From a great candid review by Raymond Fong:
Maybe you know and maybe you don’t… but Yelp (a local search and reviews online service) offers paid advertising for businesses called the “Yelp Sponsorship Program“.
To sum it up, according to the page advertising this opportunity, this Yelp Sponsorship program allows you to:
- Put up a slideshow of the images of your business.
- Highlight a user’s review that you like the most (as the business owner)
- Promote your business as a sponsored search result and on your competitors’ business pages. Target potential clients while they are making decisions about where to spend their money on a business like yours
It sounds all fancy spansy right? Sounds like you get even MORE control over your business listing which will help “put your best foot forward” and sneak attack your competitors, stealing all their would be clients.
But Stop the Music, Do These Yelp Advertising Features Actually Accomplish Anything? Or are They Just Fluff Designed to Lure You in so They can Zap You?
Suck Them in & Then ZAP Them!
Before we proceed, I’d like to first state that my experience and knowledge of this Yelp Sponsorship program comes from dealing with them on behalf of one of my clients. This client signed up with Yelp (despite my warnings – apparently Yelp’s salesman are SMOOOTH) and I got to learn all about this program.
Having said that, that’s only ONE experience which doesn’t make me an expert but it certainly makes me more knowledgeable of this Yelp marketing program than those who’s never experienced it.
Furthermore, in case you are not familiar with how Yelp works, anybody can post a business on Yelp, as long as it falls under one of their categories and is a “fit” per their policies. And the rightful owner can claim that Yelp page by jumping through some hoops and voila, you have a FREE listing about your business.
9 comments
Sarah F.
January 28, 2012 at 5:11 am (UTC 0)
How Can I join the class action lawsuit against yelp.com? I am a small business hurt by their extortion scheme of paying for advertising to hide negative reviews. They are hiding NINE of my 5 star reviews. Before calling me for advertising two weeks ago, they were only hiding (they call it filtering) 4 of my 5 star reviews. After I didn’t call them back, they decided to hide another 5 of my 5 star reviews for a total of 9 filtered 5 star reviews. I have screen shots to prove this and emails. They told me on the phone if I paid for advertising they could move them around to my main page Now they deny it by email (of course, because it is in writing). One of the 5 star reviews was on my main page for over 2 years and suddenly it’s filtered? Yeah, right! How can I join the lawsuit against them? I am a small business, open for 5 years and they are hurting my business and online reputation! Please help with any advice you might have. Thank you!!! Super Cali Dog Walker
Adryenn
January 28, 2012 at 6:50 am (UTC 0)
Unfortunately, there is little you can do to make Yelp play fair. So the best advice is to make them irrelevant to your business. Their review filter is seriously lacking. But you knew that. It isn’t intelligent, and it filters real people all the time. That’s actually going to be the thing that eventually takes them down. So deep breath, relax. Now go contact all the people who wrote you nice reviews and ask them to post the same thing on Google.
Jamie B.
February 22, 2012 at 10:10 pm (UTC 0)
I hate yelp. I used to love them when I used it for personal use, but now that my business is listed on yelp, I hate them. They have filtered 80% of my legitimate customer reviews out with their filter. They left one really old review – 2 years old and a positive review – along with one bad review from a disgruntled girlfriend of one of my customers.
Why can’t I get my listing removed? Don’t I have full rights to my Corporation and Trademarked name??? I want it off, but they refuse to take it off.
Tyson
February 27, 2012 at 7:53 am (UTC 0)
I have had over 20 positive reviews and and only 1 negative review. All the positvie reviews get filtered or removed all together. The one negative review is the only one they keep. Many of my positive reviews are by long time Yelp users. They can’t believe that they get filtered.
This should be against the law!
Jamal
March 4, 2012 at 5:30 am (UTC 0)
This Company is real Shady! My Wife and I own Boston Dog Walks and many of our clients wrote great reviews about our company atleast 20 give or take! But only the negative review stay posted and I don’t even know the person that wrote that! I’m a small business trying to grow and this company is hurting us bad, if you don’t use Yelp as a marketing tool they will hurt your business!! this is Internet extortion! This should be against the Law!
It’s been 2 years I wonder how many clients I never met cause of this YELP Bullying !!!
Bart Billings
March 6, 2012 at 6:48 am (UTC 0)
I have the same experience as people above. Positive reviews being removed and negative reviews left on– some not even relevant to the business. The filtered reviews are 5 stars. I don’t advertise with them.
