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Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

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Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#91

Post by api »

nickstinemates wrote: post #26
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

NDAs and threats to sue? If this is how Yelp does business they'd be very aggressive about enforcing that.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#92

Post by gnicholas »

spiznnx wrote: post #52
gnicholas wrote: post #3

> A Yelp post from December 2017 was the first crucial clue. “Melissa R.” wrote, “I was offered money to leave a positive review for Savant Care Clinic. Must be a shady company.” The user attached Craigslist screenshots of the apparent offer, which Dean took her own screenshot of just before Yelp removed the post for violating its terms of service. Why would Yelp forbid people from talking about this? While it is cer…

Yelp's stated policy is to remove reviews by people who didn't actually directly interact with the business, regardless of the content.

So if I went to a business and was solicited by an employee, I could mention that in a review without it being taken down?

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#93

Post by bombcar »

angry_moose wrote: post #18
whalesalad wrote: post #11

Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.

The Apple Maps integration seems to be most of what's propping them up these days. It's especially infuriating because you can only see about 2 reviews before you're prompted to download the Yelp app for "full access". I thought Apple was supposed to be working on their own review system or switching to a different service, but I haven't seen anything come of that.

Apple Maps is the only place left where I see it, and I wish I wouldn't.

It seems Apple Maps and Pay could result in good reviews, because they'd all be tied together.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#94

Post by annexrichmond »

dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

I have seen this same claim so many times over the years and not once I have seen direct evidence of it, just hearsay. "My friend", "My wife's cousin", etc. How hard would it be to show before/after screenshots, timestamps of Yelp sales calls, etc.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#95

Post by jollyllama »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #79
jollyllama wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITT: people who have never heard of NDAs

IANAL, but can an NDA legally bar someone from reporting a suspected crime to law-enforcement?

I don't think Yelp's practices constitute a crime in the USA. The crime of a hypothetical Mafia is when they threaten violence for not paying. Yelp just changes what their site says about your business, which isn't a crime unless you can prove slander (very difficult).

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#96

Post by bombcar »

arbuge wrote: post #33

While on the subject, are there any review sites anywhere, not just for locations but also of products, that can be trusted? It seems to me that all of them can be and actively are gamed. Googling using the extension site:reddit.com caught on for a reason.

Anything that works gets gamed, the only real possibility would be various sites that are so absolutely local that attempts to game them would be painfully obvious.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#97

Post by randomdata »

whalesalad wrote: post #11

Serious question: is Yelp still relevant? I feel like outside of select metro areas it’s not useful at all with very dated content.

I forgot it exists. Looking at a bunch of local restaurants, there has been essentially no activity since 2017, and Google and Facebook have orders of magnitude more reviews in every case.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#98

Post by dcsommer »

jollyllama wrote: post #69
lacy_tinpot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

secrets can't be kept in any large corporation therefore this is a conspiracy theory of course secrets can be kept in large organizations, but it's funny how often that get repeated.

ITT: people who have never heard of NDAs

NDAs have nothing to do with this. Employees leak all kinds of stuff from tech companies all the time despite NDAs.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#99

Post by hoten »

wayne wrote: post #87
nickstinemates wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

It's possible the sketchiness is caused by a restaurant's competitors (writing negative reviews, falsely flagging positive reviews, spamming) rather than Yelp proper.

That adds a bit more complexity to the problem, but it still remains that Yelp is running a platform that to some extent relies on the ability to abuse it.

Re: Bay Area woman is on a crusade to prove Yelp reviews can’t be trusted

#100

Post by b112 »

nickstinemates wrote: post #26
dwater wrote: post #25

It sounds to me like Yelp is upset that other businesses are trying to do the same thing they do. My friend was GM of a new local restaurant here, and at first they were getting lots of 4 and 5 star reviews and almost none below that. But around the time they were contacted by a Yelp sales rep to start paying for promotion and advertising, the 4 and 5 star review stopped coming. My friend watched multiple people post…

You'd think there would be some whistleblowers after all of these years of the same allegations. Where are they?

The same place the tobacco companies kept their whistle-blowers for 30 years?
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