14 ms·

Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

76 points by rpledge 14y ago

cleverjake 14y ago
http://eater.com/archives/2011/07/20/yelp-accused-of-fivestar-review-extortion.php http://eater.com/archives/2011/07/20/yelp-accused-of-fivesta... http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635 http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-e... http://consumerist.com/2010/02/yelp-accused-of-more-negative-review-extortion.html http://consumerist.com/2010/02/yelp-accused-of-more-negative... http://jonathanturley.org/2010/02/27/yelp-accused-of-extortion-in-trading-positive-review-for-advertising-money/ http://jonathanturley.org/2010/02/27/yelp-accused-of-extorti... http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/yelp-lawsuit-extortion/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/yelp-lawsuit-extortion/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/17/complaints-against-yelps-extortion-practices-grow-louder/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/17/complaints-against-yelps-ex... http://www.pcworld.com/article/190231/yelp_hit_with_class_action_lawsuit.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/190231/yelp_hit_with_class_ac... http://www.wired.com/business/2010/04/yelp-fights-fraud-allegations-by-unfiltering-reviews-killing-pay-for-favorite-feature/ http://www.wired.com/business/2010/04/yelp-fights-fraud-alle... Yelp has a pretty shady history with this. The class action suit from a year or two ago was dismissed, so I assume what they are doing is legal in some sense.
- gringomorcego 14y ago
  Because it's their forum? I really don't get it. I mean, could Zagat have gotten away with this in the pre-internet era? "Hey man, love your restaurant, but each star costs $100."
- ig1 14y ago
  The suit was dismissed because of lack of evidence of extortion.
  - pbreit 14y ago
    Not only is there a lack of evidence from the plaintiffs, Yelp has mountains of evidence proving the opposite.
- twoodfin 14y ago
  Do any of those links actually document bad behavior or just allege bad behavior?
aaronsw 14y ago
This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see: - a woman owns a shady company - she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp - Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't filled with spam opinions - the woman is upset The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - peejaybee 14y ago
    It goes beyond that, though. I reviewed a local deli around a year ago. I had been using Yelp for a few months, and it was probably my tenth review. I hadn't been asked to provide a review. None of the reasons they cited in the article applied to me, yet my review was buried, and negative reviews from newer users were left unfiltered. I took my ball and went home. Yelp sucks.
    - twoodfin 14y ago
      Care to link to that review?
      - peejaybee 14y ago
        I totally took my ball home -- cancelled my account and everything.
    - dhimes 14y ago
      “If you are a user and you are writing reviews and it’s getting filtered out — keep writing reviews,” a Yelp customer service person told Desloges That's a stupid prescription. Any sensible user will do exactly what you did. Your review is free content for their service. If they don't appreciate it screw them. My sense of Yelp is that they are in a pickle for revenue. They are public, so the pressure is great.
- 14y ago
irishloop 14y ago
I don't really see a good logistical way to deal with this kind of problem. Any algorithm is going to see a bunch of sudden reviews of extreme positive or negative opinions as possible spam, and for users who never review more than once, I'm not sure how the filter is supposed to know what is and is not legitimate. Yelp does seem to have a conflict of interest with advertisements, but considering the only alternative seems to be a subscription-based model, and people don't like paying for things on the Internet, I suspect that this is still the best possible case at the moment. Plenty of room for innovation, though.
- ig1 14y ago
  There's a well known solution for this and it's called a chinese wall. You segregate the ad team from the other teams and restrict the data flow between them. It's what Google and many others use to stop ad revenues biasing their product.
  - tomkarlo 14y ago
    How does this in any way mitigate the issue of fly-by / socket puppet reviewers?
- Spooky23 14y ago
  There obviously is a better way, because competitors in this segment do a better job. TripAdvisor immediately comes to mind for restaurants. It's pretty well known that Yelp is a joke -- wasn't the #1 restaurant in San Francisco some hole in the wall taco place a few months back?
yoda_sl 14y ago
That particular topic about Yelp and their reviews have been discussed many times on HN. Yelp is a major scam company that absolutely do not care about the business owner. They are in it for the money -doh- and what matters for them is Page Views, and regular users posting more reviews, thus more page views. Their filtering system is a total mess but since it is a secret on how it works they can say whatever they want... As long as their filtering system goes into promoting page views. Nowhere in there they care about the small business that are badly hurt by their lack of common sense. Simply don't use Yelp for posting reviews or reading reviews, this is the best thing anyone can do. PS: I speak from close personal experience with my wife small business being hit hard by Yelp algorithms for filtering review, and Yelp scammy sales people.
- irishloop 14y ago
  Out of curiosity, what is the alternative? Just allow twenty five-star or one-star reviews to show up and say hey, if business owners want to scam the system by putting in fake reviews, then great? Or just open-source their algorithms? I guess to me it seems infinitely easier to criticize the way someone else does it than to present a more efficient way of doing it.
  - Philadelphia 14y ago
    One possibility would be to allow users to manually flag reviews, instead of trying to do it algorithmically. They could also have some sort of confidence rating for reviews, or possibly a reputation system for reviewers. From looking at the hidden reviews for a couple of stores while I've been trying to find a place to get new glasses, they seem to be hiding a good number of legitimate reviews with their current system.
    - yoda_sl 14y ago
      You are correct. Such simple change will be already going in the right direction. It is amazing to see all the reviews hidden that are legit: you can see if the reviewer use Yelp often by checking the number of reviews posted. The current filtering system seems to ignore that most of the times, but reviewers with no previous review prior giving 1 star will see that review stick.
