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Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

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Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#81

Post by jamesb7276 »

jly wrote: post #52
metalliqaz wrote: post #13

I would like very much to grab my pitchfork and point it menacingly at Yelp, but I have yet to see one of these stories with hard evidence. There are many, many stories of bad (and incriminating) behavior on behalf of Yelp salespeople over the phone, but I have never heard a recording. Even though most claims indicate that the harassing calls are repeated many times. Somebody record one of these calls and become Inte…

A business I used recently for some tree maintenance in my town had a 1-star Yelp review which was perplexing. In this case, the business and owner are well-known in the area as one of the best at what they do and top subject matter experts. While digging a little, I found that Yelp was highlighting only the four 1-star reviews and factoring only those into the score. Each of these reviews is responded to by the owne…

Another anecdote with out a link (or even a company name so we can search ourselves). Ignored.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#82

Post by dsp1234 »

cerved wrote: post #48
metalliqaz wrote: post #13

I would like very much to grab my pitchfork and point it menacingly at Yelp, but I have yet to see one of these stories with hard evidence. There are many, many stories of bad (and incriminating) behavior on behalf of Yelp salespeople over the phone, but I have never heard a recording. Even though most claims indicate that the harassing calls are repeated many times. Somebody record one of these calls and become Inte…

Your standard of proof is very high. Who records all of their phone calls (presumably without consent which is illegal in my jurisdiction) and makes an archive of their yelp page periodically? This is not the only company to face such allegations and afaik it's not the first time yelp has been accused either. I think you'll have to base this one on anecdotal stories.

their phone calls (presumably without consent which is illegal in my jurisdiction)

IANAL, but if the call starts out with the standard, "Please note that this call is being recorded for training and quality assurance purposes", or similar, then you are free to record that conversation and it would not be illegal. All parties to the call have been informed that the call is being recorded, and thus no wire tapping laws have been broken. This works for both 1 party and 2 party states as far as I'm aware.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#85

Post by 1ris »

Does Yelp verify that buiness actually exist?

If I was in the US, had too much time and money on hand it'd do the following: Start serveral business and make sure they never actually serve costumers. Sign them up with yelp. Write a few positive and negative reviews about them. Spend money on yelp advertising on some of them. See how they compared to the control group.

If the rumors are true, sue them with anti-mafia-laws.

The fact that nobody has done this yet colors me very skeptical about the claims.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#86

Post by cjensen »

metalliqaz wrote: post #37
golfer wrote: post #33

My wife runs a small business and is furious with Yelp. She gets a lot of 5 star reviews, legitimate ones from customers she knows, but Yelp embargoes lots of them and doesn't display them on her Yelp page. She gets frequent cold calls from their sales department, promising that if she signs up for advertising, they can get those 5 star reviews un-embargoed and live on her page. 21st century cyber-extortion?

I became active on Yelp after a new Cafe opened in my town. I loved it so much I just had to go home and write a good review. I did so, and it was embargoed. A user with one 5-star review is usually not taken into account. After I had written more like 5 or 6 reviews, all my reviews started to count. Remember how viral those recordings of Comcast shenanigans went? If she keeps getting those calls from Yelp, record on…

The 'embargo' algorithm is nothing as sensible as you suggest.

If you click through to the hidden reviews, you can quickly see that there is very little logic happening. You'll often see a hidden review from a user who has left 20+ reviews, while at the same time one of the shown reviews is from a first-time reviewer.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#87

Post by dqv »

kreutz wrote: post #69

Yelp is evil. One month ago we had 5 stars with 932 reviews. Today we have 3.5 stars with 118 reviews. 3800 reviews are not recommend. https://mobile.twitter.com/erickreutz/status/851505150002733...

Don't sweat it - 3.5 stars looks way more trustworthy than 5 stars. 5 stars makes it look like the business paid for the reviews

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#88

Post by strictnein »

timr wrote: post #9
HappyTypist wrote: post #4

I have a friend who left Yelp after 2 months. Told me that he'd get aggressive legal action if he revealed "how Yelp really makes money".

I worked there for years. Your "friend" is wrong. The way they make money is rather transparently described in their quarterly filings with the SEC. Since they're a public company. Actually, I'm not sure what your "friend" is accusing them of doing, so it's a hard claim to rebut. It's embarrassing that a vague hearsay accusation (of...what, exactly?) is considered worthy of attention here.

> "Since they're a public company"

A public company has never, ever engaged in shady behavior. It is simply unheard of.

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#89

Post by openmosix »

Diederich wrote: post #73
metalliqaz wrote: post #13

I would like very much to grab my pitchfork and point it menacingly at Yelp, but I have yet to see one of these stories with hard evidence. There are many, many stories of bad (and incriminating) behavior on behalf of Yelp salespeople over the phone, but I have never heard a recording. Even though most claims indicate that the harassing calls are repeated many times. Somebody record one of these calls and become Inte…

One thing that Yelp absolutely does do, I've seen it with my own eyes, is play with 'recommended' reviews based on whether the business in question is paying them. I can't provide hard links because it's a client of my wife's business. Specifically, a business had about 20 very positive reviews in total, all of them 'recommended'. A review that isn't 'recommended' basically doesn't exist; it doesn't count toward the…

We were just discussing this with my wife yesterday. The very same story happened to our doula, who's very non-technical and she asked us what to do (we are both engineers). Short story: she had a profile on Yelp, almost 20 5-star reviews from former customers (who spend, on average, 2/3 months with her - so each star is a big deal). One day Yelp! connects with her proposing her to become a paid customer, how could that boost her visibility, etc. etc. Moreover, she has great reviews and it would be good for her to maintain that track record. She declines - also because she is not very technical and she has no idea how much business she's getting from Yelp. Within a month, half of her 5-star reviews are gone and 2 1-star reviews appeared (that she does not recollect as customers - so she reported them).

My get on the entire story is that Yelp sounds a lot like Italian's mafia (btw, I'm Italian) - where "you have a really nice restaurant there, it'd be a shame if something bad would happen to it. But if you pay us, you'd have nothing to worry about."

Re: Business cancels Yelp advertising contract, negative reviews start pouring in

#90

Post by drzaiusapelord »

DamnInteresting wrote: post #79
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue isn't that they're fake but that positive reviews end up hidden as 'not recommended' and negative ones suddenly float to the top once the protection money stops. It looks like there's manipulation of the algorithm that determines what reviews are legitimate on a per client basis. The 'free' package is pretty unforgiving, but if you pay then its tweaked more towards your favor. Nothing about this would be il…

In this case, of the three "not recommended" reviews, one is positive (four stars) and two are negative (one star). This seems contrary to the common assertion that the bad reviews are all unleashed. Though I concede that if Yelp is guilty of the accusations, they might be smart about it, and leave some negative reviews hidden. I'm just concerned that there is still no ready evidence that Yelp is doing this deliberat…

There is no evidence because there can be no evidence. Every single time this is shown with screenshots, Yelp says the same thing: that its proprietary algorith changes all the time. They get a free copout and all of its defenders on the web just parrot that statement.

Lower-ranked reviews fly to the top? Algo change. Stars suddenly missing? Algo change. Positive reviews suddenly 'not recommended' Algo change.

Saw in this case and more if you care to do some legwork.

http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/09/yelp-manipulates-reviews-a...

Oh and the algo is beneficial to paying customers without actually saying so. You can bullshit it anyway you like, "high CPM via our ad network or profile enhancement package means a more reputable business which means those not recommended 4 star reviews are probably true" and off you go. Or support is much more willing to work with you to get rid of 'suspicious' one and two star reviews if you call and the CRM pop-ups you have the 'gold package.'

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