Yelp Sucks

Have you ever unexpectedly met another Yelper stranger while patronizing a business? How'd it go? Any interesting stories?

I thought Google and Amazon were a pain with all the sponsored search results, but I just searched on "carpenter" on Yelp and got SIXTEEN sponsored results (which on a PC is like 6 pages of crap before the actual listing). Are there enough brain-dead people out there that actually mindlessly fall for the sponsored results for Yelp to seemingly render the site almost useless? Why would anybody pick a sponsored result? I remember a podcast years ago where the head of Google search was interviewed, and she said their internal studies showed the sponsored vendors were the worst.

Really interesting video from renowned marketer Wes McDowell. His argument against advertising with Yelp is the high cost per lead

Paid clicks and impressions on Yelp are often reported to be significantly more expensive than alternatives like Google Ads or Meta.

I saw an earlier post from a Yelp Elite that was quickly deleted. They were defending Yelp’s predatory business practices despite never doing business with them. Should this be allowed? It clearly represents a conflict of interest.

These people wouldn’t defend Yelp if they weren’t getting some kind of kickback from them. How can anyone defend a company that has a 2-star rating on its own platform with more than 16,000 reviews? ttps://m.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco

A company that preys and mom and pop business to appease WallStreet.

A company with 6,000+ 1-star reviews on TrustPilot? More than 1,600 complaints from Business Owners in the last 3 years on the BBB website?

I would be ashamed to work for “free” for such a scandalous organization. How much does it really cost to go to dinner or a DJ class? Is it worth cheating the small businesses that make America run?

There have been several posts lately that is questionable on if it should even be here, yet they remain visible. At the same time, I’ve noticed comments and other posts being deleted by moderators, as I can still see the message indicating that content was removed.

This raises concerns about whether the moderation is activity reviewing this group. I would appreciate some clarification on the group’s moderation policies and how decisions are made regarding which posts or comments are removed.

Probably not a huge shock. At least Google and Amazon are doing something to combat the problem though. Google removed 240 million reviews from their platform in 2024. Yelp has less than 350 million reviews and only filters the 5-star ones when you don’t pay them 🤡