They say that, but they decide which reviews are legitimate, and they're more likely to decide that positive reviews are legitimate, if a business is paying them.
On the other hand, my experience pre-pandemic was that Yelp had the only reliable database of local USA businesses' hours of operation (there is probably now no way to know other than phone calls).
In fact, I know a business who complained he got more calls from Google trying to update their maps database than he got from real customers!
So THAT'S what all the humans at Google are up to, while their bots are busy locking legitimate user and developer accounts!
How cute. You think that these are humans calling from google. No biological human has represented google by phone since the 90s. It is all androids and chatbots.
https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natur...
Do you have any evidence of that?
I have several unsolicited 5-star reviews for my business that have been flagged as "not currently recommended." Yet despite fighting off their sales reps for years my business is the best rated business in my city in my category.
Based on my experience, the Yelp hate is just sour grapes from businesses that are reluctant to bend over backwards to make every customer happy.
Not too many business that do that stay in business for long. "The customer is always right" if not taken with many grains of salt will bury you when you get just the right customer (who will directly reference the mantra).
One key to making it work is to invest in long term relationships with your clients. A transaction with a client you have an established relationship with is much less risky than a transaction with a stranger.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149078
Not sure if the policies have changed since then, but I am inclined to believe him.