crikli 14y ago
I keep seeing articles like this. I read the article, then I find the company on Yelp and read through the reviews. Every single time it's been very clear that Yelp is telling these businesses that they have a problem. But rather than acting on this extraordinarily valuable feedback the owners/managers react by blaming Yelp for the bad reviews or accusing Yelp of hiding the good reviews. This behavior frequently exposes the characteristics about which customers are complaining: there's a problem, the owners have been told about it, and they're killing the messenger. EDIT: I have no connection to Yelp whatsoever. I'm communicating the scope of my experience and the conclusions I've drawn. These conclusions may be grossly flawed. It wouldn't be the first time today. :)
- yoda_sl 14y ago
  Clearly you have not been running a small business. Some reviews are posted from time to time by people that are not even customers or stopped by the business; for some dumb reason they post a 1 star review.. And that review usually stick and doesn't get filtered out...but other reviews from true customers posting 4 to 5 stars reviews disappear usually in less than 24 hours after they were posted. What kind of explanation do you have?
  - valuegram 14y ago
    I can vouch that this exact scenario has happened to one of my small businesses. Multiple reviews from actual customers are filtered out, but a negative review from someone who has never interacted with our organization is displayed normally.
    - kip_ 14y ago
      Were your actual customers regular users of Yelp who have reviewed other businesses actively? We can pick apart Yelp's model and likely should, but it does appear to discount "drive-by" Yelpers who only sign up to give a good review to a single business.
      - 14y ago
lincolnwebs 14y ago
I'm on the opposite side of the equation: I quit using it after I discovered it was hiding my positive reviews of establishments I frequent. I refuse to trust anything on that site now.
Symmetry 14y ago
It seems like social networking could be used to good effect to try and filter reviews, or at least let me see review from people I trust first.
neovive 14y ago
This does demonstrate the value of third-party "professional" reviews (e.g. Consumer Reports, Zagat) and a big reason why Google bought Zagat -- the trust factor. You never know if personal reviews on various sites were driven by ulterior motives. Although it's likely that the majority of personal reviews are genuine, you should try not to be swayed by just a few reviews without further research.
- eevilspock 14y ago
  Are you saying professionals are not prone to bias or influence?
  - lallysingh 14y ago
    Professionals have a reputation, which should reduce bias or influence. If Zagat was known to take bribes, they wouldn't be around for very long. It may happen, but is less likely to happen than non-professionals. You have a much larger issue with selection bias for reviews, and a much easier way for vendors to bias them. I've been in shops that insist, rather persistently, that I write a good review for their store on their computer, at the shop.
    - neovive 14y ago
      Great points! The issue of selection bias is very real on many review sites. Especially with the volume of reviews being so low for most products and services.
moderation 14y ago
718 Cyclery in Brooklyn, NY has had long running issues with Yelp. Some detail at http://brooklynian.com/bk/2012/01/25/digital-shakedown-is-718-cyclery-in-gowanus-being-screwed-by-yelp/ http://brooklynian.com/bk/2012/01/25/digital-shakedown-is-71...
bapbap 14y ago
I've been running a business review website for about 4/5 years and I absolutely hate it. If I had $1 for every time a business owner writes a review for themselves (signing up for an account with their business email address no less), our system removes it and then they email me within minutes complaining that a genuine customer had written them a review, where has it gone... There are lots of variables our algorithms track to try and make a decision on whether to filter a review or not and of course it will get things wrong but if there wasn't any filtering in place, the amount of spammy reviews would be overwhelming. I feel somewhat for Yelp, even with all their millions of dollars to throw at the problem as there is no easy solution, ignoring any potential pay for stars type nonsense. That is something I would never do and am very proactive when it comes to protecting small businesses. Like I said though, after years of seeing people try to pull a fast one, the warmth in my heart fades.
aneth3 14y ago
"Yelp buries reviews by one-time posters" might be a more accurate title. Yelp is trying to build a community of reliable reviewers, not display every review of an establishment, because this is a good way to avoid business owners soliciting reviews from friends and family. If those acquaintances are not part of the Yelp community, they don't understand the standards of the community or even what a five star review means. They are not useful reviews so they are filtered. Community members have a stake in their reputation as a reviewer. This is something like the practice of hellbanning on Hacker News, except implemented with a well considered policy. (Yelp would likely fail quickly if they implemented HN's shamefully poor method.) Yelp could probably do a better job of explaining this to users - it should say "Yelp displays reviews by experienced reviewers more prominently. Until you establish yourself by writing frequent reviews, yours may be filtered."
aneth3 14y ago
"Yelp buries reviews by one-time posters" might be a more accurate title. Yelp is trying to build a community of reliable reviewers, not display every review of an establishment, because this is a good way to avoid business owners soliciting reviews from friends and family. If those acquaintances are not part of the Yelp community, they don't understand the standards of the community or even what a five star review means. They are not useful reviews so they are filtered. Community members have a stake in their reputation as a reviewer. This is something like the practice of hellbanning on Hacker News, except that it allows users to progress from untrusted to trusted, rather than HN's "lightening" approach. Yelp could probably do a better job of explaining this to users - it should say "Yelp displays reviews by experienced reviewers more prominently. Until you establish yourself by writing frequent reviews, yours may be filtered."