Yelpsucks
March 28, 2012 at 3:18 am (UTC 0)
Yelp has absolutely no credibility. I personally experienced the same treatment many others have described: after declining to advertise with these crooks, negative review appeared (surprise!) and positive reviews were hidden was promised by Yelp rep this could be remedied, but only if I bought advertising. Extortion, plane and simple. Stoppelman and his crew of nerds have found a way to pad their pockets on the expense of the very people who form the backbone of our economy, small business owners.
Diana
April 2, 2012 at 5:16 am (UTC 0)
I have been reading a little about the YELP issue and I have to say I agree with the claims against Yelp. However, my position against Yelp stems more from an alternate source. Yelp seems to be defending itself much like the company Vision Appraisal did in many of the real estate property tax appeals here in CT. For example, as property owners vigorously pursued the valuation methodologies and demanded the production of their valuation tools, Vision Appraisal defended them as proprietary. In my lawsuits for the property tax appeals, I spent a huge amount of time backing into all their formulas and debunking their “methodologies and proprietary formulas”, and that was the end of them; cases won for me. Yelp seems hell bent on the same sort of scheme. With the Court resting on the failure to prove extortion, I lean towards the following: Why filter and why should Yelp, whose guiding principle, as posted on their site, is to help people find great local businesses like dentists, hair stylists and mechanics, have a filter at all? In my humble opinion, the claim against Yelp in its simplest form, is a reckless filter of free speech, which whether they intend it (or not) defames and libels businesses, negatively financially affecting those businesses, altering the choices of customers, and that their alleged fair filter decimates businesses by filtering every good review and posting only negative reviews. It is simply a no-brainer to prove that their filter is filtering all or the largest majority of good reviews. My business has seven reviews showing and fifteen filtered reviews. No filter program could possibly, in its broadest spectrum, fairly filter 2 of every 3 reviews, and for that matter 8 out of 9 five star reviews, and every single review posted after my email correspondence to Yelp confronting them about their filter of all of our great reviews. And why should any business be allowed to apply a filter to the opinions of others? Especially when those filtered opinions damage the pursuit of my life, my liberty and my happiness? Interestingly enough and before I even knew about these cases, Yelp emailed me telling me how they were going to tell me how to drive more business to my company. When I responded by email with my ardent disappointment about Yelp, their email response was:
“This is where the filter comes in. The filter tries to show the most useful and helpful reviews and rather than doing a subjective evaluation about how well the review was written, for instance, it focuses on objective data. While the data being evaluated is intentionally kept a mystery, what I can say is what the engineers tell me, which is that the filter applies the same rules and analysis to all businesses and all reviews. Certainly we understand that legitimate customer reviews can get caught in the filter. While it’s unfortunate and proves to be frustrating, it is a byproduct of having to have a system of checks and balances that keeps the overall content of the site helpful and reliable.”
I would submit to you that this filter, as they define it, does not show the most useful and helpful reviews, and emphatically can be shown by example after example to be NOT applying the same rules and analysis to all businesses and all reviews, and therefore NOT a byproduct of any system of checks and balances.
In addition, where the rubber meets the road financially is that Yelp is, with and by the use of their sister company, giftrocket.com, presenting themselves and marketing the sale of gift cards for any business; for example, my business, without my explicit consent. For example, when a person buys a gift card to my business at giftrocket, they charge a $1.00 fee, plus 5% of the value of the gift card amount to the purchaser; all without my consent. To me, that is illegal and interfering with the trade at my business without my consent. They do not have my consent to advertise my name or solicit the sale of a gift card to my business on their website. Yet, they are advertising the sale of gift cards to my business. They are extorting a fee and a percent of the value of the gift card when I already offer gift cards without a fee. This is extortion to me.
Yelp, with a reckless disregard for the consequences, is knowingly hampering free speech, interfering in fair trade and unfairly participating in the defamation of our business.
For all of the above reasons, I will pursue a claim against Yelp, and while it may be difficult to prove the value of their interference, it is interference nonetheless.
GoodReviews
May 6, 2012 at 5:04 pm (UTC 0)
If I had known how bad Yelp was I would have never put a business listing with them. They are bad for small merchants. They attract complainers, cowards, and people that can’t communicate with their merchant. They filter out the good reviews and put the bad at the top. I hope they go out of business. No merchant should sign up with them.