Have you seen your Online Reputation?

Adryenn Ashley — Fri, 24 May 2013 23:26:07 +0000

(9)

Google said to face new FTC antitrust probe on display ad market

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 22:53:27 +0000

The fresh inquiry, which follows the FTC’s decision to close a review of Google’s search business in January without taking action, is in the preliminary stages and may not expand into a larger probe, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter hasn’t been made public.

FTC investigators are examining whether Google is using its position in U.S. display ads — a $17.7-billion industry that includes the sale of banner ads on websites — to push companies to use more of its other services, a practice that can be illegal under antitrust laws, the people said.

Google has been drawing regulatory scrutiny around the world as it bolsters its market share of digital advertising.

Canada’s Competition Bureau is preparing to start a formal inquiry into Google’s search practices, the Mountain View, Calif., company disclosed last week. The European Union is investigating Google for the way it operates its search business and also has opened a probe into its handset unit, Motorola Mobility, over the licensing of its patents to rival device makers. Antitrust agencies in Argentina and South Korea are also scrutinizing the company.

Niki Fenwick, a spokeswoman for Google, and Peter Kaplan, a spokesman for the FTC, declined to comment on the probe.

Google’s shares fell $9.47, or 1.1%, to $873.32 on Friday.

Google, avoiding a potentially costly legal battle with U.S. regulators, ended a 20-month probe in January of whether it unfairly skewed search results by pledging to change some business practices and settling allegations that it misused patents to thwart competitors in smartphone technology.

The company said it would voluntarily remove restrictions on the use of its online search advertising platform and offer companies the option of keeping their content out of Google’s search results.

The FTC’s resolution of its search-practices probe came as a blow to Google’s competitors, including Microsoft Corp., Yelp Inc. and Expedia Inc. An alliance of such e-commerce and Web search companies pressed the agency to bring a lawsuit, claiming that Google’s dominance of Internet search, combined with the company favoring its own services in answers to queries, violates antitrust laws.

Microsoft isn’t involved in the FTC’s review of the display advertising market, one of the people said.

The FTC secured clearance to move forward with the new investigation in the display advertising market from the antitrust division of the Justice Department under a process that ensures the two agencies don’t investigate the same matters at the same time, one of the people said.

For the last two years, the Justice Department and the FTC have split investigations of Google, with the FTC conducting a broad probe of whether the company’s business practices hurt competition and the Justice Department reviewing its acquisitions.

In the new probe, the FTC is exploring concerns about Google’s growing market share with some of its digital advertising tools and services, including technology that places display ads on websites, the people said.

The FTC is looking at whether Google is using its tools to force companies to bypass competing products and use other Google properties, including a marketplace for buying and selling Internet display ads, and features that help companies maximize revenue, the people said. The agency is also reviewing Google’s potential to use its dominance in search advertising to squeeze out competitors in the display advertising market, the people said.

(5)

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google-ftc-20130524,0,4157360.story

Yelp Continues to Defend Against Claims of Review Manipulation

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:30 +0000

Social review site Yelp has a big problem: Angry small-business owners. This week, Yelp published a fiery blog post defending itself, yet again, against claims that it extorts money from small-business owners. Some outspoken business owners and several media reports have accused Yelp of manipulating reviews and ratings for pages of companies that refuse pay Yelp for advertising.

“Let me be clear: This claim is not — and has never been — true,” wrote Vince Sollitto, vice president of corporate communications at Yelp.

Managing a business page on Yelp can be a blessing or a nightmare for business owners. A page full of five-star reviews can help drive business. But negative reviews can kill business, and the process of trying to convince Yelp to remove fake reviews can be exhausting.

The problem is twofold. The algorithm Yelp uses to determine which reviews will be displayed on a business’s page can sometimes filter legitimate, positive reviews out while highlighting negative ones instead. Lawsuits from business owners have alleged that Yelp will only remove those bad reviews in exchange for buying advertising on the site.

Yelp has denied these allegations, pointing out that the legal complaints have all been dismissed due to lack of evidence.

“In either case — if Yelp is guilty of recommendation manipulation or if businesses are simply seeing the natural trend of recommendations come and go — it’s Yelp who has created this situation, and they are the ones who need to fix any misconceptions,” says Brian Blau, a research director for consumer technology and markets for New York City-based tech research group Gartner Inc.