76 points by rpledge 14y ago

http://eater.com/archives/2011/07/20/yelp-accused-of-fivestar-review-extortion.php http://eater.com/archives/2011/07/20/yelp-accused-of-fivesta... http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635 http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-e... http://consumerist.com/2010/02/yelp-accused-of-more-negative-review-extortion.html http://consumerist.com/2010/02/yelp-accused-of-more-negative... http://jonathanturley.org/2010/02/27/yelp-accused-of-extortion-in-trading-positive-review-for-advertising-money/ http://jonathanturley.org/2010/02/27/yelp-accused-of-extorti... http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/yelp-lawsuit-extortion/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/yelp-lawsuit-extortion/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/17/complaints-against-yelps-extortion-practices-grow-louder/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/17/complaints-against-yelps-ex... http://www.pcworld.com/article/190231/yelp_hit_with_class_action_lawsuit.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/190231/yelp_hit_with_class_ac... http://www.wired.com/business/2010/04/yelp-fights-fraud-allegations-by-unfiltering-reviews-killing-pay-for-favorite-feature/ http://www.wired.com/business/2010/04/yelp-fights-fraud-alle... Yelp has a pretty shady history with this. The class action suit from a year or two ago was dismissed, so I assume what they are doing is legal in some sense.

gringomorcego 14y ago
Because it's their forum? I really don't get it. I mean, could Zagat have gotten away with this in the pre-internet era? "Hey man, love your restaurant, but each star costs $100."
ig1 14y ago
The suit was dismissed because of lack of evidence of extortion.
- pbreit 14y ago
  Not only is there a lack of evidence from the plaintiffs, Yelp has mountains of evidence proving the opposite.
twoodfin 14y ago
Do any of those links actually document bad behavior or just allege bad behavior?

