Yelp's Review Filter
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It’s all over the news http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/C… and I am glad that people are starting to publicly question the system. You watch their video and tell me why are their comments disabled? It’s because they do not want to hear what the consumers have to say. They do not care. They don’t want to hear the truth of what people are saying. Yelp is not necessary to spread the word thanks to youtube people can still tell the truth.
Yelp created an account for my Business and allowed a client to create a negative comment that was NOT remotely true! Now they won't delete my account and they keep hiding under the umbrella that my info is public info therefore they have the right to open an account under my name. This is extortion!!! YELP definately SUCKS!
I have not created an account with Yelp because I did not want an account and did not want to advertise with them because I think most of the comments of the reviews are friends and bogus!
I have tried to reason with Yelp but as of today they still refuse to take down my account, that again I did NOT want to did NOT create!!
Renee
I feel you! At one point they had posted my very super secret phone number. And wouldn't change it. I have a public phone I always answer, but this was my bat phone, high end clients only! I know of many people who have had their accounts delisted. The page is still there, but the search is turned off making it virtually invisible. You might want to ask about that…
Yelp does suck – they lead me astray and because of glowing reviews I did business iwth a company that is terrible and hiding lawsuits against them . WhenI complained to yelp and put down a review of 1/5 stars they send me a form response and then proceeded to take down my review
Yelp sucks – maybe someone should sue them for leading people astray
See the comments below. The media are looking for stories like this. So if you are willing to share your identity, you should contact them!
Adryenn I have a big problem with Yelp. They have filtered every one of my good reviews and will ONLY keep the bad ones up. They called and asked if I would advertise with them and I said no, and I am wondering if this is the problem. I have seen my positive reviews and looked at the reviewers profile. They have keep all their other positive reviews on other businesses, but have filtered my businesses review. I have contacted Yelp and told them several of my bad reviews were false and untrue, but they did not care. Also some of the horrible reviews and made by people who have glowing reviews from my compeditors. These bad reviews are hurting my business in so many ways. People call constantly and tell me they have read the reviews and are not sure if they should come to my business becasue of them. What can I do? There filtering system is so wrong. They claim the reviews are from "real" people. It couldn't be more false..
Lots of good reviews are filtered and they leave reviews by people who appear to be angry, immature people. It's not clear to me how this site benefits consumers or businesses that want to advertise. I saw one where an elite reviewer basically called business owner a bitch who came to work on a tampon. Nice.
Wow !
I am astonished by these comments
I was looking to have a little whine about why yelp only show one review and hides 11 for our website (all of them good). I quickly sensed they are playing the role of corporate bully who speaks with forked tongue (ie their FAQs do not answer their own questions, and they aren't contactable). So thought I'd google to see if there was any solution and I found this !
Guys you should look seriously at some type of class action lawsuit. You need to take this goliath down and soon.
I'm in the UK so am not sure but I thought in the US you've got a lot of lawyers who work on a no win no fee basis and who want to make their names…
wow it's so sad that a resource people should be able to trust is being so badly run. My thoughts are with you !
Same thing has happened to me, they keep filtering all of my reviews from actual real clients. There is no rhyme or reason as to why they keep doing this. Meanwhile my competitors who are advertising with them have their reviews (less than my filtered ones) up and running. It seems to me like the filter chooses to filter reviews for people who refuse to give them money. I guess it is the age of cyber-extorsion.
Unfortunately it's not as clean cut as pay for advertising and get your filtered reviews back. Based on a lot of experiments, it does appear that if you complain, you get penalized. It does look like if you piss off an elite or someone who works there, your reviews get whacked. No solid proof, but tons of anecdotal. Like the tattoo parlor with all positive reviews from real people are filtered and two negatives (one who claimed to be a Yelp employee) is unfiltered.
