Yelp

edit

Yelp is going to do a lot more damage in the long run as they attempt to make more money. There is already evidence they have used under-handed technics manipulating reviews as part of their sales process. Does American business really what to trust their reputations to a third party website?

Melinda wants evidence - so here, look at this cached review via Google cache: http://tinyurl.com/p6t38p and then try to look for this review on Yelp. The review is the absolute truth, Los Gatos Floors is a terrible contractor and is guilty of all of the crimes in the review. I was planning to add my own voice to Yelp as soon as I get them to finish (if ever...) their work on my place. But it seems it would be a waste of time if they are so easily able to get negative reviews removed.

I have been using yelp for quite a while now and have relied on user reviews to help me decided where to shop/eat etc. I had a bad experience at a local pizza joint, and wanted to write a review on yelp about it, in order to contribute. My review was honest and fair however negative. I recently checked back on yelp and noticed that my review had been taken down. This doesn't make any sense to me and yelp has lost all credibility in my opinion. How can I trust that when I read reviews on yelp, that negative ones haven't been removed for some reason. I would like to be able to read all of the reviews good and bad and decide for myself whether or not to frequent a business.

I like how so few of these negative comments towards Yelp, accusing them of this and that, can actually back up their hysterical accusations with any kind of direct evidence. It's all second-hand and "friend of a friend" nonsense. I've been using Yelp for 3 years now. They have never taken down any of my reviews (and I have left several positive AND negative reviews) or any reviews of anyone I know from the site. The owners keep public blogs and representatives from the company are very open to answering any questions you may have. I'm sorry that apparently all of your businesses suck and you're getting bad reviews, but I fail to see how that's Yelp's problem.

There is absolutely no transparency on Yelp. Nothing that is said on the site can be trusted. Yelp does not even uphold it's own Guidelines or Terms of Service. It allows campaigns against businesses for political disagreements and does nothing about it. The executive staff does not respond to your messages. They remove or hide positive reviews of businesses, but always leave up the one star negative reviews. While the concept of consumers having a voice may be a good one, Yelp's algorithm is completely broken and unmanaged.

first i have to say wow to the annonymous business owner- im shocked, if you're a customer service business owner i'll bet you go down in this economy... i have personally left several bad reviews so I don't see how yelp goes around and deletes them. i have even been contacted by business owners who appreciate the reviews and want to fix them

Yelp doesn't do a good job controlling anything. This is supposed to be a site where people freely speak about their experiences and leave reviews but the Yelp moderators censor these reviews badly. They will leave up racist and hurtful comments yet take down perfectly helpful reviews, claiming herese.

Regarding Susan C's posting: I have been following Yelp for some time and also own an Internet Matketing company specializing in the Automotive space. I have done a lot of reseach regarding on-line reputation mangement, and the opportunity for fraudalent reviews connected with these type of review sites. Yelp appears to be the only site that appears to be attempting to control their postings. They appear to give more validity to those posting multiple reviews (Yelpers) than the other sites. I personally believe that Yelp is doing it properly and there is no doubt that these type of sites are growing in popularity. These sites provide real reviews by real people, that can help consumers. If a business is getting a lot of negative reviews it's probably a function of poor business practices and the company should read the comments and make changes to accordingly. A good, well run business can really take advantage of sites like this to spread the message. About time we had a voice of the consumer to drown out flashy big marketing campaigns that focus only on price and selection and not product quality and customer service.

Yelp is awful. Yelp is all flash and marketing and trying to look "cool", but they are completely biased in the reviews that they allow, and those that they delete. I posted a truthful and positive review of a local animal organization. I didn't realize that another previous reviewer had a vendetta against that organization, and he had Yelp delete my review. He was a member longer and had many more reviews than I did, so they just deleted my review, without even getting the truth from me first. When I protested to Yelp, they ignored my emails, so I deleted my account. In reviewing more of this persons reviews, he included racist and offensive remarks about a certain group of ethnic people, they don't delete that, but leave the racist comments up there. I'm simply amazed that they would allow racist comments against ethnic groups, and delete my positive and truthful review just because the racist has a vendetta and doesn't like it, and Yelp listens to him. You just can't trust the reviews on Yelp, great idea in theory for the site, but poor performance, standards and judgement. Stay away!

http://consumerist.com/5166653/more-business+owners-accuse-yelp-of-review-extortion a post from consumerist about distressing practices from this company

Yelp's tag line "Real People, Real Reviews" is a fallacy. Yelp has admittedly paid people to write reviews. And, while they refuse to admit it, they allow business owners to pay to have real reviews removed if they don't like the reviews. Unfortunately I relied on Yelp as a reference for a company. With 21 all-good reviews, how could I go wrong? When I ended up providing a bad review for what ended up being the worst business transaction I have ever been a party too, the review never showed up. My spouse also provided a negative review. That review has also never been displayed. A year later, there are now 23 great reviews. I wonder how many other bad reviews of this awful corporation have been removed?!

I joined Yelp in November 2008 and have written over 200 reviews, at least 80% of them on restaurants. I'm 61 years old and a NY/Chicago foodie, so I don't fit the typical profile. But I do contribute information for others, and I get great information when I read the reviews of Yelp Friends. I've had two replies from owners: one a boilerplate response on a restaurant I gave 3 stars to, which should have been embarrasing to the owner if he'd compared my review and what he sent to me. The other, on a 4-star-but-critical review, was also from the owner, who's in his 70's and has been running this restaurant forever - he thanked me for certain comments, asked about others, agreed with one criticism, and made suggestions for future menu choices. Wow! I've already let several people know about his reply, and will be telling the story for months if not years. And will be going back sooner than planned.

