8 ms·

Foursquare’s CEO says Yelp is shaking down local businesses

75 points by stunod 10y ago

unclebucknasty 10y ago
>Unlike Yelp — they have several thousand people who dial the pizzeria and the bar to try and get them to pay each month. Our ratings are really neutral. WTH kind of punctuation is that?
- TheDrizzle43 10y ago
  Are you referring to the em-dash?
  - unclebucknasty 10y ago
    I'm referring to the entirety of that which I cited.
gxs 10y ago
I'm not a huge yelp fan. I think there are elements of their product that are done sloppily, and I even dislike some yelpers that I've personally interacted with. That said, it would be nice if someone presented some evidence to back up claims that yelp is doing something "corrupt". I don't doubt their AE's are assholes, which is where I'm guessing a lot of business owners' negative feedback is coming from, but there's never been actual data driven proof that yelp does something shady.
- josefresco 10y ago
  There's been plenty of smoke ... https://consumerist.com/2014/04/04/yelps-controversial-business-tactics-contribute-to-2000-complaints-received-by-ftc/ https://consumerist.com/2014/04/04/yelps-controversial-busin...
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  > That said, it would be nice if someone presented some evidence to back up claims that yelp is doing something "corrupt". This is an extremely difficult standard to meet. A lot of the accusations against Yelp involve phone calls with their sales reps, which is not public data that can be aggregated and parsed. All we really have to go on are anecdotes. Speaking personally, I've heard from two people I know who have small businesses- a wedding photographer in Seattle and a small restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire- who separately told me how they had good Yelp reviews, and then watched them get pushed down and bad reviews pushed to the top shortly after they declined to buy Yelp ads. These two people didn't even know each their and would have no way or reason to coordinate their tales, and they told me identical stories. I never use Yelp anymore, for this reason. Anecdotes might not be scientific data, but if the circumstances are such that scientific data is impossible to obtain, they're better than nothing.
  - eqleriq 10y ago
    Same exact thing happened to me. I ran a small custom design shop and due to it, I knew all of my customers personally and didn't have many jobs a month. Then, there was a door-to-door canvas trying to get businesses on my block to join some yelp ad subscription. I know this because we all would go down to the pub after work and chat about it, we're in an artsy corridor / community. I was one of the only ones who had a discussion with this ad subscription salesman. And they offered me a package that I could sign up for where we could change the order of our reviews and "effectively hide the bad ones on later pages" as well as responding to the reviews in a way where it would be prominent. I responded that I don't have any bad reviews, my business doesn't work that way, not interested. And surprise, surprise literally the next day I had my first one star review sitting at the top of the page. The review in question had a picture / reviewer I had never met with and their description of the "problem" didn't even state any specifics. You would not be able to tell what I do from the complaint. When I responded to the complaint asking for any insight and very verbosely responding to them, never a reply AND my response was hidden from sight. None of this made any sense: I offered a lifetime guarantee and did electronics modifications to the person's specs. I've never missed a deadline or had anything fail at a bad time. If I had, I'd be notified of it obviously. I just happened to have a storefront accessible from the street so they thought I gave a flying fuck about "walk-in traffic" or something. I am not dumb enough to claim that this is a widespread practice, sanctioned by yelp, or anything like that. But the system definitely empowers their "sales team" to extort businesses by leaving bogus negative reviews, as well as competitors. Just a shit system in general that cannot be taken seriously. Hell, even a shady landlord could start a campaign against a tenant if they want to try and break a lease. But hey, don't believe me: I could be just leaving a bogus negative review about yelp, here, and sounding very convincing. AKA, that's my entire point about how crappy it is in general and not to be trusted. Look at grubhub reviews as well. They're nonsense largely, but you don't really want to ignore them... there's no accounting for taste, etc.
