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Comment by vikingcaffiene | Hacker News Reader

Good. Yelp is utter trash. They've shaken down several friends of mine who own and run restaurants. Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start magically appearing on your business Its a well known racket and they should be run out of town on a rail for it.

On a more personal note, they also refused to adequately protect my wife when we encountered and reported an unscrupulous vendor who threatened my wife and exposed her personal information on the site.

There is a very real need for this kind of thing but Yelp has proven time and time again that they can't be trusted to deliver it.

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This. After I received my first positive review on the site they called me and tried selling me all kinds of advertising. Hundreds of dollars per month worth. I declined, and around the same time my review went from being on my business page to being buried behind a "View Reviews that are not recommended" link.

It's a total scam and they should be dragged into court and their internal memos and procedures turned inside out for the world to see.

As long as we're sharing anecdata, I too was agressively pursued by their sales department after my first couple reviews. I declined, and nothing happened. My business became one of the highest-rated in its category locally. I even sucessfully requested the removal of a fake 3-star review (I know all my customers, and the reviewer was never one). And all along, I never paid Yelp a cent. I have since spent money on Yelp, but it was not necessary to reach the top of my local Yelp listings.

Playing devil's advocate here but maybe they had already targeted many similar businesses in the area and were giving them all bad reviews. For these bad reviews to make a difference, there needs to be one with good reviews.

I hear what you're saying. But bear in mind that there's an entire "SEO" industry out there, which tries to shake down businesses by either promising to improve their search rankings, or threatening to tank their search rankings.

So I'm sure your friends got a bunch of calls about this. But are you (or they) sure it was Yelp, though? Often it's some scammers in foreign countries like India.

No, this is not some conspiracy theory by a few anecdotal players. This is a quite well-documented phenomenon well-known to small business owners across a wide variety of industries. I understand that the instinct is "There's no way a big company could be doing something so obviously unethical and get away with it". But just do your own research, there's articles detailing sales calls that literally offer to remove bad reviews. Only Yelp has algorithmic control over what reviews get put into "not recommended", and one of the "coincidences" that happen after these calls is that 5 star reviews start disappearing. And do you think it is a coincidence that those positive reviews get restored after a business pays for advertising services?

Yelp has been involved in class acton lawsuits for this behavior no fewer than three times, and while they deny everything the court ruling astoundlingly claimed that this behavior isn't illegal or extortionary:

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Yelp-can-give-paying-cli...

> No, this is not some conspiracy theory by a few anecdotal players.

I've been working in the search engine industry for more than 15 years (as in, worked on core ranking algorithms and other infrastructure for a long time). I've heard similar reports countless times about ranking algorithms that our team controlled, and it was all just speculation.

Once again: Yelp has been around for 10+ years. By now, surely someone will have iron-clad proof that they paid to get bad reviews removed. I have not seen any.

You can try this guy for proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY

Though if you already have confirmation bias that anyone who complains of a large company of shady behavior is a crazy nut, maybe this conversation chain is simply a waste of time. Without access to Yelp internals, it's always possible to just write it off as hearsay. Especially when, if you read my post, the courts have ruled that this behavior is not racketeering, even if it passes the duck test for extortion in my view.

The logical explanation offered in the video is that the salespeople themselves are the ones leaving the reviews, not sanctioned by Yelp higher ups. I worked a year doing web development and SEO for an agency that specialized in small local businesses, and enough of my clients had had similar experiences with the "Not Recommended" review algorithm after receiving harassing telemarketing calls from Yelp that I just assume that there's something shady going on.

I honestly just think their business model is structured poorly. Too many perverse incentives involved. I won't be sad to see them go.

Just a random point of feedback, but you sound more like the one carrying confirmation bias here. But really, throwing that phrase around in an internet debate is pretty meaningless rhetoric. It takes YEARS of working with someone before I feel like I understand that person's biases well enough to accuse them of such a thing.

You're right. Maybe epistemic closure is a better term. And maybe I need to take some time to evaluate the evidence in context of my own biases before I make baseless accusations. You have to understand that I've internalized articles over a number of years about class action lawsuits against yelp as well as my own experiences dealing with valid 5 star ratings locked behind a Not Recommended filter. But it may be the case that I am wrong and I ought to reconsider the complexity of the situation. Thanks for the input.

> Though if you already have confirmation bias

You don't have to throw such claims around. If anything, they further weaken your case.