For business owners, one big issue is that many don’t understand Yelp’s filtering system. Presumably to guard its proprietary technology from competitors and users who’d try to “game the system,” Yelp has not publicly revealed specific details about how the algorithm works.

“Ironically, it’s this mysterious black box that instills distrust in companies that in turn begin to believe Yelp is out to get them,” says David Gerzof Richard, a social media and marketing professor at Emerson College in Boston and president of public relations and social media firm BIGfish. If business owners that don’t understand the process continue to see bad reviews, justified or not, the allegations will continue, he says.

“Because Yelp keeps their recommendation filter algorithm secret the public may never know Yelp’s true intentions,” Blau says. “Until Yelp removes any perception of bias or conflict of interest, businesses will continue to be caught up in a real or perceived tough spot when they start to see negative reviews on their Yelp page.”

Yelp Continues to Defend Against Claims of Review Manipulation

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 19:00:30 +0000

“Let me be clear: This claim is not — and has never been — true,” wrote Vince Sollitto, vice president of corporate communications at Yelp.

Yelp has denied these allegations, pointing out that the legal complaints have all been dismissed due to lack of evidence.

Yelp: We Don’t Extort Small Businesses

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:03:43 +0000

Yelp has been accused of extorting businesses by burying positive reviews for businesses who won’t advertise with them, and surfacing those reviews if they do advertise. The company staunchly denies that this is happening, but there have been multiple reports and lawsuits alleging that this has been going on.

Do you think Yelp is extorting businesses or are businesses allegations simply false? Have you had negative experiences with Yelp? Let us know in the comments.

This is not a new story. Businesses have been accusing Yelp of extortion for quite some time. Back in September, for example, a restaurant in Connecticut told a local news station that Yelp had been taking down their positive reviews because they refused to buy advertising. Here’s that report:

WFSB Channel 3

Fast forward to this week, and similar stories are appearing. Here’s a report from Brook Silva-Braga at The Washington Post:

“A lot of business owners say what Yelp is really doing is extorting them for advertising money,” says Silva-Braga.

The piece discusses a business who lost all of its customers, and attributed this to a one-star rating and bad reviews on Yelp. Interestingly, it claims deals services like Groupon and LivingSocial will no longer work with the business either, due to the poor rating.

“I signed a contract with Groupon about a month ago to run a deal, and they’re not running a deal because of the reviews,” the business owner says in the interview.

Silva-Braga says in the piece that many business owners say Yelp wields its power unfairly. He goes on to point to the paid Yelp ads for competitors that appear above actual reviews on listings for specific businesses. He notes that when he clicks on a listing for one of the paid advertisers, there are no competitor ads.

“But that’s just a small example – one Yelp doesn’t debate,” he says. “It’s something else much harder to prove that gets business owners really upset with Yelp.”

The basic story, according to the report, is that a business gets a bunch of new customers because of the reviews, Yelp reaches out to the business to advertise, then after it doesn’t advertise, the positive reviews start disappearing, and only negative or indifferent reviews stay. The other reviews appear in the filtered section, which is accessed when a user clicks and enteres a CAPTCHA.

Yelp strongly denies that any of this is going on, which the report also mentions. It even includes footage of Yelp’s VP Communications Public Affairs, Vince Sollitto, discussing how the filtering algorithm works. The review filter, he says, does not take into account advertiser status. The report then goes on, however to showcase a business owner claiming that a Yelp salesperson said they would unfilter filtered reviews if they advertised. The business reportedly did start some “small scale” advertising, and “magically,” five or six of the filtered reviews became unfiltered. Finally, the report notes that all “evidence” of the allegations at hand are circumstantial.

Sollitto took to the Yelp blog to discuss Yelp’s side of the story further, calling out the Washington Post report and an LA Times article as stories that rehash “sensational” allegations, which he says are not, and have never been true.

Sollitto points to research from Harvard Business School and Yale professors finding no connection between advertising and Yelp’s automated filtering, though the claim in the Washington Post piece indicates there was human intervention in the automated process. He then notes that courts have “rejected the conspiracy”.

“Some business owners have even gone so far as to take these accusations to court, but their claims keep getting dismissed for lack of any fact-based evidence,” he writes.

