8 ms·

Yelp tried to strong-arm us

88 points by z0a 8y ago

duxup 8y ago
It's a sad but predictable pattern you see from everyone from the Better Business Bureau to more recent companies. Being established isn't enough, eventually they have to push on those whose information / access they provide. Personally I gave up on Yelp as years ago I could see so many reviews for places by people who clearly had no clue what that place even was. Such as if you go to a Neapolitan pizza place... you really shouldn't complain that the pizza is "just thin crust". Or the always great "this place isn't as good as X" where X is a place that costs 3x as much....
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Its not just enough to make money, you have to make increasingly more money every year.
ilikehurdles 8y ago
This sounds like a scam call. Did the user verify that the agent was in fact in any way associated with yelp, and not just someone trying to blackmail a business owner? As a domain owner, you get these scammy SEO agents pretending to be affiliated with google all the time.
- jordache 8y ago
  really? Based on otherwise pristine reputation for Yelp?
  - ilikehurdles 8y ago
    No, of course not. But over the years I’ve heard tons of anecdotal and second-hand stories about yelp doing variations of this but nothing concrete or well-documented. That, and knowing that these kinds of scammers exist.
  - gotocake 8y ago
    I ask this every time a Yelp story emerges: where is the evidence commensurate to the claim about Yelp’s reputation? It would make a fantastic news story, any reporter would leap at it, so where is it? Every time I ask this people “cite” Reddit and a bunch of blog posts, so I’m still waiting for evidence. Now I don’t like Yelp. Fakespot often finds loads of fake reviews and that’s a problem, but one unrelated to Yelp’s social media “reputation.”
saagarjha 8y ago
Interestingly, the Reddit comments seem to mention Google as a better alternative.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Is Google automated in this space, like most everything else Google does, or does it have actual people to make the same threats that Yelp reportedly does?
  - usrusr 8y ago
    Google has automated fear on the client side: some of their most important products are "not for sale", but ad-spend might be used a signal in ranking. And because the ranking works in mysterious ways, nobody can do an informed cost/benefit decision, nobody dares to reject the Google what the Google is due. Advertisers faithfully put their money in the sacrifice box, afraid of finding out what would happen if they did not. Google has effectively deified itself. Follow-up question: was it all a cunning plan or was it discovered by chance? My guess is the chance discovery.
- notatoad 8y ago
  Google has plenty of issues on the consumer side, but from my experiences and everything i've heard they treat their advertisers well. At the very least, they're not an outright protection racket.
- pcurve 8y ago
  I found Google restaurant reviews in NYC to be generally very inflated. You'd think couple hundred reviews averaging out to be 4.6+ would mean pretty good experience, but I've learned to dial back my expectation.
  - daxterspeed 8y ago
    Ratings are cultural as well. Compare to the traditional French scoring system where 19/20 was traditionally considered the highest attainable score as 20/20 was reserved for perfection (eg. something unattainable).[1] I couldn't find a source for this but I once heard of an North American company which had opened some offices in northern Europe and used the same satisfaction survey across all offices. They were astonished to see satisfaction scores being so low in northern Europe so they launched an investigation into the matter. The result of the investigation was that satisfaction in the European offices was actually comparable if not higher than the North American offices, but culturally they would use a score like 3/5 to indicate that they had no complaints, reserving higher scores for when things were above and beyond great. Someone with better Google-fu might be able to find a source because I probably got something wrong but I think that was the gist of the event. [1] https://astoldbydana.com/2014/11/11/grading-on-the-french-system/ https://astoldbydana.com/2014/11/11/grading-on-the-french-sy...
gotocake 8y ago
Nothing about this seems credible or interesting enough to be posted here. These stories emerge every so often, and they rarely seem to exist beyond Reddit. I’d be interested in this if it could be verified, but as it is this is internet rumor momgering.
- Nicksil 8y ago
  What would you require for verification?
  - gotocake 8y ago
    I’d trust a reputable news outlet to do the vetting of the story, but that never seems to happen with these Reddit posts. They just become cultural artifacts and get repeated ad nauseum.
  - pvg 8y ago
    Even if it is perfectly true and exhaustively verified, 'one business had an interaction with Yelp they are unhappy with' is not a that story belongs on HN because it's not interesting.
kadendogthing 8y ago