I find a lot of comments here to be indicative of bitter business owners who cry foul about Yelp. From a purely statistical standpoint, Yelp is far more valuable than any "professional" review, in the sense that the overall rating of a business is averaged over many reviews - sometimes hundreds. Most businesses who offer exceptional value and excellent customer service receive overwhelming positive feedback, event if one or two reviews are bad. A business that is receiving some negative reviews has a valuable tool for ways to improve its competitiveness. A business who dismisses the majority of its clientele as too young and uninformed to have a meaningful opinion isn't going to do well in a city like San Francisco or Portland where the demographic consists of young professionals. It's important to recognize that one review will not make or break a business.

As a paying advertiser, I find Yelp to be both an obnoxious trap and non reliable source. Their problems with slanderous reveiws are one thing, but they only pitch the pitch when confronted. My ad rep. Erica seems to think that if a users does not have a picture up then it means something. I am glad my contract will soon end. What I have found is that the users are not well versed due to their ages. It is a social board that has a bit more grown up fell than myspace.

I agree with 'Lame'...the content lacks in favour of the social networking aspect. I've run my blog since mid 2007 focused solely on the review aspect (and the quality of them). Kudos to Yelp on the reach of their site, however - something I'd like to hit. However, not at the expense of content.

Here is a link to the Yelp Business Owner's Guide for those business owners who would like to participate on Yelp. http://www.yelp.com/business Some tools are free and others require paid sponsorship.

We have not participated much with Yelp, however, finding reviews about your company is not completely the story. Let's say that when writing a review, the person writing has no idea about your particular industry. For us, <a href="http://www.biscaynelady.com>Miami Yacht Charters</a> is a dynamic industry. Anyone writing has no idea about this industry but can potentially harm your reputation. There needs to be a specific place for companies to comment on behalf of their organization.

Kudos to you Barry Brookens that is about the same as my experience. If you write the truth and the truth happens to be about one of their customers that they recieve money from and it paints a negative light in any way, they randomly remove it from their site....so much for truth and a reliable place to get honest reviews on.

Very disappointing. Much more socializing than info-exchanging, even where info-exchanging is supposedly going on. They might want to consider a minimum age limit. Far too many teeny-boppers swapping sexual innuendos to be of any real use to people wanting to get, or publish, useful information. The combined functions just don't function.

Below's a thread about someone giving a company a bad review, and then a Yelp employee going out of their way to contact and eventually harass the reviewer. When the reviewer blocks the employee's communications to avoid further harassment, the employee then opens a public thread, and divulges private emails. The employee at first vehemently denies being paid by Yelp, but later gets caught confessing to the whole thing: "yelps pays me a lot of money to protect its sponsors. its a good racket. dont blow it for me." The fact that this same employee who began the harassment has also given the other company a glowing review, is completely unethical to say the least. See for yourself, and quickly, before Yelp pulls the thread down to cover up their tracks: http://www.yelp.com/topic/san-francisco-calling-you-out-atlas-plumbing-review

Yelp's reviews can not be trusted. I wrote a negative review about an unethical company that doesn't even have a business license. Others then posted their negative experiences about that same company and business owner. Then Yelp notified me that they removed my review, and when I checked, all of the reviews on that company were removed, but they left that company's ad and web site link on Yelp. Yelp would not give me an explanation or respond to my emailed questions. They are a business marketing advertising for business, using the public as a tool and manipulating the review scores for their own profit.

With the recent "changes" at Yelp and the number of users who got booted, looks like a Class Action Lawsuit is brewing! go to yelplawsuit.com for more info...

Turns out Yelp is a great place for "internet anonymous" people to use if they want to persecute someone at their workplace. "Real people, real reviews" except that the posters can be as irresponsible as they wish.

I've perused the Yelp site, and I'm not impressed. Too much room for users to leave phoney critiques. Furthermore, if they plan on shaking businesses owners down under the guise of "marketing" their businesses on the site, I suggesst they clean up the "social networking" aspect of the site. Any brief check of the Talk section reveals immature discussion based around sexual innuendo and weekly bouts of binge drinking. Frankly, these aren't the kind of people I want frequenting my business, nor are they the kind of people I want spreading word-of-mouth about my business.

I find an interesting mix of synergy and exchange of ideas, which is the entire point of providing a site such as Yelp; putting people together with other people.

What is the revenue model for yelp? How much do they bring in every month? Doesn't the rating system dramatically reduce the potential customer base?

I personally love Yelp.com as a source of information on the more obscure restaurants and bars where I travel. Great social networking features and a dedicated user base!

I find that people are too easy on restaurants for it to be useful to me. I'm much too picky. Some people will say things like, "Quality isn't too good, but it's all you can eat and there's a lot of variety! 4.5 stars". For me it's quality over quantity. Most of their reviewers feel the opposite.

Yelp isn't a bad place for social networking. I find it to be a very cool site to share experiences (and photos!) of venues you have been. Their staff is helpful and full of energy if you need help (say, merging two duplicate business listings). Sadly, they don't yet offer support for non-US locations (Canada, Mexico, Europe, the rest of the world, etc.).

dogoody two shoes type of website, can't leave any negatives.