Does Yelp "manipulate reviews for their own profit"?

[ed.brooks]

Does Yelp "manipulate reviews for their own profit"? That is the contention being made in court in an appeals case.

As reported this morning by Ben Weitzenkorn on the Entrepreneur website, "At the point and time that [the merchants] refused to continue to pay for advertising the good reviews were stripped," said attorney Larry Murray, who represents the business owners. "There seems to be a one-to-one correlation between money and having a good rating and it has nothing to do with the truth."

What do you think?

 

[craigh]

In my opinion, which holds very little weight on the topic, this was not a Yelp issue.
It's possible that an irate sales person at Yelp decided to do this, but I highly doubt it was or is a Yelp common practice.

The fact that the EFF is siding with Yelp is, in my opinion, enough to warrant that the original judgement stands.

 

[dcolon02]

I would love to know if this is true. If so that is sad.. I can tell you that I have left reviews on Yelp and have never seen them post.

 

[ryan.leslie]

It's possible that an irate sales person at Yelp decided to do this, but I highly doubt it was or is a Yelp common practice.

One salesperson shouldn't have the ability to do anything with content...ever.

I don't know how Yelp handles this, but our content team is well insulated from the rest of us for this very reason. They don't have any idea who the review is for when they moderate it. It could be our largest client in a massive metro or an independent repair facility in a no-stoplight town in middle America. The TOU is the TOU.

I don't have a problem with Yelp, but I do think that some of their policies don't jive well with our vertical in most markets. I also think that a lot of Vendors aren't helping dealers by putting them in the business of trying to create Yelpers. Those reviews will likely be filtered.

 

[craigh]

One salesperson shouldn't have the ability to do anything with content...ever.

I don't know how Yelp handles this, but our content team is well insulated from the rest of us for this very reason. They don't have any idea who the review is for when they moderate it. It could be our largest client in a massive metro or an independent repair facility in a no-stoplight town in middle America. The TOU is the TOU.

I don't have a problem with Yelp, but I do think that some of their policies don't jive well with our vertical in most markets. I also think that a lot of Vendors aren't helping dealers by putting them in the business of trying to create Yelpers. Those reviews will likely be filtered.

You've touched on a couple things here:

1. There are still humans that have access to these reviews. This may be the quality control team at Yelp who decided that the positive reviews for the store in question were fake. Maybe Joe the sales guy calls his lunch buddy James in quality control and tells him to remove them. Isolation only goes so far.
I'm not here to pick a fight, but every review site is going to come under fire for these issues.
http://www.pissedconsumer.com/revie...gus-front-for-car-dealers-20111006266347.html
I don't give them any weight any more - all review sites have humans at the helm.
Just as DealerRater can remove reviews for being false based on the account of a dealer, Yelp can remove reviews for any number of reasons and have the legal right to do so.

2. Trying to create Yelpers is not something that just happen on Yelp. I have worked with numerous dealerships who ask customers to write a review on n49, DealerRater, Google or Yelp. All 4 services get fake reviews and all 4 services get real reviews (good and bad).

Just my two cents though.