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Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in
- 11thEarlOfMar 10y agoThis happened about 2 years ago? I'm curious if the legal scrutiny that happened about this time changed anything. Example: http://nypost.com/2014/10/13/restaurant-fights-yelps-alleged-extortion/ http://nypost.com/2014/10/13/restaurant-fights-yelps-alleged...
- an_account 10y agoIIRC a judge determined that it's not legally a racket because yelp has control over what they do with their platform.
- timlyo 10y agoA link posted in that thread looks pretty interesting. Automated phone bots as a service. http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/ http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/
- HappyTypist 10y agoI have a friend who left Yelp after 2 months. Told me that he'd get aggressive legal action if he revealed "how Yelp really makes money".
- swalsh 10y agoWould whistle blowing laws apply to private companies?
- goseeastarwar 10y agohttps://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:YELP https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:YELP
- swalsh 10y agoInteresting, looking more into it... there seems to be an expansion of SOX to protect employees. Seems to have been created post Enron.
- timr 10y agoI worked there for years. Your "friend" is wrong. The way they make money is rather transparently described in their quarterly filings with the SEC. Since they're a public company. Actually, I'm not sure what your "friend" is accusing them of doing, so it's a hard claim to rebut. It's embarrassing that a vague hearsay accusation (of...what, exactly?) is considered worthy of attention here.
- mustacheemperor 10y agoCan you comment on the link in the OP? I thought at this point it's almost assumed yelp removes negative reviews from advertising customers and posts fake negative reviews when customers have cancelled. There's plenty of similar experiences just in these comments.
- timr 10y agoIt is "assumed", but these assumptions are false. See my other comment on this subthread for the actual reason why you see these stories.
- Someone1234 10y agoAs someone who worked there, what is your take on these fake review stories? I've read the same or highly similar accounts from other small businesses over years. Did you do this when you worked there? Did your colleagues?
- timr 10y agoTo be blunt, they're total bullshit. Which is why you never see any evidence, outside of vague hearsay from someone's uncle. Yelp has a small army of people cold-calling every business in the country to sell ads. Simultaneously and independently, they have a system that filters out bad reviews, all day, every day. Just by chance, someone is going to get called soon after reviews have been filtered. This leads, inevitably, to third-hand stories of someone's Uncle Walter who got called right before/after some reviews were removed.
- ryanwaggoner 10y agoThis is such garbage. Yelp might be the worst company on the planet, but "anonymous internet poster who has a friend who worked there two months and claims something unspecified-but-fishy is going on" is completely worthless. "A friend of mine said he'd be threatened with legal action if he revealed what HappyTypist does on Saturday nights."
- chinathrow 10y agoWhat I learned from all those stories about Yelp: If there's smoke there must be a fire. Lot's of smoke recently.
- ryanwaggoner 10y agoYou didn't learn that, you decided that. Unless you've seen the fire and can point us to it?
- educar 10y agoTIL that you cannot unlist your business from Yelp.
- swsieber 10y agoIt'd be interesting to figure out how Yelp generates the negative reviews. I'd love to see somebody setup a "honeypot" business - fake, doesn't exist in real life (well, physically/location wise)... and then sign up with Yelp and then cancel. Do that with a good 10-100 fake businesses, and could you drum up a case against Yelp?
- clxsi 10y agoThis is a really good idea.
- corndoge 10y agoIf you have money to blow on advertising contracts and are willing to lie on the contracts or spin up 10-100 LLCs
- asdfasdf222 10y agoI remember reading long ago that they don't generate negative reviews, but they change their sort magic to let the negative ones bubble up to the top.
- TruthSHIFT 10y agoNo problem. Just seed the Honeypot with fake reviews. Make 50% of the review positive and 50% negative. Then, check to see which reviews are favored on Yelp before and after signing up and cancelling service.
