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Comment by evo_9 | Hacker News Reader

But the blood-suckers at Yelp are doing just fine.

They continue to bleed my wife's family business for 100 bucks a month - an extortion fee - otherwise all our reviews are removed (by which I mean all our positive reviews which are all we have) and are replaced by negative / fake reviews.

I cannot express my deep, unyielding absolute disgust and hatred for Yelp strong enough.

I would love to create an alternative, but I just don't see how viable that is even though I'm more than capable tech/coding-wise.

Edit/additional info: That $100 is the least we can pay a month; there is no lower amount.

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I used to look at yelp reviews before deciding on a restaurant to eat at. I'm now completely ignoring yelp reviews because I don't trust them. Strange I do still trust google reviews. Maybe I shouldn't since I don't know how reliable that is either. But at least I'm not hearing about the same shaddy tactics there.

I use Yelp purely for discovery, and even then, only on Apple Maps (because Yelp provides the data for Apple Maps). I otherwise find that it directs me to higher-priced venues, presumably because those are the only ones that can afford the "value-add." This is not a rap on those venues, to be clear.

I think the local guide system google set up is the only reason I bother to read Google reviews. It's nice to have the guarantee of "here's a review by what is probably a real person who lives near this business and reviewed this out of kindness/boredom"

unless somebody hates on the business, not for their food or whatever, just hating the owner or a person there or whatever. than he makes a negative review and it's impossible to actually remove it. even if the comment just says "i don't like person XYZ". heck most people don't read reviews so they see this 3-3.5 star business and think it sucks (when it only has like 3 reviews)

basically google review is like the opposite of yelp. if somebody posts trash it will be their forever. even after the business died.

I had a bad review from someone I interviewed and didn't hire. Disputed and it's still there, 2 years later.

Not sure even if Google can be trusted as reviews can be from friends/family, I've seen owners give themselves five stars, and recently saw signs posted on stop signs about buying five star reviews for businesses on Google.

In what jurisdiction is your wife's business?

If the pattern is that predictable, I'm curious if you could gather enough data to successfully sue Yelp for defamation?

You don't just need data to sue. You need a lawyer. Lawyers cost money. Yelp has more money than the parent poster. Yelp would not lose such a case.

>Yelp would not lose such a case.

You don't know that. No one knows that. Having money doesn't magically mean automatically winning court battles.

No but it does mean a higher chance that the legal battle ends up being protracted enough that the smaller party is forced to abandon their case because they can't afford legal fees anymore. Saying that having more money doesn't magically win court battles ignores the ways in which having deeper pockets lets you bog the other side down until they literally can't afford to keep fighting.

It's not magic. Yelp has already won at least one similar case [0]. And like a sibling commenter said, without enough money, you won't even get to court.

0 - http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2014/09/02/11...

If one player has millions and the other has billions, the poorer party can prevail.

If one player has thousands and the other has millions, the larger player can just jam up the legal processes to make it virtually impossible to hold them to account.

They've been engaged in this deplorable practice for years, so I would think many have tried, and failed, to sue over it.

It’s a nail and wax salon, probably an easy target as they are typically owned by Asian Americans (which is our case). It’s easy to scare someone with heavy rhetoric when English is their second language.

Maybe a better approach to this problem than a lawsuit or a direct competitor to Yelp is a website for business to log/track Yelps bullshit. A sort of class-action lawsuit gathering point.

Aka, something like 'YelpEvidence.com' where businesses can catalog this routine behavior, and gather the kind of information a law firm could actual use. It might be enough of to force Yelp to change their ways.

Is there a straightforward way to monetize the review business without resorting to what's essentially extortion (BBB, Yelp) or having a feature subsidized by other methods (Google reviews)?

Form a mutual company where businesses listed on the directory pay a nominal fee to list and collectively own the business. Profits are returned back to the owners to keep costs down.

That being said, I've heard everything about the ratings business is a lie, so there seem to be insiders claiming that there's a lot of fuzziness to the problem.

I haven't thought about it too deeply, but i'm wondering if theres just an unsolvable gap between "business owners just bury bad reviews" and "irrational customers can sink small business owners."

I'm assuming that manual curation of reviews is necessary here, it may not be.

I think there are compromises, such as doing away with a star rating review system, and only showing positive reviews.

The unfortunate side effect is you never end up learning which companies to stay away from, because a system like that only focuses on the good, but you need a system that benefits both buyers and sellers.

