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We were just discussing this with my wife yesterday. The very same story happened to our doula, who's very non-technical and she asked us what to do (we are bot

We were just discussing this with my wife yesterday. The very same story happened to our doula, who's very non-technical and she asked us what to do (we are both engineers). Short story: she had a profile on Yelp, almost 20 5-star reviews from former customers (who spend, on average, 2/3 months with her - so each star is a big deal). One day Yelp! connects with her proposing her to become a paid customer, how could that boost her visibility, etc. etc. Moreover, she has great reviews and it would be good for her to maintain that track record. She declines - also because she is not very technical and she has no idea how much business she's getting from Yelp. Within a month, half of her 5-star reviews are gone and 2 1-star reviews appeared (that she does not recollect as customers - so she reported them). My get on the entire story is that Yelp sounds a lot like Italian's mafia (btw, I'm Italian) - where "you have a really nice restaurant there, it'd be a shame if something bad would happen to it. But if you pay us, you'd have nothing to worry about."

Diederich 9y ago
Yup, sounds about right. In my wife's correspondences with Yelp (via voice and e-mail) on behalf of her clients, they kept focusing on that word 'algorithm'....like it's some magical, mystical thing that nobody really understands or controls. That was the key word that was used in all of the bullshit deflections. Thing is, Yelp is absolutely dominant in this space, so we're all kind of stuck with it.
- degenerate 9y ago
  Not if they are exposed to the general public by way of recording / hard proof, as the original commenter said. Once people know they are lying scum, their dominance will fall.
- angry-hacker 9y ago
  Why are they so dominant? Do they rank so well on a Google in the U.S?
  - Diederich 9y ago
    I really don't know how they became so dominant, but Yelp is basically The Way my family and tons of people we know find services, restaurants, and the like. We live in the SF Bay Area; I don't know how widely applicable it is, but based on the work my wife has done with her customers (all over the US), Yelp is generally pretty important everywhere in a lot of sectors.

Diederich 9y ago

Yup, sounds about right. In my wife's correspondences with Yelp (via voice and e-mail) on behalf of her clients, they kept focusing on that word 'algorithm'....like it's some magical, mystical thing that nobody really understands or controls. That was the key word that was used in all of the bullshit deflections. Thing is, Yelp is absolutely dominant in this space, so we're all kind of stuck with it.

degenerate 9y ago
Not if they are exposed to the general public by way of recording / hard proof, as the original commenter said. Once people know they are lying scum, their dominance will fall.
angry-hacker 9y ago
Why are they so dominant? Do they rank so well on a Google in the U.S?
- Diederich 9y ago
  I really don't know how they became so dominant, but Yelp is basically The Way my family and tons of people we know find services, restaurants, and the like. We live in the SF Bay Area; I don't know how widely applicable it is, but based on the work my wife has done with her customers (all over the US), Yelp is generally pretty important everywhere in a lot of sectors.