aaronsw 14y ago

This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see: - a woman owns a shady company - she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp - Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't filled with spam opinions - the woman is upset The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- peejaybee 14y ago
  It goes beyond that, though. I reviewed a local deli around a year ago. I had been using Yelp for a few months, and it was probably my tenth review. I hadn't been asked to provide a review. None of the reasons they cited in the article applied to me, yet my review was buried, and negative reviews from newer users were left unfiltered. I took my ball and went home. Yelp sucks.
  - twoodfin 14y ago
    Care to link to that review?
    - peejaybee 14y ago
      I totally took my ball home -- cancelled my account and everything.
  - dhimes 14y ago
    “If you are a user and you are writing reviews and it’s getting filtered out — keep writing reviews,” a Yelp customer service person told Desloges That's a stupid prescription. Any sensible user will do exactly what you did. Your review is free content for their service. If they don't appreciate it screw them. My sense of Yelp is that they are in a pickle for revenue. They are public, so the pressure is great.
14y ago

irishloop 14y ago

I don't really see a good logistical way to deal with this kind of problem. Any algorithm is going to see a bunch of sudden reviews of extreme positive or negative opinions as possible spam, and for users who never review more than once, I'm not sure how the filter is supposed to know what is and is not legitimate. Yelp does seem to have a conflict of interest with advertisements, but considering the only alternative seems to be a subscription-based model, and people don't like paying for things on the Internet, I suspect that this is still the best possible case at the moment. Plenty of room for innovation, though.

ig1 14y ago
There's a well known solution for this and it's called a chinese wall. You segregate the ad team from the other teams and restrict the data flow between them. It's what Google and many others use to stop ad revenues biasing their product.
- tomkarlo 14y ago
  How does this in any way mitigate the issue of fly-by / socket puppet reviewers?
Spooky23 14y ago
There obviously is a better way, because competitors in this segment do a better job. TripAdvisor immediately comes to mind for restaurants. It's pretty well known that Yelp is a joke -- wasn't the #1 restaurant in San Francisco some hole in the wall taco place a few months back?

yoda_sl 14y ago

That particular topic about Yelp and their reviews have been discussed many times on HN. Yelp is a major scam company that absolutely do not care about the business owner. They are in it for the money -doh- and what matters for them is Page Views, and regular users posting more reviews, thus more page views. Their filtering system is a total mess but since it is a secret on how it works they can say whatever they want... As long as their filtering system goes into promoting page views. Nowhere in there they care about the small business that are badly hurt by their lack of common sense. Simply don't use Yelp for posting reviews or reading reviews, this is the best thing anyone can do. PS: I speak from close personal experience with my wife small business being hit hard by Yelp algorithms for filtering review, and Yelp scammy sales people.

irishloop 14y ago
Out of curiosity, what is the alternative? Just allow twenty five-star or one-star reviews to show up and say hey, if business owners want to scam the system by putting in fake reviews, then great? Or just open-source their algorithms? I guess to me it seems infinitely easier to criticize the way someone else does it than to present a more efficient way of doing it.
- Philadelphia 14y ago
  One possibility would be to allow users to manually flag reviews, instead of trying to do it algorithmically. They could also have some sort of confidence rating for reviews, or possibly a reputation system for reviewers. From looking at the hidden reviews for a couple of stores while I've been trying to find a place to get new glasses, they seem to be hiding a good number of legitimate reviews with their current system.
  - yoda_sl 14y ago
    You are correct. Such simple change will be already going in the right direction. It is amazing to see all the reviews hidden that are legit: you can see if the reviewer use Yelp often by checking the number of reviews posted. The current filtering system seems to ignore that most of the times, but reviewers with no previous review prior giving 1 star will see that review stick.

crikli 14y ago

I keep seeing articles like this. I read the article, then I find the company on Yelp and read through the reviews. Every single time it's been very clear that Yelp is telling these businesses that they have a problem. But rather than acting on this extraordinarily valuable feedback the owners/managers react by blaming Yelp for the bad reviews or accusing Yelp of hiding the good reviews. This behavior frequently exposes the characteristics about which customers are complaining: there's a problem, the owners have been told about it, and they're killing the messenger. EDIT: I have no connection to Yelp whatsoever. I'm communicating the scope of my experience and the conclusions I've drawn. These conclusions may be grossly flawed. It wouldn't be the first time today. :)