- geofft 10y ago
  In an ideal world, employing people to regularly be assholes to small business to extract profit would itself be shady. I want my local ramen place to worry about making delicious ramen, not about how to placate the guy on the phone making threats, regardless of whether the threats are credible.
askafriend 10y ago
Here's Yelp's CEO's response on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/793159598651736065 https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/793159598651736065 Quite unprofessional in my opinion. Could have exercised a bit more restraint as a public company CEO. EDIT: Here's a screenshot in case it gets deleted --> http://imgur.com/a/ViqX8 http://imgur.com/a/ViqX8
- kilroy123 10y ago
  Wow very unprofessional indeed. Makes me glad I don't use their service very often.
  - aisofteng 10y ago
    Knowing their business practices makes me not use it at all.
- tw04 10y ago
  Look at his profile picture, would you expect any less? This isn't the first time they've done it, and it surely won't be the last. https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2364585/court-rules-yelp-may-demand-money-for-adding-and-removing-reviews https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2364585/court-rule...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- clydethefrog 10y ago
  The term bahramdipity comes to mind... bahramdipity - the suppression of a discovery, sometimes a serendipitous discovery, by the often-egomaniacal act of a more powerful individual who does cruelly punish, not merely disdain, a person (or persons) of lesser power and little renown who demonstrates sagacity, perspicacity, and truthfulness. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/19271/title/-Bahramdipity--and-Scientific-Research/ http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/19271/...
- no_wave 10y ago
  What was the Foursquare CEO exercising when he made unsubstantiated allegations against Yelp?
post_break 10y ago
Here is a great example of how Yelp tries to bully small businesses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY I suggest you watch this even if you like Yelp. It was definitely eye opening.
- rhapsodic 10y ago
  Eye opening indeed. On a lighter note, I recommend the South Park episode "You're Not Yelping" (S19e04). The full episode is on Youtube (at the moment) and http://southpark.cc.com/ http://southpark.cc.com/ . It has plenty of the usual South Park toilet humor, but it's a brilliant take on the whole Yelp phenomenon.
- Touche 10y ago
  That guy is super long-winded.
troncheadle 10y ago
I've moved twice in the past four years and I have gone to yelp for food recommendations a few times -- totally useless, sadly. Always wants me to go to Papa Johns or some other chain. The days of interesting food discovery via yelp are over. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  It's still moderately useful, if you know how to read for bullshit reviews and the usual disturbed people, as a way to find out if the place you're thinking of getting food from is alright.
- frandroid 10y ago
  That's why I use Foursquare.
- beamatronic 10y ago
  I don't know if anyone remembers the old days of Yelp ( talking 2006-2007-ish ). It was a fun community to be a part of. As a reviewer you had a great feeling like you were appreciated. There were community organizers setting up get-togethers at bars, sending swag to you in the mail, and earning stars and badges. It's really too bad they threw that all away.
- buckhx 10y ago
  My thoughts on Yelp is that you are getting the average recommendation instead of exceptional ones because of the law of large numbers.
- hsod 10y ago
  I use Yelp all the time when I'm in a part of the city I don't know well. I mostly ignore the star rating and just look at the pictures and skim individual reviews for relevant info. Works great for that purpose.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Keyframe 10y ago
