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Yelp was involved in more than a few shady dealings over the years, and most people remember that. They manipulate their own rating for money, and for that rea

Yelp was involved in more than a few shady dealings over the years, and most people remember that. They manipulate their own rating for money, and for that reason many consider these ratings - their core product - to be unreliable and misleading. They will not be missed.

DerfNet 8y ago
I don't think "most people" are even aware of Yelp's previous issues. It's probably more just Google eating their lunch.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  I meant "most people on this thread", which is the context GP was invoking: > I can't relate to the negativity I see here. And yes, Yelp calculated that they could get away with their shady money-grabbing since they had no competition. Very clever, but like most dishonest behaviors - quite short sighted. As soon as a competitor emerged, Yelp was unceremoniously ditched. Also worth mentioning: you didn't have to be aware of their past misdeeds to be affected by the resulting rating distortions, which are still affecting users to this day.
- acdha 8y ago
  I don't know, I've heard an awful lot of people who aren't tech/privacy nerds joke about how Yelp allows you to pay to remove bad reviews or add fake ones. It seems to be a common belief in at least the food industry and that employs an awful lot of people who may hear and propagate it.
  - rossdavidh 8y ago
    Same here; I know people who are tech-averse (willing to use smartphones, Facebook, etc. but not interested in knowing anything about how it works) refer to Yelp's unreliability, without bothering to explain it. In other words, it's a known fact not needing to be explained, because they assume everyone in the conversation already knows it. I think their reputation is probably a net negative, by now, and their technology certainly cannot help them with that.
  - istjohn 8y ago
    And yet no one can produce any evidence. It's just an easy excuse for a manager or owner whose location is getting poor ratings. My personal experience is that Yelp has an agressive sales force, their fraud detection system seems to fairly frequently raise false positives, but a business can do great on Yelp without paying a penny if they have happy customers.
    - acdha 8y ago
      My point was that it was widespread. There are so many small businesses that you don’t need that high a percentage to have bad experiences with sales critters or be conspiracy minded for a lot of people to hear the claim.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  The thing Yelp has never understood is that when they hide, deprecate, or remove a review for no good reason, the person who posted that review gripes about it to a half-dozen of their friends.
timr 8y ago
None of this is true. Stop repeating rumors. Source: I worked there, on the systems in question, and know for a fact that the things you're asserting are not true.
- cblades 8y ago
  Working on the systems in a technical capacity doesn't necessarily inform you of how those systems were used.
  - timr 8y ago
    I worked directly on the code that would have done the things you're asserting to be true. There's no code to support it, and in fact, there are tools in place to prevent what you're claiming. If there were some top-secret internal conspiracy to use the other tools on the site to do what you're claiming, you have to be especially credulous to believe that I -- or people just like me -- wouldn't have noticed it. Unless you have some evidence to bring to the table other than "I read it on the internet", my word is worth more than your theories. If you don't believe that what I'm telling you is true, then feel free to provide some proof.
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      The typical criticism of Yelp was that you could get negative reviews of your business removed if you paid them. I'm not sure how as a coder you'd be able to guarantee that's never been done, except if your code guaranteed that no review could ever be removed by a human moderator, which I'm sure is not the case.
      - ilikehurdles 8y ago
        There. is. no. evidence. of. this. I'm not sure how otherwise skeptical techy people imagine a conspiracy into reality with nothing to back it up. Don't you think that of the thousands of people who have worked at yelp, that one of them would have spread news about it with their peers? The "shakedowns", floods of negative reviews, sudden filtering, etc. Every single instance is some anecdotal story online, and has never been backed up in court, by investigative journalism, a scientific study, any kind of material evidence. The barrier to entry to create a business listing, get reviews, get a sales call from yelp, and study the change in review is really, really low -- and yet you'd think we'd have more proof to go on than comments on hackernews and reddit if yelp were as shady as is claimed. There are third party services that are effectively shakedowns -- similar to what shady SEO people do to spam whois contacts -- they threaten you with worse rankings if you don't pay up. These things have no connection to yelp itself.