yoda_sl 14y ago
Clearly you have not been running a small business. Some reviews are posted from time to time by people that are not even customers or stopped by the business; for some dumb reason they post a 1 star review.. And that review usually stick and doesn't get filtered out...but other reviews from true customers posting 4 to 5 stars reviews disappear usually in less than 24 hours after they were posted. What kind of explanation do you have?
- valuegram 14y ago
  I can vouch that this exact scenario has happened to one of my small businesses. Multiple reviews from actual customers are filtered out, but a negative review from someone who has never interacted with our organization is displayed normally.
  - kip_ 14y ago
    Were your actual customers regular users of Yelp who have reviewed other businesses actively? We can pick apart Yelp's model and likely should, but it does appear to discount "drive-by" Yelpers who only sign up to give a good review to a single business.
    - 14y ago

lincolnwebs 14y ago

I'm on the opposite side of the equation: I quit using it after I discovered it was hiding my positive reviews of establishments I frequent. I refuse to trust anything on that site now.

Symmetry 14y ago

It seems like social networking could be used to good effect to try and filter reviews, or at least let me see review from people I trust first.

neovive 14y ago

This does demonstrate the value of third-party "professional" reviews (e.g. Consumer Reports, Zagat) and a big reason why Google bought Zagat -- the trust factor. You never know if personal reviews on various sites were driven by ulterior motives. Although it's likely that the majority of personal reviews are genuine, you should try not to be swayed by just a few reviews without further research.

eevilspock 14y ago
Are you saying professionals are not prone to bias or influence?
- lallysingh 14y ago
  Professionals have a reputation, which should reduce bias or influence. If Zagat was known to take bribes, they wouldn't be around for very long. It may happen, but is less likely to happen than non-professionals. You have a much larger issue with selection bias for reviews, and a much easier way for vendors to bias them. I've been in shops that insist, rather persistently, that I write a good review for their store on their computer, at the shop.
  - neovive 14y ago
    Great points! The issue of selection bias is very real on many review sites. Especially with the volume of reviews being so low for most products and services.

moderation 14y ago

718 Cyclery in Brooklyn, NY has had long running issues with Yelp. Some detail at http://brooklynian.com/bk/2012/01/25/digital-shakedown-is-718-cyclery-in-gowanus-being-screwed-by-yelp/ http://brooklynian.com/bk/2012/01/25/digital-shakedown-is-71...

bapbap 14y ago

I've been running a business review website for about 4/5 years and I absolutely hate it. If I had $1 for every time a business owner writes a review for themselves (signing up for an account with their business email address no less), our system removes it and then they email me within minutes complaining that a genuine customer had written them a review, where has it gone... There are lots of variables our algorithms track to try and make a decision on whether to filter a review or not and of course it will get things wrong but if there wasn't any filtering in place, the amount of spammy reviews would be overwhelming. I feel somewhat for Yelp, even with all their millions of dollars to throw at the problem as there is no easy solution, ignoring any potential pay for stars type nonsense. That is something I would never do and am very proactive when it comes to protecting small businesses. Like I said though, after years of seeing people try to pull a fast one, the warmth in my heart fades.

aneth3 14y ago

"Yelp buries reviews by one-time posters" might be a more accurate title. Yelp is trying to build a community of reliable reviewers, not display every review of an establishment, because this is a good way to avoid business owners soliciting reviews from friends and family. If those acquaintances are not part of the Yelp community, they don't understand the standards of the community or even what a five star review means. They are not useful reviews so they are filtered. Community members have a stake in their reputation as a reviewer. This is something like the practice of hellbanning on Hacker News, except implemented with a well considered policy. (Yelp would likely fail quickly if they implemented HN's shamefully poor method.) Yelp could probably do a better job of explaining this to users - it should say "Yelp displays reviews by experienced reviewers more prominently. Until you establish yourself by writing frequent reviews, yours may be filtered."

aneth3 14y ago

"Yelp buries reviews by one-time posters" might be a more accurate title. Yelp is trying to build a community of reliable reviewers, not display every review of an establishment, because this is a good way to avoid business owners soliciting reviews from friends and family. If those acquaintances are not part of the Yelp community, they don't understand the standards of the community or even what a five star review means. They are not useful reviews so they are filtered. Community members have a stake in their reputation as a reviewer. This is something like the practice of hellbanning on Hacker News, except that it allows users to progress from untrusted to trusted, rather than HN's "lightening" approach. Yelp could probably do a better job of explaining this to users - it should say "Yelp displays reviews by experienced reviewers more prominently. Until you establish yourself by writing frequent reviews, yours may be filtered."