It's interesting to see how, over the years, service industry like that became dependant on user reviews on certain sites. About a week ago I was in a five-star hotel in Dubrovnik (Villa Dubrovnik, I absolutely recommend if anyone cares) that's had over 90 million Euros put into its new decor and stuff. That's some serious money. Yet, one of the first things guy told me there they are proud of their tripadvisor rating and, of all the things and ratings they have, that's probably the most important one to them. These multi-national big corps have their nuts in hands of sites like these. Lots of potential for abuse, among great stuff for users of course.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  I rely on Tripadvisor reviews exclusively when I travel, they've been spot on, and I've never heard of Tripadvisor being accused of abusing the system like Yelp. If they were to abuse service providers like Yelp does, I'd drop them in a hot second.
  - Keyframe 10y ago
    I like them too, and I haven't heard about them abusing their position either. It's just that too much power is being concentrated into sites like that. For better or for worse, that's how it is now.
  - komali2 10y ago
    On the other hand, every shop in Vietnam has printed off a "rated #1 on Trip Advisor!" sign and stuck it to the front window. It can go both ways.
    - roywiggins 10y ago
      I love places with "Rated on TripAdvisor" stickers. Technically true- they probably ARE rated. not quite a lie, but totally meaningless.
  - cageface 10y ago
    People play all kinds of games with TripAdvisor reviews here in SE Asia, most notably stuffing the box with good but bogus reviews from friends or family or trashing competitors with fake bad reviews. But I've never heard any complaints of TripAdvisor itself shaking businesses down the way Yelp is often accused of.
sean_patel 10y ago
This is nothing new. Kathleen Richards, an investigative reporter with the East Bay Express, reported on this at length back in 2009. See "Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0" => ( 2009 ) http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635&showFullText=true http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-... EDIT 2: Mobile view (1st page only) if browsing from iPhones, Droids... https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635 https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbaye... I remember being alarmed that time when I read this. So I asked a local Indian Restaurant owner located on 2nd Street and Market Street here in San Francisco, with who I had become good friends with, since he was from the same city as my dad (Bombay). The restaurant used to be called "Bhindi". The owner pretty much confirmed everything in that report. He even told me that the Yelp Marketing guy threatened to display his low star ratings on top and completely hide true 5-star ratings if they (the restaurant) did not buy at-least 300$ worth of ads from Yelp every month. Eventually that restaurant went out of business (don't think it was related to the Yelp Extortion 2.0 though, definitely didn't help either) and now there's Mehfil in it's place. EDIT: Her follow up story: "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up" https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/yelp_extortion_allegations_stack_up/Content?oid=946025 https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastba...
- tinbad 10y ago
  I know that place! It's been the same restaurant but with different names for, what feels like, every few months from 2011 until about 2013 when I moved out of the city. I first thought it was a front for something shady, but now it makes sense to why they kept changing their name so often!
- tomjakubowski 10y ago
  Unfortunately the link to that story is entering a redirect loop on my iPhone. Does anyone have a link to that story which works on an iPhone?
  - sean_patel 10y ago
kirykl 10y ago
Waitress friend told me about her restaurant's zero tolerance Yelp policy. If you are explicitly named in two negative reviews (in some un-defined time period), you are fired.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  Wow I guess she wouldn't want to piss off any coworkers either, since fake reviews are so common.
- jonwachob91 10y ago
  Your waitress friend should submit a few (fake) bad reviews explicitly naming her boss (or whomever wrote the policy). Not to get the person fired, but to make them face the reality of that shitty policy and get it changed...
- DanBC 10y ago
  Holy shit talk about perverse incentives. Giving away free food avoids negative yelp reviews.
- oldmanjay 10y ago
  That seems more like one tolerance.
tinbad 10y ago