Not on a micro-level, no, but on a platform level irrational customers can be dealt with. If they consistently rank low across all businesses you just normalize their votes or remove them as outliers. If they vote randomly it will simply average out (both for the user and for the businesses with more than 10 reviews). If they have a particular consistent bias (e.g. against a particular ethnic group, or particular kind of food) clustering could help (if you can label the clusters, I have some ideas). You just have to work on this, but I don't know if anyone in power cares enough?

Also consider that customers themselves might have (non-algorithmic) reputation that will decide if/how they can affect the reputation of others. Pagerank, if you will.

The entire field is crying out for big data, but then drowns in big dollars.

The problem isn't technical. The problem is the lack of stable, profitable business models around reviews that are long term compatible with being honest.

For sure. Most businesses would be happy to pay a dollar or two for traffic sent their way from various channels, including some kind of directory with reviews. You just need to show proof that a given customer came from that directory. A single-use coupon code springs to mind, a fake phone number (one per directory service per business), bounced links embedded inside driving directions, direct link to a page where one can order or reserve a spot and such, etc. Anything that attaches a token to a user will work as a proof.

It's all possible, but simply asking for $100 is a lot easier because the power disparity is so huge.

Then there is the fact that is Facebook ever shows interest they can easily crush the entire market - they don't need to make immediate money and the identity of the reviewers is better known, providing higher quality score.

Probably not at scale. Newspapers, websites, guidebooks are going to be fragmentary and often not very fresh. There used to be actual restaurant guides (like Zagat--which sold to Google) but, like everything else, most people want free. I miss the old Zagat; the demographic and preferences of people who filled out their surveys was probably pretty close to me. There's still a website but it's not what it used to be.

Zagat was successful, perhaps that is replicatable.

> otherwise all our reviews are removed (by which I mean all our positive reviews which are all we have) and are replaced by negative / fake reviews.

Did they tell you this outright?

They don't hide the fact that they're doing it to you; they just market it to you as "75 other reviews that are not currently recommended," etc.

Connect the dots.

Isn't that extortion?

Textbook definition? Sure. Legally? No.

I've seen them do things like this to local businesses around me. Usually they just delist the company.

Pretty much paying the mob to make sure nothing bad happens to you.

I think most people wish they only had to pay the mob $100/mo

I’ve heard a similar story from a friend who owns a coffee shop and whose family owns a restaurant.

The Yellow Pages business model is always ripe for takeover. Remember those big books they placed near your doorstep?

I have not heard this before. Do all businesses pay yelp $100 per month?

No, many pay a lot more. Basically if you see any indicators of company highlights on Yelp, they're paying for it, and they're passing off Yelp's extortion to you by increasing margins. Yelp tries to keep a visible dichotomy on their site by offering "Sponsored Results," but the reality of their listings is that they're almost all sponsored results.

Their reputation is so poor among some circles now that I don't see them staying in power 10 years out. They're going the way of the BBB.

As a result, you're safer searching for certain types of businesses on Google Maps, but even Google has "GOOGLE GUARANTEED" and possibly other paid-for indicators which make me not trust their results.

The market incentives are so bad among rating and business directory sites that I can only imagine that at this point, only a mutual company dedicated to business directory services can survive long-term. I don't think any exist right now.

Although the Google Guaranteed program is paid, it's specific to certain types of businesses (service providers like plumbers and locksmiths). Google performs a background check and verifies the business's license and insurance. It also guarantees customers a refund (up to a cap) if they aren't satisfied.[1]

EDIT: In fact the background check and screening are free. The Guarantee only appears to refer to the refund guarantee.[2]

Disclosure: I work at Google, and knew some people on the team.

1. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/7549288?hl=en

2. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6226575?hl=en&r...

It sounds like a nice idea that is supposed to reassure buyers, but it only makes me more suspicious of both the seller and Google.

Pretty much, if you don't they hassle you with calls and verbal threats. They were highly unpleasant to my wife on more than one call right when we opened. I tell our customers to not review us on Yelp, mostly pointing them to google which is the lesser of two evils in this situation.

I own a business and refuse to list on Google because I'm concerned they use similar tactics that I'm not aware of yet.

Bad reviews and reviews targeting specific employees are nearly impossible to remove from Google. I saw somebody post a rumor that someone was having an affair in a review of her employer and even that took MONTHs to take down.

It’s absolutely incredible that there’s no real recourse for these things either.

I dunno, it doesn't really fit Google's business model and whatever money they could extort from you would be a drop in the bucket compared to other revenue. Besides, wouldn't you realize if you were being extorted?

I wonder if small business owners have journaled or otherwise kept records of those interactions. Do you think small businesses could somehow take on yelp? Does failure to comply with yelp lead to false accusations from their platform?

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