DerfNet 8y ago

I don't think "most people" are even aware of Yelp's previous issues. It's probably more just Google eating their lunch.

dunpeal 8y ago
I meant "most people on this thread", which is the context GP was invoking: > I can't relate to the negativity I see here. And yes, Yelp calculated that they could get away with their shady money-grabbing since they had no competition. Very clever, but like most dishonest behaviors - quite short sighted. As soon as a competitor emerged, Yelp was unceremoniously ditched. Also worth mentioning: you didn't have to be aware of their past misdeeds to be affected by the resulting rating distortions, which are still affecting users to this day.
acdha 8y ago
I don't know, I've heard an awful lot of people who aren't tech/privacy nerds joke about how Yelp allows you to pay to remove bad reviews or add fake ones. It seems to be a common belief in at least the food industry and that employs an awful lot of people who may hear and propagate it.
- rossdavidh 8y ago
  Same here; I know people who are tech-averse (willing to use smartphones, Facebook, etc. but not interested in knowing anything about how it works) refer to Yelp's unreliability, without bothering to explain it. In other words, it's a known fact not needing to be explained, because they assume everyone in the conversation already knows it. I think their reputation is probably a net negative, by now, and their technology certainly cannot help them with that.
- istjohn 8y ago
  And yet no one can produce any evidence. It's just an easy excuse for a manager or owner whose location is getting poor ratings. My personal experience is that Yelp has an agressive sales force, their fraud detection system seems to fairly frequently raise false positives, but a business can do great on Yelp without paying a penny if they have happy customers.
  - acdha 8y ago
    My point was that it was widespread. There are so many small businesses that you don’t need that high a percentage to have bad experiences with sales critters or be conspiracy minded for a lot of people to hear the claim.
CamperBob2 8y ago
The thing Yelp has never understood is that when they hide, deprecate, or remove a review for no good reason, the person who posted that review gripes about it to a half-dozen of their friends.

timr 8y ago

None of this is true. Stop repeating rumors. Source: I worked there, on the systems in question, and know for a fact that the things you're asserting are not true.

cblades 8y ago
Working on the systems in a technical capacity doesn't necessarily inform you of how those systems were used.
- timr 8y ago
  I worked directly on the code that would have done the things you're asserting to be true. There's no code to support it, and in fact, there are tools in place to prevent what you're claiming. If there were some top-secret internal conspiracy to use the other tools on the site to do what you're claiming, you have to be especially credulous to believe that I -- or people just like me -- wouldn't have noticed it. Unless you have some evidence to bring to the table other than "I read it on the internet", my word is worth more than your theories. If you don't believe that what I'm telling you is true, then feel free to provide some proof.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    The typical criticism of Yelp was that you could get negative reviews of your business removed if you paid them. I'm not sure how as a coder you'd be able to guarantee that's never been done, except if your code guaranteed that no review could ever be removed by a human moderator, which I'm sure is not the case.
    - ilikehurdles 8y ago
      There. is. no. evidence. of. this. I'm not sure how otherwise skeptical techy people imagine a conspiracy into reality with nothing to back it up. Don't you think that of the thousands of people who have worked at yelp, that one of them would have spread news about it with their peers? The "shakedowns", floods of negative reviews, sudden filtering, etc. Every single instance is some anecdotal story online, and has never been backed up in court, by investigative journalism, a scientific study, any kind of material evidence. The barrier to entry to create a business listing, get reviews, get a sales call from yelp, and study the change in review is really, really low -- and yet you'd think we'd have more proof to go on than comments on hackernews and reddit if yelp were as shady as is claimed. There are third party services that are effectively shakedowns -- similar to what shady SEO people do to spam whois contacts -- they threaten you with worse rankings if you don't pay up. These things have no connection to yelp itself.