“A simple Google search debunks the conspiracy,” he adds. “Want to see if businesses that advertise on Yelp really do get ‘special treatment?’ Feel free to do your own version of a simple Google test like this [site:yelp.com/biz 'Yelp sponsor' AND 'rude staff'] by inserting your own negative phrases in the last set of quotation marks. The words ‘Yelp Sponsor’ only appear on pages of advertisers, which begs the question: if these Yelp advertisers get a special ‘Delete’ button for negative reviews, why in the world aren’t they using it? (Hint: because it doesn’t exist.) Nor is there any rational incentive for a Yelp sales team member to jeopardize his or her career by pitching a product that can’t be delivered because it doesn’t exist.”

I’m not sure what that says about the possibility that reviews could be hidden on Yelp in the “filtered” section rather than actually being deleted.

Sollitto goes on to note that you can also find many non-advertisers with good ratings.

“So why does this misbelief exist?” he asks. “Ironically, it stems from Yelp’s efforts to protect consumers from those who are constantly trying to game the system. Yelp uses automated software to showcase the most helpful and reliable reviews from among the millions submitted. Those that don’t make the grade — about 20 percent — are posted to a separate ‘Filtered Review’ page. So, in trying to prevent unethical wrongdoing on Yelp, Yelp gets accused of the same.”

Earlier this month, Yelp revealed that its average monthly unique visitors grew 43% year over year to 102 million, and revenue was up 68% year-over-year. Cumulative reviews grew 42% year over year to more than 39 million.

Do you think Yelp is wronging businesses? Let us know in the comments.

(5)

Article source: http://www.webpronews.com/yelp-we-dont-extort-small-businesses-2013-05

Yelp: We Don’t Extort Small Businesses

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:03:43 +0000

Do you think Yelp is extorting businesses or are businesses allegations simply false? Have you had negative experiences with Yelp? Let us know in the comments.

WFSB Channel 3

Fast forward to this week, and similar stories are appearing. Here’s a report from Brook Silva-Braga at The Washington Post:

“A lot of business owners say what Yelp is really doing is extorting them for advertising money,” says Silva-Braga.

“I signed a contract with Groupon about a month ago to run a deal, and they’re not running a deal because of the reviews,” the business owner says in the interview.

“But that’s just a small example – one Yelp doesn’t debate,” he says. “It’s something else much harder to prove that gets business owners really upset with Yelp.”

“Some business owners have even gone so far as to take these accusations to court, but their claims keep getting dismissed for lack of any fact-based evidence,” he writes.

I’m not sure what that says about the possibility that reviews could be hidden on Yelp in the “filtered” section rather than actually being deleted.

Sollitto goes on to note that you can also find many non-advertisers with good ratings.

Do you think Yelp is wronging businesses? Let us know in the comments.

(5)

Article source: http://www.webpronews.com/yelp-we-dont-extort-small-businesses-2013-05

Yelp: We Don’t Extort Small Businesses

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:40:46 +0000

Do you think Yelp is extorting businesses or are businesses allegations simply false? Have you had negative experiences with Yelp? Let us know in the comments.

WFSB Channel 3

Fast forward to this week, and similar stories are appearing. Here’s a report from Brook Silva-Braga at The Washington Post:

“A lot of business owners say what Yelp is really doing is extorting them for advertising money,” says Silva-Braga.

“I signed a contract with Groupon about a month ago to run a deal, and they’re not running a deal because of the reviews,” the business owner says in the interview.

“But that’s just a small example – one Yelp doesn’t debate,” he says. “It’s something else much harder to prove that gets business owners really upset with Yelp.”

“Some business owners have even gone so far as to take these accusations to court, but their claims keep getting dismissed for lack of any fact-based evidence,” he writes.

I’m not sure what that says about the possibility that reviews could be hidden on Yelp in the “filtered” section rather than actually being deleted.

Sollitto goes on to note that you can also find many non-advertisers with good ratings.

Do you think Yelp is wronging businesses? Let us know in the comments.

(4)

Article source: http://www.webpronews.com/yelp-we-dont-extort-small-businesses-2013-05

Yelp: We Don’t Extort Small Businesses

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:40:46 +0000

Do you think Yelp is extorting businesses or are businesses allegations simply false? Have you had negative experiences with Yelp? Let us know in the comments.

WFSB Channel 3

Fast forward to this week, and similar stories are appearing. Here’s a report from Brook Silva-Braga at The Washington Post:

“A lot of business owners say what Yelp is really doing is extorting them for advertising money,” says Silva-Braga.

“I signed a contract with Groupon about a month ago to run a deal, and they’re not running a deal because of the reviews,” the business owner says in the interview.

