4 ms·

I will have to do some searching to grab a screen cap, but I can tell you that Yelp explicitly advertised a paid "feature" to small businesses like mine to hide

I will have to do some searching to grab a screen cap, but I can tell you that Yelp explicitly advertised a paid "feature" to small businesses like mine to hide competitors from top search results in exchange for a fee. I don't know that empirical proof of systemic abusive behavior and antitrust violations would necessarily be useful here. They are clearly employing tactics that actively damage open competition and informed consumer choice, and even anecdotal evidence of that is justification for regulatory movement to stop it.

dqv 6y ago
Yelp can easily expose businesses to people who are more likely to give bad reviews too. I mean they collect this data on every profile - some reviewers have a TON of 1 star reviews. Hide the restaurants that pay and increase exposure of those that don’t to these reviewers to get them to give poor ratings. Obviously there is no way to prove this, but it would be a great way to get people to pay while still maintaining plausible deniability. After all, the one star reviewers still have to go to the establishment and have their bad experience.