- ryanackley 10y agoFrom a consumer standpoint, I stopped using Yelp when I left a 3-star review (neither good or bad) and it was flagged as "fake". I was so puzzled, i contacted support. They still refused to publish it. I figured the business owner must be an advertiser. I use TripAdvisor exclusively for restaurant reviews now. Even local ones.
- ortuna 10y agoThat would seem like the strategy used. Mark all the low ratings as "fake" until the business stops paying. Just do a review again. "ohh these weren't fake" reviews and restore them.
- usaphp 10y agoMy friend has a retail business in New York, he had the same experience, he cancelled his advertising contract and immediately most of the positive reviews became hidden and negatives were pouring in and his average rating dropped from 5 to 2 stars in a matter of couple weeks
- metalliqaz 10y agoI would like very much to grab my pitchfork and point it menacingly at Yelp, but I have yet to see one of these stories with hard evidence. There are many, many stories of bad (and incriminating) behavior on behalf of Yelp salespeople over the phone, but I have never heard a recording. Even though most claims indicate that the harassing calls are repeated many times. Somebody record one of these calls and become Internet famous! There are also many stories like this one that should come with before/after screenshots or links to an archived page. They need to actually link to the page in question so we can see if they are accurately depicting the situation. Shill reviews are easily spotted by people who have the necessary experience. Like I said, I am ready to turn around on Yelp, these stories sound very plausible to me. I haven't yet seen sufficient evidence. The fact is that I do use that service and the subset of restaurants that I know very well have reviews that match my experience with the place. Therefore I can't help but think that perhaps the person who write the linked article is perhaps deserving of bad reviews and doesn't want to admit it.
- jacquesm 10y ago> but I have yet to see one of these stories with hard evidence. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14237684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14237684 You think they made that up?
- metalliqaz 10y agoI don't know, but there's no link to anything. Don't even know the name of the establishment. I can't change my consumer habits on the word of "that guy's friend"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ryanwaggoner 10y agoYes? No? Who knows? That's literally worthless as evidence of anything other than someone's ability to post an internet comment.
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- tarr11 10y agoI wonder if disavowing links on Google could help. The problem for most businesses is Yelp listings rank very highly for their name. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en
- Someone1234 10y agoThat isn't how a disavow works. It won't impact Yelp's pagerank, it will only impact your business site's pagerank (likely in a negative way). In essence you're saying "don't use Yelp to evaluate my site's reputation." Which would likely de-rank you and could result in Yelp appearing before the official site of your business.
- mozumder 10y agoReally wish Apple wouldn't use Yelp for place ratings to their Maps app.
- dboreham 10y agoThe thing is: this is how the rest of the journalist/advertising world always worked, right?
- jordanlev 10y agoNo. For a long time, newspapers explicitly walled off their business / sales / ad people from the journalists.
- victorvation 10y agoI'm surprised that even on HN, people seem to unquestioningly accept that Yelp extorts businesses using reviews, where any other topic would be subject to a higher level of scrutiny. I've heard countless anecdotes about peoples' friend's account of how evil Yelp Sales is, but never any solid proof.
- MS_Buys_Upvotes 10y agoI'm surprised that you're foolish enough to fall under the assumption that people here are somehow smarter or better. They are not. This is simply a web site with zero barrier to entry. I don't trust Yelp either. There have been too many stories like this over years - and even some in the comments section of this HN story!
- brilliantcode 10y agoOh there is a clear us vs them mentality here. I was surprised to see transphobic comments go unremoved. Negative comments criticizing YC backed ventures or saying Peter Thiel is gay is heavily censored through downvotes. let's not forget that YC companies have an "edge" compared to other submissions.
- frik 10y agoHN has audience from both sides of the pond. Smart people from both sides write insightful comments. Some people should add a disclaimer to their comments, as it's rather obvious they are related to the company mention in the news.