I watched the first couple of minutes of the video you posted. Even if we take that guy's word for it, you're talking about ONE salesperson. One bad actor. That's it. Which company doesn't have asshole sales people?

You are making a stronger claim: that Yelp itself is a bad actor. That, my friend, requires a much higher bar for proof.

Look, as I mentioned earlier, I used to work on building ranking algorithms for search engines (no, not Google). In the early days of the Internet (i.e, 15 years ago), there were lots of 3rd party people pulling off stunts like this salesperson.

You can call any business today, and try to get protection money (on Yelp) off of them. That doesn't make you a Yelp employee!

You're right, I apologize for implying the presence confirmation bias and I don't mean it as a personal attack. I just wanted to express that when you immediately discredit the anecdotal experience of others in favor of your own anecdotal experience, it may be a sign of confirmation bias. But I guess that kind of implication comes with connotations that I didn't intend.

Basically, I want to draw your attention to the fact that the salesperson in that video did work for Yelp at the time. Doesn't that on its own distinguish the behavior that's happening at yelp with your experience with third party scammers?

Maybe the Wells Fargo scandal from a few years back can be a reference here. If a company is structured in a way where salespeople are incentivized to misbehave for their own personal interest, shouldn't that company be held accountable?

Anyway, you're right that I'm wrong to claim with certainty that Yelp is a bad actor. I don't have proof beyond dealing with 5 star reviews for clients locked behind Yelp's "Not recommended". But any company with a monetization scheme that in practice boils down to cold calling and harrassing small businesses, is a company against which I have no problem jumping on any bandwagon that comes my way.

> and one of the "coincidences" that happen after these calls is that 5 star reviews start disappearing. And do you think it is a coincidence that those positive reviews get restored after a business pays for advertising services?

This is hearsay that is quoted in the article you link to, but I would like to see proof of positive reviews being restored after purchasing advertising. This would not be difficult to document if it is happening.

Lawsuits in which Yelp has prevailed are not compelling evidence for the claims of malfeasance.

They raised too much money, had a down round and have been on the ropes for some time. This is what happens.

> Either you pay for their premium services or a bunch of 1 star reviews start magically appearing on your business

How do you square that claim given that both current and former Yelp employees say they do no such thing?

How do you know those reviews are fake vs coincidence? I've heard a lot of anecdotes and conspiracies about this, but have never seen actual proof. No documents, recorded phone calls, court cases etc? And given how many people have worked at Yelp it's strange no one has blown the whistle yet if they engage in such practices. They would be an instant hero.

There is a whole article on cbc about it.

Here is the link: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/yelp-accused-of-bullying-bu...

That article is hardly conclusive.

There are plenty of salty business owners, and somewhat understandably. Yelp is far more proactive than, say, Amazon in policing reviews with its automated software. They do sometimes filter legitimate reviews, particularly when a reviewer has few other reviews on the site and is very flattering to the business. They do not want businesses to game the system by bribing customers or recruiting friends and family.

But of course, sometimes this incorrectly flags legitimate positive reviews. And when simultaneous negative reviews don't get filtered, this is understandably frustrating for businesses. And it doesn't take much imagination for a slightly paranoid owner to wonder if Yelp's pushy sales efforts have a nefarious undertone.

But this aggressive quality control is what makes Yelp ratings so much more useful than Amazon ratings. And if businesses can keep attracting positive reviews, especially from established reviewers on the platform, and perhaps more importantly, avoid negative reviews, their ratings will rise. And they will have to fight Yelp's slightly trigger-happy automated review moderation whether or not they give money to a Yelp sales rep.

Still no proof, just accusations. In fact the business owners say Yelp didn't actually say these things.

"What I got without spoken direct words..."

"The restaurateur says the representative didn’t blatantly tell Dloomy he could solve his problem by paying up, but he believes that was the underlying message"

It sounds like motivated reasoning and applying an existing narrative to the advertising calls.

Not sure, but at a business I worked for a few years ago, we perused Yelp reviews for a while. It worked, and over about 3 months we ended up with 13 five-star reviews, and one four star.

Not bad, right?

Then we got 'the call', declined, and within 3 weeks, all but our single four start review was gone from the profile. I no longer work there, but last time I checked, they had zero stars. I can't wait to see yelp fail.

I square it by actually knowing people who've been affected. It's not like it was ambiguous or hard to figure out how it works. Its a VERY commonly known thing in the F&B industry and they all hate Yelp for it.

Yeah yelp doesn't do this.

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