Based on how I have seen certain businesses profiles handled, I can safely bet there is a manual feature to the filter, it's not random, and it's not evenly applied. Kind of like a credit score (I used to work at Fair, Isaac doing the validation studies on the behavior scorecards my department built), there are factors that can lower your score, and factors that can raise it. Long time avid yelpers have more power, obviously, because they spend more time on the site, contributing to the community. I'm less concerned with that, than I am with the in-house factors that affect the score. That's the black box. That's where the magic happens and since it doesn't happen the same across the board to equally situated businesses, either there is a major flaw (making the filtered results statistically irrelevant), or there is a way to manually manipulate the results.
Since my business is manually suppressed, I know for a fact that they can manipulate the results. How far that power goes is where the lawyers will find their smoking gun. But it isn't a payola scheme anymore, and the advertising department doesn't have the power to unfilter reviews, so don't bother paying them.
I have been struggling for months trying to save my reputation and business since a non patient said awful thing
About me 8months ago. I am a successful 25 yr.s In practice psychotherapist and after this demonizing
Review my phone barely rung. He had gone out with my daughter years ago. He calls himself Dracula and With yelps help he put this review up without any question. I worked hard to find his identity and once I
Found out his identity and once he realized he was found out, he took his diatribe down. The damage
Had been done.
Very few people call a therapist without looking at yelp reviews. If I had read his review, I would have
Hesitated to call me as well.
Yelp has given anyone a platform whether the person is living in reality or not. How dangerous
Is this?
Roxy De Cou
About a month ago, I fired two employees from my 6 month old (at the time) restaurant that were quite frankly, atrocious at customer service. It was time to go. As a childish recourse, the two have retreated to Facebook bragging to friends that they're trashing us on Yelp through pseudynoms. Fortunately, some of my current employees caught the chatter and alerted us.
The fake reviews are defamatory, totally untrue, and clearly meant to harm the business. For a young business, we have a short track record of 10ish reviews. Not surprising six 5 stars and a 4 star are buried by the filter, and the scams are propped up as the only credible reviews. Infuriating.
I've gone back and forth with Yelp customer service, and they seem impotent to do anything about the problems with their filter…especially for small businesses with small review samples and obvious scams. They just send along their lame video content links and say it all works out in the end.
No it doesn't. Canceling my Yelp account immediately.
The comments are true for me also.I was harrassed for 1 month by yelp through phone calls and emails.they called my store at least 10 times and even used the Urgent message system.I was going through some personal tragedies and did not respond.They knocked my reviews down by 4 that had been up for months and placed them in filtered for punishment for me not signing up with their ad campaign! Yelp does use unfair tactics if you don't pay them what they want. They have ways of unfairly manipulating your standings on their website to make you look better or worse than you really are.All this boils down to is a very foggy review site and very unfair manipulating tactics used to mislead the public.I am in on any lawsuit,this site should be shut down!
How to hurt or RUIN Yelp Now! Everyone google Yelp RIGHT NOW and rate them the worst on WOT so they will be in the RED ZONE!
That will definitely hurt them with a lot lees people wanting to go on bad red zone websites!
How to hurt or RUIN Yelp Now! Everyone google Yelp RIGHT NOW and rate them the worst on WOT so they will be in the RED ZONE!
They are scoring pretty high right now. It would be nice to see all the people here vote there so that the mainstream internet users understand what they have done. http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/yelp.com
I rated Yelp on WOT .. I hope they go under from this initial offering.
Is this the silver bullet for Yelp's demise or saving grace? I for one think Yelp.com could be a great platform for good companies like mine, however I firmly believe Yelp.com is missing the boat when it comes to credible marketing and structure of their now "public" company. In my opinion all attorney's going after Yelp are miss-guided with their arguments. You need substance to take on a big public money fed company like Yelp.com, not unsubstantiated hear say. I would like to see Yelp.com become long term and successful, however not at the expense of misleading the public and allowing selective free speech to exist in a free society. You see, plain and simple Yelp.com suggests that their filtering system gets it right most of the time. In my discussions with Yelp staffers this has been their position. This position is also outlined in their marketing. That policy miss-states fact by suggesting they get the filtering process right more than not and I suggest they almost never get it right. That is certainly the case with my company. California law does not allow for false or misleading advertising nor does the SEC. This idea of Yelp.com mostly getting the reviews filtered correctly most of the time is just false and misleading. The fact is Yelp.com gets it mostly wrong and that is easily proven with my business page on their site. My company review and filter pages are a clear example of Yelp's misleading points. My company has shown Yelp.com Management definative proof that 100% of our filtered 5 starr reviews are real people that have purchased from us. More importantly is the fact that no reviews have made it to the front review page or have rightfully impacted my rating with their company for a long time. During this time period we have had well over twenty credible reviews hit our page and become filtered. All real. All 5 star reviews, yet none are arcurately filtered. Not one. Yelp.com, Really? You get it right when? This argument for Yelp.com's gross negligence is in my opinion a slam dunk loss for Yelp.com in my opinion. Even in our pathetic liberal California court system. My company is here to help the small business man make Yelp.com do what is right. I can be contacted at my office. Justbettercars.com CEO Eric Fischer 916-782-4445.
