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Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

chicagotribune.com

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Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#51

Post by noduerme »

ma2rten wrote: post #44
noduerme wrote: post #13

Extortion. This is the racket of the 21st Century. Once you got the eyeballs, you call every business in your database and threaten to cut its legs out from under it unless it pays up. Google's running more or less the same racket. It's "soft"...there are no threats, exactly. But imagine if the Chicago Tribune called vendors and threatened to run a miserable review of them if they didn't pay? So why hasn't that happe…

Am I the only one who believes that yelp is prolly telling the truth and that it was just a coincidence? It sounds quite plausible to me that their algorithms work in the way, that are described in the article.

Just because it's algorithmic doesn't mean it's legal or clean. I can write an algorithm that searches your cookies for porn sites, figures out who employs you, and emails you a customized extortion threat. If their algorithm works the way it's described in the article, then it'll downrank or remove 10 legitimate, positive posts from real customers if they're made in one day, and will preserve and uprank 1 illegitimate negative post from a competitor, unless the unwilling subject of this debate agrees to pay to remove the negative review. That's the definition of extortion, and if ever there was an algorithm written for that purpose, the one described in the article is it.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#52

Post by ma2rten »

noduerme wrote: post #51
ma2rten wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I the only one who believes that yelp is prolly telling the truth and that it was just a coincidence? It sounds quite plausible to me that their algorithms work in the way, that are described in the article.

Just because it's algorithmic doesn't mean it's legal or clean. I can write an algorithm that searches your cookies for porn sites, figures out who employs you, and emails you a customized extortion threat. If their algorithm works the way it's described in the article, then it'll downrank or remove 10 legitimate, positive posts from real customers if they're made in one day, and will preserve and uprank 1 illegitima…

The way I understand this is, that he was not asked to pay to have the negative review removed, just for advertising, which was totally unrelated to his reviews.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#53

Post by pbreit »

mikeleeorg wrote: post #34

In case you want to dig in deeper, Frank Brader's dog business on Yelp now has 4 stars from 5 reviews: http://www.yelp.com/biz/haus-von-brader-dog-obedience-traini... Justin G, the negative reviewer, was a Yelp Elite member from 2006-2008: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=z25c9TyWY1TdVEGxkj34...

The 4 new reviews appear to have been generated by the article and I suspect 2 or 3 of them will eventually be hidden. And rightfully so since they are content-free and by new reviewers.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#55

Post by pbreit »

huhtenberg wrote: post #33
pbreit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. The note goes right in the same box as the review.

Wrong too. The note goes on guy's website, not on Yelp's. "We noticed you came here from Yelp. Yadda-yadda..."

Wrong.

"Where your Public Comment will appear Your comment will appear directly following the review that you've commented on."

https://biz.yelp.com/support/responding_to_reviews

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#56

Post by jclemenson »

cletus wrote: post #4

This raises several important issues. The first is that most people don't review things. No matter how easy it is the vast majority of the population just won't do it. The simpler you make it the more that will but the simpler it is the less useful it becomes. This has several important implications. - It makes local hard to scale because your audience size is that much smaller that reviews are far less reliable both…

I question the value of social search in general. It doesn't matter what your friends like. What matters is what others with similar tastes like. The only good thing about social search is the context informed by the relationships.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#57

Post by veyron »

cowkingdeluxe wrote: post #25
marquis wrote: post #6

I use a great car rental service at LAX. I've tried to put a glowing review on their Yelp page to help them get business to no available. It doesn't even show up. I'm guessing this is because they choose not to advertise with yelp either? I just wrote another review right now to test this out again, and my account shows I have written two with them. Why is Yelp not displaying these on their business page, and their s…

Because Yelp is a scam business which extorts. I'm more surprised to see people defending Yelp on this site.

Maybe yelp paid a firm to generate positive reviews of yelp?

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#58

Post by veyron »

ma2rten wrote: post #52
noduerme wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it's algorithmic doesn't mean it's legal or clean. I can write an algorithm that searches your cookies for porn sites, figures out who employs you, and emails you a customized extortion threat. If their algorithm works the way it's described in the article, then it'll downrank or remove 10 legitimate, positive posts from real customers if they're made in one day, and will preserve and uprank 1 illegitima…

The way I understand this is, that he was not asked to pay to have the negative review removed, just for advertising, which was totally unrelated to his reviews.

He was asked to pay for advertising. He wasn't happy with previous dealings with yelp, so he declined. Then, all of the positive reviews that were on the site mysteriously disappeared. One plausible explanation is that all of the positive reviewers removed their responses. Another one is that all of the positive reviewers weren't real. But a third explanation is that they were removed precisely because he chose not to pay for advertising. And in the business owner's mind, that is what happened.

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#59

Post by pbreit »

termie wrote: post #40
pbreit wrote: post #16

The article could have revealed that of the 18 "hidden" reviews, 14 were the only review by the Yelper and 11 were in a one week period. These are two of the main criteria for Yelp's filtering. I'm surprised people believe that Yelp would be so clumsy and unethical to simply penalize non-advertisers.

There is certainly a ton of press around this coming from several reputable media outlets for months. Google for 'yelp extortion'. So you shouldn't be surprised. This is a real problem for them. At minimum, here is a documented case of legitimate reviews that simply aren't shown. They are basically saying 'The computer did that, so fuck off' and end up coming off like a bully, which by all measured terms they are.

This meme hit pretty big a year or two ago, a bunch of lawsuits were filed and nothing came of any of them. Yelp is usually able to demonstrate in each case that what it claims is happening is accurate (advertisers are buying a specific bill of goods, review flagging is systematic, etc.).

Re: Lone Yelp review dogs business owner

#60

Post by blahedo »

joezydeco wrote: post #24
noduerme wrote: post #13

Extortion. This is the racket of the 21st Century. Once you got the eyeballs, you call every business in your database and threaten to cut its legs out from under it unless it pays up. Google's running more or less the same racket. It's "soft"...there are no threats, exactly. But imagine if the Chicago Tribune called vendors and threatened to run a miserable review of them if they didn't pay? So why hasn't that happe…

Ironically, mild extortion is the point of the Tribune's "What's Your Problem?" column. People who can't get results from local businesses write the column, where they're publicly shamed into doing something to help the consumer.

> Ironically, mild extortion is the point of the Tribune's "What's Your Problem?" column.

I don't think so. I can see why you'd say that---there's a certain family resemblance---but extortion when someone threatens to reveal a bad thing for their own gain; WYP is actually revealing a bad thing for the gain of the reader. If Jon Yates (the WYP author) ever ended a phone call "if you pay me (or otherwise grant me consideration) I won't run this column," then that would turn it into extortion.

As I think about it further, another thing that makes it not-extortion is that with WYP the company that did someone wrong is given a chance to make it right, even before the deed is revealed. That's not typically a feature of extortion.

(Edit: clarify last paragraph)

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