Why should I believe a self post? There's a weird anti-Yelp cult but never can the people who claim Yelp is involved with nefarious business practices provide any actual proof. Yelp employees don't know about these practices. Yelp says it doesn't have these practices. And these people can't ever offer substantive evidence for the outrage porn they're writing. I'm thoroughly convinced after reading countless of these types of posts that the anti-Yelp sentiment is purely born out of salty business owners who don't like the fact that they get terrible reviews from an experienced audience. This post does not belong on HN. There is nothing worth discussing about this story except to fulfill someone's outrage porn fetish.
- sdinsn 8y ago
  I agree, an unsubstantiated self post shouldn't be spread on HN.
- paleogizmo 8y ago
  AFAIK, it's more than just yelp employees that don't admit knowing about such practices, ex-yelp employees also don't admit knowing either. So far evidence points to yelp extortion being the work of independent scammers. However, hasn't Google reviews pretty well made Yelp irrelevant at this point? And while there's lots to be concerned about Google's business model, I'm not aware of any potential for conflict-of-interest in Google reviews as with Yelp.
  - whycombagator 8y ago
    > However, hasn't Google reviews pretty well made Yelp irrelevant at this point? If it were a race to rate everything as close to 5/5 as possible, yes. Google, Facebook, and Tripadvisor are all winning that race. Yelp typically has lower ratings and is easier to filter/search. It's far from the perfect platform, but certainly less astroturfed than the others.
- millzlane 8y ago
  You don't have to believe it. I believe the post because I have experienced this similar behavior with two clients that were involved with yelp. And both times yelp tried to use scare tactics to get me to purchase their services on behalf of my clients. I won't go into detail. But this is more than some anti-yelp cult like some people from yelp would love for you believe.
argonaut 8y ago
This sounds like a misleading / high-pressure sales call, but if you read into it carefully there's nothing that indicates to me anything illegal, scammy, or even anything that would back up the claim that Yelp penalizes businesses that don't advertise. A charitable interpretation is that the salesperson is basically claiming there were 21,000 searches the business showed up in, where they could have been shown at the top if they advertised.
- nosuchthing 8y ago
  I've directly noticed Yelp penalizing a local restaurant down in their search results for a key term and when I asked them about it, they told a nearly identical story to what this Reddit poster describes. They had paid for Yelp advertising, and after deciding to stop suddenly their search result priority dropped, bad reviews were prioritized in their profile, and good reviews started being removed.
- judge2020 8y ago
  There are many cases of yelp doing these actions (we obviously don't have the source code as hard proof): https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/01/09/yelp-accused-hiding-positive-reviews-non-advertiser/ https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/01/09/yelp-accused-hiding-posi... https://raymondfong.net/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-yelp-ripping-people-off/ https://raymondfong.net/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-... https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-filter-positive-reviews-business-refuses-pay-advertising/98695/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-filter-positive-rev...
  - millzlane 8y ago
    For my clients they basically said that if we didn't purchase and edit our page with them. That our competitors ad's would show on or page. (No mention that yelp basically puts them there.) So if we paid and setup our page they would cease to show our competitors? Nope, they would move to the bottom of the page where most visitors end up anyway.
omershapira 8y ago
Good time as ever to mention that Foursquare is still great in every big city I try it in.
- ardy42 8y ago
  > Good time as ever to mention that Foursquare is still great in every big city I try it in. Isn't their new business model basically track your location and sell the data to anyone with money? The title to their website it literally "Foursquare - The Trusted Location Data & Intelligence Company" (https://foursquare.com/ https://foursquare.com/).
oliwarner 8y ago
I do wonder —with so many examples— how they avoid being charged with racketeering or extortion.
- noddingham 8y ago
  Because it isn't true? Because it's an unverified self-post on reddit, one of the least trustworthy places on the internet?
  - oliwarner 8y ago
    This is far from the first individual report of this, and what happens if you don't pay. It's allegedly been happening for years. See other comments in here for more.
    - pwinnski 8y ago
      And yet they've still avoided being charged with anything, which suggests that stories might be less credible than they first seem.
grandsui 8y ago
Okay, you keep on going on about Yelp. Why do I care about Yelp? Seriously now, let's think about this for one second, okay? I've been in business for 24 years. Why do I care if Yelp has a review about me? Do you think I really care about Yelp? I don't give a fuck about Yelp!

