Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

Yelp has a pretty shady history with this. The class action suit from a year or two ago was dismissed, so I assume what they are doing is legal in some sense.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#3

Post by aaronsw » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 1:20 PM UTC

This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see:

- a woman owns a shady company

- she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp

- Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't filled with spam opinions

- the woman is upset

The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#4

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 1:23 PM UTC

aaronsw wrote: post #3

This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see: - a woman owns a shady company - she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp - Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't filled with spam opinions - the woman is upset The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.

[deleted]

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#5

Post by irishloop » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 1:27 PM UTC

I don't really see a good logistical way to deal with this kind of problem. Any algorithm is going to see a bunch of sudden reviews of extreme positive or negative opinions as possible spam, and for users who never review more than once, I'm not sure how the filter is supposed to know what is and is not legitimate.

Yelp does seem to have a conflict of interest with advertisements, but considering the only alternative seems to be a subscription-based model, and people don't like paying for things on the Internet, I suspect that this is still the best possible case at the moment. Plenty of room for innovation, though.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#6

Post by gringomorcego » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 1:33 PM UTC

cleverjake wrote: post #2

http://eater.com/archives/2011/07/20/yelp-accused-of-fivesta... http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-e... http://consumerist.com/2010/02/yelp-accused-of-more-negative... http://jonathanturley.org/2010/02/27/yelp-accused-of-extorti... http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/yelp-lawsuit-extortion/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/17/complaints-against-yelps-ex... http://www.pcworld.com/article/190231/yelp_…

Because it's their forum?

I really don't get it. I mean, could Zagat have gotten away with this in the pre-internet era? "Hey man, love your restaurant, but each star costs $100."

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#7

Post by ig1 » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 1:36 PM UTC

irishloop wrote: post #5

I don't really see a good logistical way to deal with this kind of problem. Any algorithm is going to see a bunch of sudden reviews of extreme positive or negative opinions as possible spam, and for users who never review more than once, I'm not sure how the filter is supposed to know what is and is not legitimate. Yelp does seem to have a conflict of interest with advertisements, but considering the only alternative…

There's a well known solution for this and it's called a chinese wall. You segregate the ad team from the other teams and restrict the data flow between them.

It's what Google and many others use to stop ad revenues biasing their product.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#8

Post by brianjyee » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 1:37 PM UTC

aaronsw wrote: post #3

This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see: - a woman owns a shady company - she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp - Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't filled with spam opinions - the woman is upset The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.

The article says she asked her customers to post genuine reviews. I don't know if that's true but if it is, I see nothing shady about asking your customers to post reviews. There is definitely a conflict of interest on Yelp's side, but I don't see a good solution to the spam problem.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#9

Post by yoda_sl » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 1:38 PM UTC

That particular topic about Yelp and their reviews have been discussed many times on HN. Yelp is a major scam company that absolutely do not care about the business owner. They are in it for the money -doh- and what matters for them is Page Views, and regular users posting more reviews, thus more page views. Their filtering system is a total mess but since it is a secret on how it works they can say whatever they want... As long as their filtering system goes into promoting page views. Nowhere in there they care about the small business that are badly hurt by their lack of common sense.

Simply don't use Yelp for posting reviews or reading reviews, this is the best thing anyone can do.

PS: I speak from close personal experience with my wife small business being hit hard by Yelp algorithms for filtering review, and Yelp scammy sales people.

Re: Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews

#10

Post by crikli » Mon, Jun 11, 2012, 1:38 PM UTC

I keep seeing articles like this. I read the article, then I find the company on Yelp and read through the reviews.

Every single time it's been very clear that Yelp is telling these businesses that they have a problem. But rather than acting on this extraordinarily valuable feedback the owners/managers react by blaming Yelp for the bad reviews or accusing Yelp of hiding the good reviews.

This behavior frequently exposes the characteristics about which customers are complaining: there's a problem, the owners have been told about it, and they're killing the messenger.

EDIT: I have no connection to Yelp whatsoever. I'm communicating the scope of my experience and the conclusions I've drawn. These conclusions may be grossly flawed. It wouldn't be the first time today. :)