I rated them on WOT. I really think they are the Mafia of the internet. If I end up missing, look for my severed head and assume it was the CEO of Yelp.
I'm still waging my battle against yelp. Yelp Fraud is rampant. I've posted my personal problems with Yelp in other posts, but here is a tid bit of info I found while researching.
Yelp clearly states that reviews must be of first hand knowledge. I came across a review of a business that stated, "I have never been here, but will definitely never go based off of the reviews here on Yelp." The business owner tried to have this one star review removed, but Yelp said, "NO".
Hmmm, wonder if they had signed up for the monthly ad fees, would Yelp's answer be different? You decide.
Join us in our fight against yelp at http://www.facebook.com/yelpisafraud
Unfortunantely, even if you do PAY monthly to yelp, your still being scammed. We have been paying yelp $300/month and our good reviews are still disappearing. Do NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY. they are going to give you the run around regardless.
If you are tired of Yelp filtering your reviews, you can sign our Yelp petition. Click here to tell Yelp to "Stop filtering our reviews!" http://tinyurl.com/73jr8sx
I just went to http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/yelp.com to vote but there is no place to do that!
You have to login first before you can rate and leave a comment. Once you have logged in, just move the markers on the scale to where they should be, low teens, and then you can submit.
Have you seen the pictures on Yelp's listing on Yelp? Just saw a few, pictures of employees you can tell they were hand picked, I don't think normal good people would want to work for Yelp! There is one picture of this "Yelps Rules" wrote in the sands! This alone shows the mind set of these inhuman people! They believe they have they are ruling our lives! They are aware of destroying lives and they are proud of it! Hoe creepy is that!
People in over seas pull down dictators by putting their lives on the line, why can't we have a organized demonstration to bring light and attention to this?
I have the same experience. It is slowly ruining our business. But this is a typical thread.
Lots of complaints. All valid.
No solutions!!!
We are looking for a solution.
Go to the BBB and file a complaint in fact get a fair and accurate free report with your local better business bureau. I go to the BBB and use only member companies it works great
Go to the Oakland better business bureau site and file a complaint they will start treating your company fairly asap
Join the BBB
Hi, thanks so much for writing an article about Yelp's filtered reviews. I recently wrote a review about a less-than-acceptable and TRUE experience at Hardware Salon in Seattle. My review had stayed up for maybe a couple weeks. I noticed this mainly because the stylist who gave me the poor service had rebuttled and sent a private message to me via Yelp. My review was marked "Useful" by quite a few of Yelp users.
A week later, the owner of the salon had told me that the stylist was no longer at the salon. I checked for the placement of my review again, to see if it was still at the top of the list of reviews. I found that it was filtered with the rest of the poor reviews.
The ones that were kept out in the open were positive reviews and outdated. This is not good business where legitimate reviews with detailed comments are hidden away from people who use Yelp as a trusted source to choose which business to go to.
What is there to do about this? BBB?
I wrote some comments above outlining my bad experience as a business owner and yelps immoral business practices. Your comments are exactly inline with what I was trying to say.
In my case I try very hard to run a good business and make sure my clients are happy. If they for whatever reason were not happy, then I will do whatever needed to make them happy.