88 points by z0a 8y ago

It's a sad but predictable pattern you see from everyone from the Better Business Bureau to more recent companies. Being established isn't enough, eventually they have to push on those whose information / access they provide. Personally I gave up on Yelp as years ago I could see so many reviews for places by people who clearly had no clue what that place even was. Such as if you go to a Neapolitan pizza place... you really shouldn't complain that the pizza is "just thin crust". Or the always great "this place isn't as good as X" where X is a place that costs 3x as much....

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
throwaway2048 8y ago
Its not just enough to make money, you have to make increasingly more money every year.

ilikehurdles 8y ago

This sounds like a scam call. Did the user verify that the agent was in fact in any way associated with yelp, and not just someone trying to blackmail a business owner? As a domain owner, you get these scammy SEO agents pretending to be affiliated with google all the time.

jordache 8y ago
really? Based on otherwise pristine reputation for Yelp?
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  No, of course not. But over the years I’ve heard tons of anecdotal and second-hand stories about yelp doing variations of this but nothing concrete or well-documented. That, and knowing that these kinds of scammers exist.
- gotocake 8y ago
  I ask this every time a Yelp story emerges: where is the evidence commensurate to the claim about Yelp’s reputation? It would make a fantastic news story, any reporter would leap at it, so where is it? Every time I ask this people “cite” Reddit and a bunch of blog posts, so I’m still waiting for evidence. Now I don’t like Yelp. Fakespot often finds loads of fake reviews and that’s a problem, but one unrelated to Yelp’s social media “reputation.”

saagarjha 8y ago

Interestingly, the Reddit comments seem to mention Google as a better alternative.

reaperducer 8y ago
Is Google automated in this space, like most everything else Google does, or does it have actual people to make the same threats that Yelp reportedly does?
- usrusr 8y ago
  Google has automated fear on the client side: some of their most important products are "not for sale", but ad-spend might be used a signal in ranking. And because the ranking works in mysterious ways, nobody can do an informed cost/benefit decision, nobody dares to reject the Google what the Google is due. Advertisers faithfully put their money in the sacrifice box, afraid of finding out what would happen if they did not. Google has effectively deified itself. Follow-up question: was it all a cunning plan or was it discovered by chance? My guess is the chance discovery.
notatoad 8y ago
Google has plenty of issues on the consumer side, but from my experiences and everything i've heard they treat their advertisers well. At the very least, they're not an outright protection racket.
pcurve 8y ago
I found Google restaurant reviews in NYC to be generally very inflated. You'd think couple hundred reviews averaging out to be 4.6+ would mean pretty good experience, but I've learned to dial back my expectation.
- daxterspeed 8y ago
  Ratings are cultural as well. Compare to the traditional French scoring system where 19/20 was traditionally considered the highest attainable score as 20/20 was reserved for perfection (eg. something unattainable).[1] I couldn't find a source for this but I once heard of an North American company which had opened some offices in northern Europe and used the same satisfaction survey across all offices. They were astonished to see satisfaction scores being so low in northern Europe so they launched an investigation into the matter. The result of the investigation was that satisfaction in the European offices was actually comparable if not higher than the North American offices, but culturally they would use a score like 3/5 to indicate that they had no complaints, reserving higher scores for when things were above and beyond great. Someone with better Google-fu might be able to find a source because I probably got something wrong but I think that was the gist of the event. [1] https://astoldbydana.com/2014/11/11/grading-on-the-french-system/ https://astoldbydana.com/2014/11/11/grading-on-the-french-sy...

gotocake 8y ago

Nothing about this seems credible or interesting enough to be posted here. These stories emerge every so often, and they rarely seem to exist beyond Reddit. I’d be interested in this if it could be verified, but as it is this is internet rumor momgering.