- golfer 10y agoMy wife runs a small business and is furious with Yelp. She gets a lot of 5 star reviews, legitimate ones from customers she knows, but Yelp embargoes lots of them and doesn't display them on her Yelp page. She gets frequent cold calls from their sales department, promising that if she signs up for advertising, they can get those 5 star reviews un-embargoed and live on her page. 21st century cyber-extortion?
- metalliqaz 10y agoI became active on Yelp after a new Cafe opened in my town. I loved it so much I just had to go home and write a good review. I did so, and it was embargoed. A user with one 5-star review is usually not taken into account. After I had written more like 5 or 6 reviews, all my reviews started to count. Remember how viral those recordings of Comcast shenanigans went? If she keeps getting those calls from Yelp, record one and be the one that finally turns the tide.
- golfer 10y agoWhy would those embargoed reviews start to count after she paid Yelp? That is what the Yelp salesperson is implying. Embargoed reviews shouldn't suddenly have more legitimacy due to her buying ads on the site. Something is shady here.
- koolba 10y agoI can imagine the corp spin on this being something like: We embargo reviews until we can validate the reviewer. Paying Yelp can bump the priority of who is validated...
- cjensen 10y agoThe 'embargo' algorithm is nothing as sensible as you suggest. If you click through to the hidden reviews, you can quickly see that there is very little logic happening. You'll often see a hidden review from a user who has left 20+ reviews, while at the same time one of the shown reviews is from a first-time reviewer.
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- koolba 10y agoFree Side Project Idea This might already exist but how about a history tracker for rating sites. Not sure how it'd deal with terms for scraping information but assuming you maintained history you could see ratings over time. Could also be used to validate claims like this or just overall trends for a business's ratings. Bonus points for throwing in blockchain based timestamping (because "bitcoin" ;-))
- jps359 10y agoLouis Rossman (the guy who makes mac repair videos) had this happen to him too, and did some investigating of his own/connected the dots between the Yelp salesperson and the person leaving 1 star reviews on his business page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY
- brilliantcode 10y agoUnfuckingbelievable. If you google Eric Sperber, you can see that youtube show up in first page results. I wonder how in hell is Yelp not giving a fuck? They even tried to take down the video but that guy was smart enough to upload a backup on S3 and many ppl have copies ready to be distributed. At least Yelp knows about streisand law....
- brilliantcode 10y agowho would actually support yelp sales extorting small buinesses? wtf HN?
- edoceo 10y agoI have a business on Yelp, not a restaurant, I've never paid them. My listing is mostly correct, I've tried to update but the settings never save. Yelp sales call about every three months to sell me on improving my profile. I say I'm not interested and the conversation is done. Have not experienced aggressive sales tactics.
- DamnInteresting 10y agoVia a bit of sleuthing, I managed to figure out what business this person is writing about. I could post a link to the Yelp page, but that feels a bit doxxy, so I don't know if it's appropriate. The business does have more one-star reviews than one might normally expect, but the texts of the accompanying reviews contain specific details of complaints, and the complaints are appropriate for the ISP/TV category. For example: Absolutely atrocious. I have never had a worse experience with a company. After multiple calls to service my internet connection they refused to accommodate me efficiently. The customer service representative was rude, disinterested, and frankly mean. On top of this, they have messed up my bill several times, and failed to rectify them even after acknowledging that they messed up the billing. The service was simply unacceptable. If you can avoid using them, by all means do. A couple of the users' reviews do show cities outside of the business's city, but that could just be out-of-date user profiles, or people who have moved since they posted their reviews. The oldest of the one-star reviews appears to be April 2015. Of the reviews "not recommended" by Yelp (i.e., hidden by default), two are one-star and one is four-star. My feeling is that these are not fake reviews, but rather that an ISP/TV service is a business quite unlikely to attract positive/neutral reviews. Personally it had never occurred to me to review any ISPs on Yelp, even those I liked. It seems likely that these are legitimately upset customers who realized they can use Yelp to harm the business they had a bad interaction with. So, if I am correct, these reviews are legitimate, but not representative.