Doesn't surprise me at all. I have stopped using Yelp for recommendations and went back to asking locals whenever I'm traveling. Not only is their search algorithm terrible (seems completely arbitrary to how or why places do/don't show up), the reviews and ratings seem to be a completely random and often times unreliable. Part of the issue is that it's an oversimplified rating that doesn't allow for refinement. I can't recall how many times I see a place that has really good food only getting 3 stars because people don't like "the ambience" or the "service is slow" - two things that I, for example, don't care about as much.
- nradov 10y ago
  We were in Vienna recently and wanted to find a good café to eat dessert. So of course I pulled out my phone and started searching for reviews. My wife just walked over to a fat policeman and asked him for a recommendation. Her technique seems to work pretty well.
  - tunap 10y ago
    I used to trust and find gems with urbanspoon, but it feels like since the zomato change it misses niche places in small towns I know exist from previous experience. As stated above, ask a local. If they say Applebees, ask someone else.
photonray 10y ago
What's a good alternative to Yelp (other than FS)?
- j-walker 10y ago
  Posting to that city's sub-reddit (if there is one) ?
- askafriend 10y ago
  Nextdoor just rolled out a recommendations feature. Give it a try! FourSquare used to be good but I stopped using it a while ago. It might still be pretty decent.
  - gnicholas 10y ago
    Have you seen anything worthwhile on ND? Where I live (near Redwood City, CA) there isn't anything useful. It's mostly people posting about their own/friend's restaurant. Without photos or star ratings, I can't see it taking off—and I say this as a frequent ND user.
- buckhx 10y ago
  If you're in one of their cities (NYC,DC,LA and a few others look) into https://www.theinfatuation.com https://www.theinfatuation.com . It's curated instead of crowd sourced and definitely caters to a younger audience.
- t3soro 10y ago
  Try http://www.chowdrapp.com http://www.chowdrapp.com it's got more of a social twist to food discovery
thomasdub 10y ago
I'd love someone to point to evidence of this beyond pure anecdotes. Yelp clearly allows negative reviews on accounts which advertise with them which can be seen with this Google search [0]. Furthermore an independent Harvard Business School study showed no evidence of fraud [1]. Sure Yelp gives a hard sell, but until some disgruntled ex-employee blows the whistle, or multiple businesses record evidence of this extortion, I'm not ready to believe this is any widespread fraud. I'm sure there are isolated cases, but surely someone would have come forward to back up claims that Yelp can manipulate reviews and ratings? [0] https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+%22this+place+sucks%22+OR+%22if+i+could+give+them+zero+stars+I+would%22+OR+%22rude+staff%22+AND+%22yelp+advertiser%22&cad=h https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+%22thi... [1] https://www.yelpblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hbs-study-yelp-reviews.pdf https://www.yelpblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hbs-stud...
- strathmeyer 10y ago
  Damn, who do you know what owns business that Yelp hasn't tried to shake down? At some point you are being willfully ignorant like climate change deniers.
  - tomjakubowski 10y ago
    Climate science isn't built on anecdotes and hearsay. I have yet to see real hard proof of the long-standing Yelp shakedown allegations. Shouldn't one of these business owners have posted a recording of a phone call or meeting or something to the Web by now? Admittedly, I haven't tried very hard to find any, but GP is not unreasonable in asking for evidence.
  - thomasdub 10y ago
    Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan, JS is not exactly a model CEO, and they do sell hard. A tough sell, however, isn't illegal or fraudulent. a shakedown is something else though - are you suggesting they engage in any fraud? Do they manipulate reviews? Or do you have evidence that they, as a company, change reviews if you do/don't buy their ads?
- 10y ago
pcardh0 10y ago
So what? Hillary does the same thing, it is a viable business model. Instead of Papa Johns, she does it to Uranium companies
- sctb 10y ago
  Please don't shoot drive-by political comments into threads like this, that's not what this site is for.
rajacombinator 10y ago
Such a shame all these entrenched web monopolies are focused on squeezing out profits with salespeople instead of continuing to innovate.
sidcool 10y ago
The billion dollar bully documentary is a good documentary on this.

