even more. I've worked with several ex Yelp engineers and the consensus seems to be that more than anything Yelp is terrible, maybe on purpose, at explaining why what they do APPEARS to be bad. It has to do with how their algorithms deal with time and aging posts - often things don't happen right away so people jump to the conclusion that this is being done manually when in fact it's just math kicking in.