“But that’s just a small example – one Yelp doesn’t debate,” he says. “It’s something else much harder to prove that gets business owners really upset with Yelp.”

“Some business owners have even gone so far as to take these accusations to court, but their claims keep getting dismissed for lack of any fact-based evidence,” he writes.

I’m not sure what that says about the possibility that reviews could be hidden on Yelp in the “filtered” section rather than actually being deleted.

Sollitto goes on to note that you can also find many non-advertisers with good ratings.

Do you think Yelp is wronging businesses? Let us know in the comments.

(4)

Article source: http://www.webpronews.com/yelp-we-dont-extort-small-businesses-2013-05

Hedge Fund Passport Capital’s Top Five Purchases: YHOO, YELP, BUD, GDI …

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:00:46 +0000

Investor John Burbank, leader of hedge fund Passport Capital, is decisively bearish on global growth, as he expressed in a CNBC interview at the SALT conference May 9. In his expected scenario, he advises:

“You want to own primarily U.S. companies, you want to own world leaders. Those are more likely to have some growth, liquidity, top governance, dividends, good capital allocation, and they’re not beneficiaries of just global growth. U.S. companies are increasingly spreading round the world, but they don’t need the whole world to grow the way, say, commodity equities do, or even emerging market equities do. “

Burbank engaged in significant trading in the first quarter, as suggested by his 32% turnover from the previous quarter. He bought 44 new stocks, ending the three months with 121 holdings valued at $2.5 billion.

The intrepid investor has also reported having 17% of his firm’s $3.7 billion in capital invested in Saudi Arabia as of February, and has 44.9% of his equity portfolio in basic materials

Burbank’s Largest Stock Purchases of Q1

5. Yelp Inc. (YELP)

Shares purchased: 2,029,241. Average price: $22 – near a two-year high. At $29.33 per share on Thursday, Yelp shares have gained 33% from his average price. The holding represents 1.9% of his portfolio.

Yelp, the website that allows customers to give online reviews of companies they patronize, became a public company in March 2012. In that time, revenue has grown annually, while the bottom line has deteriorated:

Valuation:

P/B: 11.1
P/S: 11.6

4. Anheuser-Busch Inbev SA (BUD)

Shares purchased: 483,925. Average price: $92. The Anheuser-Bush holding, representing 1.9%, has increased 4% in price since his purchase, at $92 on Thursday – closing in on its 10-year high.

Anheuser-Bush’s 10-year revenue and net income growth history:

Valuation

P/E: 27.1
P/B: 3.70
P/S: 3.9 – close to a three-year high

Check out:

1. John Burbank’s Undervalued Stocks
2. John Burbank’s Top Growth Companies, and
3. John Burbank’s High Yield stocks
4. Stocks that John Burbank keeps buying

3. Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)

Shares purchased: 2,228,297. Average price: $21. Yahoo is a search engine generating revenue from advertisers. This week, it announced as part of its revitalization it would acquire media network Tumblr for $1.1 billion. Yahoo’s 10-year revenue and earnings history:

(9)

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gurufocus/2013/05/24/hedge-fund-passport-capitals-top-five-purchases-yhoo-yelp-bud-gdi-mhfi/

Hedge Fund Passport Capital’s Top Five Purchases: YHOO, YELP, BUD, GDI …

Mystic Maggie — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:00:46 +0000

The intrepid investor has also reported having 17% of his firm’s $3.7 billion in capital invested in Saudi Arabia as of February, and has 44.9% of his equity portfolio in basic materials

Burbank’s Largest Stock Purchases of Q1

5. Yelp Inc. (YELP)

Valuation:

P/B: 11.1
P/S: 11.6

4. Anheuser-Busch Inbev SA (BUD)

Shares purchased: 483,925. Average price: $92. The Anheuser-Bush holding, representing 1.9%, has increased 4% in price since his purchase, at $92 on Thursday – closing in on its 10-year high.

Anheuser-Bush’s 10-year revenue and net income growth history:

Valuation

P/E: 27.1
P/B: 3.70
P/S: 3.9 – close to a three-year high

Check out:

1. John Burbank’s Undervalued Stocks
2. John Burbank’s Top Growth Companies, and
3. John Burbank’s High Yield stocks
4. Stocks that John Burbank keeps buying

3. Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO)

(4)

Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gurufocus/2013/05/24/hedge-fund-passport-capitals-top-five-purchases-yhoo-yelp-bud-gdi-mhfi/