75 points by stunod 10y ago

>Unlike Yelp — they have several thousand people who dial the pizzeria and the bar to try and get them to pay each month. Our ratings are really neutral. WTH kind of punctuation is that?

TheDrizzle43 10y ago
Are you referring to the em-dash?
- unclebucknasty 10y ago
  I'm referring to the entirety of that which I cited.

gxs 10y ago

I'm not a huge yelp fan. I think there are elements of their product that are done sloppily, and I even dislike some yelpers that I've personally interacted with. That said, it would be nice if someone presented some evidence to back up claims that yelp is doing something "corrupt". I don't doubt their AE's are assholes, which is where I'm guessing a lot of business owners' negative feedback is coming from, but there's never been actual data driven proof that yelp does something shady.

josefresco 10y ago
There's been plenty of smoke ... https://consumerist.com/2014/04/04/yelps-controversial-business-tactics-contribute-to-2000-complaints-received-by-ftc/ https://consumerist.com/2014/04/04/yelps-controversial-busin...
Analemma_ 10y ago
> That said, it would be nice if someone presented some evidence to back up claims that yelp is doing something "corrupt". This is an extremely difficult standard to meet. A lot of the accusations against Yelp involve phone calls with their sales reps, which is not public data that can be aggregated and parsed. All we really have to go on are anecdotes. Speaking personally, I've heard from two people I know who have small businesses- a wedding photographer in Seattle and a small restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire- who separately told me how they had good Yelp reviews, and then watched them get pushed down and bad reviews pushed to the top shortly after they declined to buy Yelp ads. These two people didn't even know each their and would have no way or reason to coordinate their tales, and they told me identical stories. I never use Yelp anymore, for this reason. Anecdotes might not be scientific data, but if the circumstances are such that scientific data is impossible to obtain, they're better than nothing.
- eqleriq 10y ago
  Same exact thing happened to me. I ran a small custom design shop and due to it, I knew all of my customers personally and didn't have many jobs a month. Then, there was a door-to-door canvas trying to get businesses on my block to join some yelp ad subscription. I know this because we all would go down to the pub after work and chat about it, we're in an artsy corridor / community. I was one of the only ones who had a discussion with this ad subscription salesman. And they offered me a package that I could sign up for where we could change the order of our reviews and "effectively hide the bad ones on later pages" as well as responding to the reviews in a way where it would be prominent. I responded that I don't have any bad reviews, my business doesn't work that way, not interested. And surprise, surprise literally the next day I had my first one star review sitting at the top of the page. The review in question had a picture / reviewer I had never met with and their description of the "problem" didn't even state any specifics. You would not be able to tell what I do from the complaint. When I responded to the complaint asking for any insight and very verbosely responding to them, never a reply AND my response was hidden from sight. None of this made any sense: I offered a lifetime guarantee and did electronics modifications to the person's specs. I've never missed a deadline or had anything fail at a bad time. If I had, I'd be notified of it obviously. I just happened to have a storefront accessible from the street so they thought I gave a flying fuck about "walk-in traffic" or something. I am not dumb enough to claim that this is a widespread practice, sanctioned by yelp, or anything like that. But the system definitely empowers their "sales team" to extort businesses by leaving bogus negative reviews, as well as competitors. Just a shit system in general that cannot be taken seriously. Hell, even a shady landlord could start a campaign against a tenant if they want to try and break a lease. But hey, don't believe me: I could be just leaving a bogus negative review about yelp, here, and sounding very convincing. AKA, that's my entire point about how crappy it is in general and not to be trusted. Look at grubhub reviews as well. They're nonsense largely, but you don't really want to ignore them... there's no accounting for taste, etc.
geofft 10y ago
In an ideal world, employing people to regularly be assholes to small business to extract profit would itself be shady. I want my local ramen place to worry about making delicious ramen, not about how to placate the guy on the phone making threats, regardless of whether the threats are credible.

askafriend 10y ago

Here's Yelp's CEO's response on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/793159598651736065 https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/793159598651736065 Quite unprofessional in my opinion. Could have exercised a bit more restraint as a public company CEO. EDIT: Here's a screenshot in case it gets deleted --> http://imgur.com/a/ViqX8 http://imgur.com/a/ViqX8

kilroy123 10y ago
Wow very unprofessional indeed. Makes me glad I don't use their service very often.
- aisofteng 10y ago
  Knowing their business practices makes me not use it at all.
tw04 10y ago
Look at his profile picture, would you expect any less? This isn't the first time they've done it, and it surely won't be the last. https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2364585/court-rules-yelp-may-demand-money-for-adding-and-removing-reviews https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2364585/court-rule...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
clydethefrog 10y ago
The term bahramdipity comes to mind... bahramdipity - the suppression of a discovery, sometimes a serendipitous discovery, by the often-egomaniacal act of a more powerful individual who does cruelly punish, not merely disdain, a person (or persons) of lesser power and little renown who demonstrates sagacity, perspicacity, and truthfulness. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/19271/title/-Bahramdipity--and-Scientific-Research/ http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/19271/...
no_wave 10y ago
What was the Foursquare CEO exercising when he made unsubstantiated allegations against Yelp?

post_break 10y ago

Here is a great example of how Yelp tries to bully small businesses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY I suggest you watch this even if you like Yelp. It was definitely eye opening.

rhapsodic 10y ago
Eye opening indeed. On a lighter note, I recommend the South Park episode "You're Not Yelping" (S19e04). The full episode is on Youtube (at the moment) and http://southpark.cc.com/ http://southpark.cc.com/ . It has plenty of the usual South Park toilet humor, but it's a brilliant take on the whole Yelp phenomenon.
Touche 10y ago
That guy is super long-winded.

troncheadle 10y ago

I've moved twice in the past four years and I have gone to yelp for food recommendations a few times -- totally useless, sadly. Always wants me to go to Papa Johns or some other chain. The days of interesting food discovery via yelp are over. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