My point is I would want to be a client of my business and Yelp shows a huge negative misrepresentation of my business to the public. With the case you are speaking about it's the opposite. Both are wrong and could be remedied in my opinion by simply not filtering any reviews and let them all just show a complete picture.
In my case you would see a 4 to 4.5 star rating and if you looked at all the reviews you'd see some horrible ones from several years ago and then outstanding reviews over the last two years. You as a consumer could see that we had some issues that we've obviously work out. How can the filtering system be better than that?
countless legitimate reviews are taken down everyday. It's absurd!
I am so annoyed with YELP. Everytime I post a good review of a business, they delete it. Then to boot, i will get messages or compliments from someone on their staff being totally unprofessional asking about my other reviews and my personal life! this company is a joke! and if they are so reliable, then why do they delete the good reviews, move the crap ones to the top?? I will tell you why… it is because they want business owners to pay to have the good reviews on top and to keep them on their page. totally unprofessional. their sales tactics are monopolizing the businesses who are on their page
I also agree. I called for a friend in a restaurant to find out about Yelp's ad, and was treated maliciously. I was frightened for my friend. Told them I had to get back to work and off the phone, but then this Yelp guytells me the restaurant had been making money off of them for a long time anyway. Got extremely hostile. Been looking every day for that fake review, and now I found it. I bet more will be popping up now that I've turned them in to the BBB. True review or not (and it's TOTALLY BOGUS and made up), this "sales" person made me frightened for the restaurant. They should be sued for that kind of thing as it is. Anyone wants to do a lawsuit, contact me.
Also, this review had two written on the same day, in the same hour. One excellent review for a hole in the wall restaurant 400 miles away who by the way was paying their "advertising," and one horrible review for the restaurant. Hmmm…..
Yelp absolutely S-U-C-K-S! A bunch of know-nothing techies sitting around out-thinking themselves–again. In Silicon Valley–again. Good reviews removed, bad ones stick, but if you pay them $$$ they'll "help you out."
They are the biggest bunch of low-lifes on the net today. Period.
I could not agree more! I own a small business and long story (semi) short I got some (well deserved) bad reviews in the beginning because of a Groupon I ran and could not handle all the business and the quality of our service suffered as a result. I did not even know about yelp until someone told me about the bad reviews.
over the next several months I cleaned up my act and went back to the bad reviewers to offer to make things right.
I now have almost 100% delighted clients and not only has yelp continued to take down almost every positive review I have had since, they have never removed the bad ones from 2 to 3 years ago. I must have 30 legit five star reviews in their "filter" and my clients sometimes call me to ask "why I took down their reviews" (they don't understand that I have no control) Things were going well and getting better when I started to work with a yelp rep try to fix my reputation but as soon as I decided not to pay for adv.) everything went to s**t, and fast. IE good reviews taken down in droves and one bad or at least not so good (3 star) was left up. Lucky for me we don't get bad reviews or I'd be ruined. For those of you that don't understand the impact it has on a business I can explain it in four sentences.
1-let's say you see a great deal on Groupon for example and decide to look up that local business in your area via Google.
2-Notice that in the top three results you will see their yelp rating
3-My business offers a great service and I have thousands of happy clients but because of the few bad (the only ones at the time) reviews my rating at one time was 2 stars. (not an accurate representation of the business)
4- I want to say 100% of the people out there (myself included) looks up a business and see's 2 stars on the Google search (via yelp) they won't even click on it further to get more info…..I wouldn't
Yelp is killing small businesses all over this country and I'm so happy to see that the public is finally starting to see this and yelp won't be around for much longer unless drastic changes are made. Mark my words
I made a huge mistake by creating my Real Estate Agent listing on Yelp and now they wont de-list my listing. Their Customer Service is run by bullies and thugs. They have 1255 complaints on BBB site yet BBB rates them as A+ . why no one is suing this malicious company called yelp ? they have no respect towards anyone who has business account. I had it with them. I wish someone sues them and reforms their awful business practices towards business accounts.
Oh yes!! Home service professionals like you should really only ask for reviews on Latch.com. Safer, fair, and about to take over the Real Estate market.