Nicksil 8y ago
What would you require for verification?
- gotocake 8y ago
  I’d trust a reputable news outlet to do the vetting of the story, but that never seems to happen with these Reddit posts. They just become cultural artifacts and get repeated ad nauseum.
- pvg 8y ago
  Even if it is perfectly true and exhaustively verified, 'one business had an interaction with Yelp they are unhappy with' is not a that story belongs on HN because it's not interesting.

kadendogthing 8y ago

Why should I believe a self post? There's a weird anti-Yelp cult but never can the people who claim Yelp is involved with nefarious business practices provide any actual proof. Yelp employees don't know about these practices. Yelp says it doesn't have these practices. And these people can't ever offer substantive evidence for the outrage porn they're writing. I'm thoroughly convinced after reading countless of these types of posts that the anti-Yelp sentiment is purely born out of salty business owners who don't like the fact that they get terrible reviews from an experienced audience. This post does not belong on HN. There is nothing worth discussing about this story except to fulfill someone's outrage porn fetish.

sdinsn 8y ago
I agree, an unsubstantiated self post shouldn't be spread on HN.
paleogizmo 8y ago
AFAIK, it's more than just yelp employees that don't admit knowing about such practices, ex-yelp employees also don't admit knowing either. So far evidence points to yelp extortion being the work of independent scammers. However, hasn't Google reviews pretty well made Yelp irrelevant at this point? And while there's lots to be concerned about Google's business model, I'm not aware of any potential for conflict-of-interest in Google reviews as with Yelp.
- whycombagator 8y ago
  > However, hasn't Google reviews pretty well made Yelp irrelevant at this point? If it were a race to rate everything as close to 5/5 as possible, yes. Google, Facebook, and Tripadvisor are all winning that race. Yelp typically has lower ratings and is easier to filter/search. It's far from the perfect platform, but certainly less astroturfed than the others.
millzlane 8y ago
You don't have to believe it. I believe the post because I have experienced this similar behavior with two clients that were involved with yelp. And both times yelp tried to use scare tactics to get me to purchase their services on behalf of my clients. I won't go into detail. But this is more than some anti-yelp cult like some people from yelp would love for you believe.

argonaut 8y ago

This sounds like a misleading / high-pressure sales call, but if you read into it carefully there's nothing that indicates to me anything illegal, scammy, or even anything that would back up the claim that Yelp penalizes businesses that don't advertise. A charitable interpretation is that the salesperson is basically claiming there were 21,000 searches the business showed up in, where they could have been shown at the top if they advertised.

nosuchthing 8y ago
I've directly noticed Yelp penalizing a local restaurant down in their search results for a key term and when I asked them about it, they told a nearly identical story to what this Reddit poster describes. They had paid for Yelp advertising, and after deciding to stop suddenly their search result priority dropped, bad reviews were prioritized in their profile, and good reviews started being removed.
judge2020 8y ago
There are many cases of yelp doing these actions (we obviously don't have the source code as hard proof): https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/01/09/yelp-accused-hiding-positive-reviews-non-advertiser/ https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/01/09/yelp-accused-hiding-posi... https://raymondfong.net/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-yelp-ripping-people-off/ https://raymondfong.net/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-... https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-filter-positive-reviews-business-refuses-pay-advertising/98695/ https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-filter-positive-rev...
- millzlane 8y ago
  For my clients they basically said that if we didn't purchase and edit our page with them. That our competitors ad's would show on or page. (No mention that yelp basically puts them there.) So if we paid and setup our page they would cease to show our competitors? Nope, they would move to the bottom of the page where most visitors end up anyway.

omershapira 8y ago

Good time as ever to mention that Foursquare is still great in every big city I try it in.

ardy42 8y ago
> Good time as ever to mention that Foursquare is still great in every big city I try it in. Isn't their new business model basically track your location and sell the data to anyone with money? The title to their website it literally "Foursquare - The Trusted Location Data & Intelligence Company" (https://foursquare.com/ https://foursquare.com/).

oliwarner 8y ago

I do wonder —with so many examples— how they avoid being charged with racketeering or extortion.

noddingham 8y ago
Because it isn't true? Because it's an unverified self-post on reddit, one of the least trustworthy places on the internet?
- oliwarner 8y ago
  This is far from the first individual report of this, and what happens if you don't pay. It's allegedly been happening for years. See other comments in here for more.
  - pwinnski 8y ago
    And yet they've still avoided being charged with anything, which suggests that stories might be less credible than they first seem.

grandsui 8y ago

Okay, you keep on going on about Yelp. Why do I care about Yelp? Seriously now, let's think about this for one second, okay? I've been in business for 24 years. Why do I care if Yelp has a review about me? Do you think I really care about Yelp? I don't give a fuck about Yelp!