M_Grey 10y ago
It's still moderately useful, if you know how to read for bullshit reviews and the usual disturbed people, as a way to find out if the place you're thinking of getting food from is alright.
frandroid 10y ago
That's why I use Foursquare.
beamatronic 10y ago
I don't know if anyone remembers the old days of Yelp ( talking 2006-2007-ish ). It was a fun community to be a part of. As a reviewer you had a great feeling like you were appreciated. There were community organizers setting up get-togethers at bars, sending swag to you in the mail, and earning stars and badges. It's really too bad they threw that all away.
buckhx 10y ago
My thoughts on Yelp is that you are getting the average recommendation instead of exceptional ones because of the law of large numbers.
hsod 10y ago
I use Yelp all the time when I'm in a part of the city I don't know well. I mostly ignore the star rating and just look at the pictures and skim individual reviews for relevant info. Works great for that purpose.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Keyframe 10y ago

It's interesting to see how, over the years, service industry like that became dependant on user reviews on certain sites. About a week ago I was in a five-star hotel in Dubrovnik (Villa Dubrovnik, I absolutely recommend if anyone cares) that's had over 90 million Euros put into its new decor and stuff. That's some serious money. Yet, one of the first things guy told me there they are proud of their tripadvisor rating and, of all the things and ratings they have, that's probably the most important one to them. These multi-national big corps have their nuts in hands of sites like these. Lots of potential for abuse, among great stuff for users of course.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
I rely on Tripadvisor reviews exclusively when I travel, they've been spot on, and I've never heard of Tripadvisor being accused of abusing the system like Yelp. If they were to abuse service providers like Yelp does, I'd drop them in a hot second.
- Keyframe 10y ago
  I like them too, and I haven't heard about them abusing their position either. It's just that too much power is being concentrated into sites like that. For better or for worse, that's how it is now.
- komali2 10y ago
  On the other hand, every shop in Vietnam has printed off a "rated #1 on Trip Advisor!" sign and stuck it to the front window. It can go both ways.
  - roywiggins 10y ago
    I love places with "Rated on TripAdvisor" stickers. Technically true- they probably ARE rated. not quite a lie, but totally meaningless.
- cageface 10y ago
  People play all kinds of games with TripAdvisor reviews here in SE Asia, most notably stuffing the box with good but bogus reviews from friends or family or trashing competitors with fake bad reviews. But I've never heard any complaints of TripAdvisor itself shaking businesses down the way Yelp is often accused of.

sean_patel 10y ago

This is nothing new. Kathleen Richards, an investigative reporter with the East Bay Express, reported on this at length back in 2009. See "Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0" => ( 2009 ) http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635&showFullText=true http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-... EDIT 2: Mobile view (1st page only) if browsing from iPhones, Droids... https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635 https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbaye... I remember being alarmed that time when I read this. So I asked a local Indian Restaurant owner located on 2nd Street and Market Street here in San Francisco, with who I had become good friends with, since he was from the same city as my dad (Bombay). The restaurant used to be called "Bhindi". The owner pretty much confirmed everything in that report. He even told me that the Yelp Marketing guy threatened to display his low star ratings on top and completely hide true 5-star ratings if they (the restaurant) did not buy at-least 300$ worth of ads from Yelp every month. Eventually that restaurant went out of business (don't think it was related to the Yelp Extortion 2.0 though, definitely didn't help either) and now there's Mehfil in it's place. EDIT: Her follow up story: "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up" https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/yelp_extortion_allegations_stack_up/Content?oid=946025 https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastba...

tinbad 10y ago
I know that place! It's been the same restaurant but with different names for, what feels like, every few months from 2011 until about 2013 when I moved out of the city. I first thought it was a front for something shady, but now it makes sense to why they kept changing their name so often!
tomjakubowski 10y ago
Unfortunately the link to that story is entering a redirect loop on my iPhone. Does anyone have a link to that story which works on an iPhone?
- sean_patel 10y ago

kirykl 10y ago

Waitress friend told me about her restaurant's zero tolerance Yelp policy. If you are explicitly named in two negative reviews (in some un-defined time period), you are fired.

jessaustin 10y ago
Wow I guess she wouldn't want to piss off any coworkers either, since fake reviews are so common.
jonwachob91 10y ago
Your waitress friend should submit a few (fake) bad reviews explicitly naming her boss (or whomever wrote the policy). Not to get the person fired, but to make them face the reality of that shitty policy and get it changed...
DanBC 10y ago
Holy shit talk about perverse incentives. Giving away free food avoids negative yelp reviews.
oldmanjay 10y ago
That seems more like one tolerance.