- drzaiusapelord 10y agoThe issue isn't that they're fake but that positive reviews end up hidden as 'not recommended' and negative ones suddenly float to the top once the protection money stops. It looks like there's manipulation of the algorithm that determines what reviews are legitimate on a per client basis. The 'free' package is pretty unforgiving, but if you pay then its tweaked more towards your favor. Nothing about this would be illegal. Its how Yelp manages their site and I believe have already won a lawsuit against this. Consumers need to be taught that Yelp isn't trustworthy. Sadly, it seems to have a Facebook-like network effect that'll be tough to beat. On the plus side Google reviews are the default on Google maps and other Google services and they seem to not play these games.
- kreutz 10y agoYelp is evil. One month ago we had 5 stars with 932 reviews. Today we have 3.5 stars with 118 reviews. 3800 reviews are not recommend. https://mobile.twitter.com/erickreutz/status/851505150002733056 https://mobile.twitter.com/erickreutz/status/851505150002733...
- dqv 10y agoDon't sweat it - 3.5 stars looks way more trustworthy than 5 stars. 5 stars makes it look like the business paid for the reviews
- circa 10y agoMy small business occaisionally gets calls from them and they are very very rude and high pressure. I remember hanging up on one guy and they kept calling back probably 3-4 times per hour. Even after literally telling the guy to "fuck off". I will never pay for anything on their site or even use it. Foursquare does a much better job at what they do now anyway.
- mudil 10y agoI and my wife left two negative reviews for our realtor on Yelp. The realtor botched the sale of our house in Half Moon Bay, she harassed and lied to us, and we even filed a complaint against her with the San Mateo realtors board. Because she advertises on Yelp, our reviews were shelved into "not recommended" category. The realtor still has 5 star rating. Never mind that I had submitted more that 30 reviews to Yelp before, so I consider myself a good Yelper. I went so far as to write a letter to Stoppelman, CEO. No response, no action. PS The same reviews were published on Zillow no problem.
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agoall the advice to hang up yelp or not answer is only serving to punt the problem to someone else and wait for them to punt back to you. nothing is fixed. you need to engage yelp salesmen. you need to break them psychologically. you need to convince them to do what needs to be done. they know what that is. you can help them.
- dqv 10y agoThere is something about Yelp that makes people want to give inflammatory reviews. Once upon a time, I got a fake 1-star review. I knew it was fake because I know who my clients are -- past and present. A few days later, a client who had recently cancelled our contract posted a "real" 1-star review. It was embellished to the point of being a fabrication. Luckily it eventually went away, but it was a bad experience. That fake review from someone who wasn't a client turned into a /real/ review from someone who was! With this information, I've taken a more critical eye to Yelp reviews and noticed most if not all of the reviews are useless. They also spam up search listings for "restaurants in my area" with useless results.
- brilliantcode 10y agoIt perplexes me that they can get away with this. This is shaking down mom & pops businesses.
- sevensor 10y agoDo we really still trust the internet for reviews on anything at this point? Personally, I've reverted to word of mouth. I assume any review on the internet has been paid for, one way or the other.
- 1ris 10y agoDoes Yelp verify that buiness actually exist? If I was in the US, had too much time and money on hand it'd do the following: Start serveral business and make sure they never actually serve costumers. Sign them up with yelp. Write a few positive and negative reviews about them. Spend money on yelp advertising on some of them. See how they compared to the control group. If the rumors are true, sue them with anti-mafia-laws. The fact that nobody has done this yet colors me very skeptical about the claims.
- perfectstorm 10y agothe problem is most business owners are not tech savvy. I would love to volunteer if someone sets something up.
- perfectstorm 10y agoi have seen many such accusations in the past but i have never seen any solid proof (screenshot of an email from Yelp or a recorded voice call demanding money). Sure voice recording might be illegal without consent but not all states have that law.