5 ms·
It's easy to come down against Yelp, but small businesses have been trying to "game" Yelp in unsophisticated ways for some time. We work with a lot of small bu
by jeremymims 15y ago
It's easy to come down against Yelp, but small businesses have been trying to "game" Yelp in unsophisticated ways for some time.
We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be submitted by friends. They get angry at Yelp for allowing bad reviews to show up and think they can fix it with reviews written in all-caps with text like "Bob and Jane ARE THE NICEST, WARMEST, MOST AMAZING PEOPLE I KNOW and the person who wrote the review above DOESN"T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT." We always advise them not to use these tactics but to instead put a sign up asking their customers to leave reviews on Yelp (since all reviews on the site trend to 4.3, they're probably improving their position with every new review).
To recap:
- So a business has a small amount of reviews online, one negative from someone who has left more than 400 reviews.
- The business asks their loyal customers to leave positive reviews all at the same time.
- Yelp sees abnormal traffic and abnormal acceleration of overly-positive reviews from brand new users (OMG. Best Dog Trainer EVER!! A+++++ Would recommend).
- Yelp's algorithm flags this activity as abnormal since it looks similar to spam/paid/fake reviews and won't alter their algorithm to accommodate an attempt to game their system.
The reality is small businesses do this kind of "gaming" all the time and sometimes it's benign, sometimes it's malicious or fake. I once worked with a client who had left dozens of reviews about themselves and complained that Yelp always took them down which "wasn't fair". Yelp sees way more attempts at gaming reviews than you'd realize and I imagine they've gotten pretty good at it. Like Google's algorithms, Yelp's algorithms may occasionally flag real reviews. Both have an incentive to improve.
The other thing is that if I'm a sales agent at Yelp (responsible for bringing in $8k in revenue this month), I'm going to call on customers who have bad reviews (and thus show up lower in searches) first. This is not because I'm trying to scam anyone. It's because the folks at the bottom are usually the most eager to pay to show up at the top. The guys who already sit in the top 5 spots of an organic search have trouble justifying the expense. If I call on someone who is on the first page of a Yelp search, their first thought isn't going to be "this guy's trying to scam us". Likewise, the companies that buy Google ads aren't the ones who show up first in an organic search either (unless they demonstrate that the ROI justifies it. SMBs aren't typically as sophisticated).
This isn't extortion, it's not a scam, and it's not wrong. It may appear obtuse from the outside, but nothing would harm Yelp more than for these allegations to be true. It would be downright irresponsible of Yelp to try to do things this way from a shareholders' perspective.
TL;DR: SMBs try to game Yelp all the time. Yelp's built algorithms to look for this kind of behavior. This business hit a lot of triggers.
- pessimizer 15y agoAgreed. If there was one terrible review written a year or two ago by someone with a reviewing history, and then suddenly twenty gushing all caps reviews filled with superlatives and exclamations of personal affection by reviewers with no other review history, all posted within the same week, I'd be upset if yelp didn't filter them out. If some business tells all of their best customers to post a review on Yelp, a site they had never used before, then they actually are straw reviews and worth nothing - and this business owner admits that. Case closed. Filter working perfectly. This is not to say that the one bad review characterizes this man's business in any way. He probably just doesn't have a tech-savvy, hip clientele, and the first yelper he ran into may have been a spoiled curmudgeon. What offsets the damage is that since he isn't drawing from that hip clientele, the review is likely not driving away any significant business. The best response would probably be to put a Yelp sign in some prominent space, which might trigger someone who is familiar with their business to add a few more reviews. If he gives good service, the preponderance will be good. Much better idea than calling for a favor from your affectionate regulars. There is no right to a good reputation.
- v21 15y agoBut the implication in the article is that the negative review is a fake review put up by a competing dog trainer...
- pessimizer 15y agoThat implication is based on the fact that he has reviewed seven dog trainers, given two of them one star reviews, one of them a five star review, and the other four reviews weren't worth mentioning in the article for some reason. Is it at all unlikely that this guy took a dog to two trainers, didn't like them, then went to a third that he thought was great? Or does it have to be a conspiracy? ----- edit: and from the article, the business owner's opinion: "The whole thing is odd," Frank Brader said. "It certainly seems to me that he's been to so many other dog trainers that nothing you can do is going to satisfy this person." ----- another edit: Here's the profile in question: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34jw http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34... Does anything even look vaguely suspicious about it? His average rating is four stars, and contrary to the article, he went to four dog trainers in 2010, and gave two of them five star ratings, and two of them one star ratings. http://www.yelp.com/user_details_reviews_self?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34jw&review_sort=time&review_filter=category&category_filter=pets http://www.yelp.com/user_details_reviews_self?userid=z25c9Ty... ----- and another: Now the review is being pushed out by wonderful, helpful reviews like this: "Just read the Chicago tribune article and it's just terrible! Yelp should pull this review!" http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-training-north-riverside#hrid:K4-1ddqnhVGkodo8HUkQNg http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-traini... "The Chicago Tribune article could go evan a lot further to expose Yelp for the extortionist business model they employ. I and thousands of hard working small business folks around the country who deliver exceptional quality and service every day to our customers are being victimized by this extortionist buiness model." http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-training-north-riverside#hrid:ipXq6-Bf8oxnTvlZpOvdlQ http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-traini... and "Score one for the small business owner not happy with Yelp's horrible filter algorithm. Yelp is a horrible business and if they don't fix things fast they will simply disappear (we can only hope) its amazing how there filter has managed to alienate all of their users (businesses and reviewers). Great article in the tribune, shine more light on Yelp's craptastic system. By the way we are animal lovers too!" http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-training-north-riverside#hrid:_p3YpvA3j-boB1U_2BvO1A http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-traini... All five stars.