tinbad 10y ago

Doesn't surprise me at all. I have stopped using Yelp for recommendations and went back to asking locals whenever I'm traveling. Not only is their search algorithm terrible (seems completely arbitrary to how or why places do/don't show up), the reviews and ratings seem to be a completely random and often times unreliable. Part of the issue is that it's an oversimplified rating that doesn't allow for refinement. I can't recall how many times I see a place that has really good food only getting 3 stars because people don't like "the ambience" or the "service is slow" - two things that I, for example, don't care about as much.

nradov 10y ago
We were in Vienna recently and wanted to find a good café to eat dessert. So of course I pulled out my phone and started searching for reviews. My wife just walked over to a fat policeman and asked him for a recommendation. Her technique seems to work pretty well.
- tunap 10y ago
  I used to trust and find gems with urbanspoon, but it feels like since the zomato change it misses niche places in small towns I know exist from previous experience. As stated above, ask a local. If they say Applebees, ask someone else.

photonray 10y ago

What's a good alternative to Yelp (other than FS)?

j-walker 10y ago
Posting to that city's sub-reddit (if there is one) ?
askafriend 10y ago
Nextdoor just rolled out a recommendations feature. Give it a try! FourSquare used to be good but I stopped using it a while ago. It might still be pretty decent.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Have you seen anything worthwhile on ND? Where I live (near Redwood City, CA) there isn't anything useful. It's mostly people posting about their own/friend's restaurant. Without photos or star ratings, I can't see it taking off—and I say this as a frequent ND user.
buckhx 10y ago
If you're in one of their cities (NYC,DC,LA and a few others look) into https://www.theinfatuation.com https://www.theinfatuation.com . It's curated instead of crowd sourced and definitely caters to a younger audience.
t3soro 10y ago
Try http://www.chowdrapp.com http://www.chowdrapp.com it's got more of a social twist to food discovery

thomasdub 10y ago

I'd love someone to point to evidence of this beyond pure anecdotes. Yelp clearly allows negative reviews on accounts which advertise with them which can be seen with this Google search [0]. Furthermore an independent Harvard Business School study showed no evidence of fraud [1]. Sure Yelp gives a hard sell, but until some disgruntled ex-employee blows the whistle, or multiple businesses record evidence of this extortion, I'm not ready to believe this is any widespread fraud. I'm sure there are isolated cases, but surely someone would have come forward to back up claims that Yelp can manipulate reviews and ratings? [0] https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+%22this+place+sucks%22+OR+%22if+i+could+give+them+zero+stars+I+would%22+OR+%22rude+staff%22+AND+%22yelp+advertiser%22&cad=h https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+%22thi... [1] https://www.yelpblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hbs-study-yelp-reviews.pdf https://www.yelpblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hbs-stud...

strathmeyer 10y ago
Damn, who do you know what owns business that Yelp hasn't tried to shake down? At some point you are being willfully ignorant like climate change deniers.
- tomjakubowski 10y ago
  Climate science isn't built on anecdotes and hearsay. I have yet to see real hard proof of the long-standing Yelp shakedown allegations. Shouldn't one of these business owners have posted a recording of a phone call or meeting or something to the Web by now? Admittedly, I haven't tried very hard to find any, but GP is not unreasonable in asking for evidence.
- thomasdub 10y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan, JS is not exactly a model CEO, and they do sell hard. A tough sell, however, isn't illegal or fraudulent. a shakedown is something else though - are you suggesting they engage in any fraud? Do they manipulate reviews? Or do you have evidence that they, as a company, change reviews if you do/don't buy their ads?
10y ago

pcardh0 10y ago

So what? Hillary does the same thing, it is a viable business model. Instead of Papa Johns, she does it to Uranium companies

sctb 10y ago
Please don't shoot drive-by political comments into threads like this, that's not what this site is for.

rajacombinator 10y ago

Such a shame all these entrenched web monopolies are focused on squeezing out profits with salespeople instead of continuing to innovate.

sidcool 10y ago

The billion dollar bully documentary is a good documentary on this.