
Foursquare’s CEO says Yelp is shaking down local businesses - stunod
http://www.recode.net/2016/10/31/13479782/foursquare-jeff-glueck-yelp-local-businesses-robin-hood-recode-podcast
======
sean_patel
This is nothing new. Kathleen Richards, an investigative reporter with the
East Bay Express, reported on this at length back in 2009.

See "Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0" => ( 2009 )
[http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-
business-...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-of-
extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635&showFullText=true)

EDIT 2: Mobile view (1st page only) if browsing from iPhones, Droids...
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbaye...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-
and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635)

I remember being alarmed that time when I read this. So I asked a local Indian
Restaurant owner located on 2nd Street and Market Street here in San
Francisco, with who I had become good friends with, since he was from the same
city as my dad (Bombay).

The restaurant used to be called "Bhindi". The owner pretty much confirmed
everything in that report. He even told me that the Yelp Marketing guy
threatened to display his low star ratings on top and completely hide true
5-star ratings if they (the restaurant) did not buy at-least 300$ worth of ads
from Yelp every month. Eventually that restaurant went out of business (don't
think it was related to the Yelp Extortion 2.0 though, definitely didn't help
either) and now there's Mehfil in it's place.

EDIT: Her follow up story: "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up"
[https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastba...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastbayexpress.com/news/yelp_extortion_allegations_stack_up/Content?oid=946025)

~~~
tomjakubowski
Unfortunately the link to that story is entering a redirect loop on my iPhone.

Does anyone have a link to that story which works on an iPhone?

~~~
sean_patel
You're right. on mobile phone (iPhone) it goes into endless redirect. Crashed
my safari also.

Here's a mobile URL I found on the internet archives. After it loads, tap the
"Reader View" on the browser so you can see the story properly.
[https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbaye...](https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-
and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635)

------
askafriend
Here's Yelp's CEO's response on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/793159598651736065](https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/793159598651736065)

Quite unprofessional in my opinion. Could have exercised a bit more restraint
as a public company CEO.

EDIT: Here's a screenshot in case it gets deleted -->
[http://imgur.com/a/ViqX8](http://imgur.com/a/ViqX8)

~~~
kilroy123
Wow very unprofessional indeed. Makes me glad I don't use their service very
often.

~~~
aisofteng
Knowing their business practices makes me not use it at all.

------
Keyframe
It's interesting to see how, over the years, service industry like that became
dependant on user reviews on certain sites. About a week ago I was in a five-
star hotel in Dubrovnik (Villa Dubrovnik, I absolutely recommend if anyone
cares) that's had over 90 million Euros put into its new decor and stuff.
That's some serious money. Yet, one of the first things guy told me there they
are proud of their tripadvisor rating and, of all the things and ratings they
have, that's probably the most important one to them.

These multi-national big corps have their nuts in hands of sites like these.
Lots of potential for abuse, among great stuff for users of course.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I rely on Tripadvisor reviews exclusively when I travel, they've been spot on,
and I've never heard of Tripadvisor being accused of abusing the system like
Yelp. If they _were_ to abuse service providers like Yelp does, I'd drop them
in a hot second.

~~~
komali2
On the other hand, every shop in Vietnam has printed off a "rated #1 on Trip
Advisor!" sign and stuck it to the front window. It can go both ways.

~~~
roywiggins
I love places with "Rated on TripAdvisor" stickers. Technically true- they
probably ARE rated. not quite a lie, but totally meaningless.

------
post_break
Here is a great example of how Yelp tries to bully small businesses:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY)
I suggest you watch this even if you like Yelp. It was definitely eye opening.

~~~
rhapsodic
Eye opening indeed. On a lighter note, I recommend the South Park episode
"You're Not Yelping" (S19e04). The full episode is on Youtube (at the moment)
and [http://southpark.cc.com/](http://southpark.cc.com/) . It has plenty of
the usual South Park toilet humor, but it's a brilliant take on the whole Yelp
phenomenon.

------
tinbad
Doesn't surprise me at all. I have stopped using Yelp for recommendations and
went back to asking locals whenever I'm traveling. Not only is their search
algorithm terrible (seems completely arbitrary to how or why places do/don't
show up), the reviews and ratings seem to be a completely random and often
times unreliable.

Part of the issue is that it's an oversimplified rating that doesn't allow for
refinement. I can't recall how many times I see a place that has really good
food only getting 3 stars because people don't like "the ambience" or the
"service is slow" \- two things that I, for example, don't care about as much.

~~~
nradov
We were in Vienna recently and wanted to find a good café to eat dessert. So
of course I pulled out my phone and started searching for reviews. My wife
just walked over to a fat policeman and asked him for a recommendation. Her
technique seems to work pretty well.

~~~
tunap
I used to trust and find gems with urbanspoon, but it feels like since the
zomato change it misses niche places in small towns I know exist from previous
experience. As stated above, ask a local. If they say Applebees, ask someone
else.

------
thomasdub
I'd love someone to point to evidence of this beyond pure anecdotes. Yelp
clearly allows negative reviews on accounts which advertise with them which
can be seen with this Google search [0]. Furthermore an independent Harvard
Business School study showed no evidence of fraud [1]. Sure Yelp gives a hard
sell, but until some disgruntled ex-employee blows the whistle, or multiple
businesses record evidence of this extortion, I'm not ready to believe this is
any widespread fraud. I'm sure there are isolated cases, but surely someone
would have come forward to back up claims that Yelp can manipulate reviews and
ratings? [0]
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+%22thi...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+%22this+place+sucks%22+OR+%22if+i+could+give+them+zero+stars+I+would%22+OR+%22rude+staff%22+AND+%22yelp+advertiser%22&cad=h)
[1] [https://www.yelpblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hbs-
stud...](https://www.yelpblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hbs-study-yelp-
reviews.pdf)

~~~
ryuker16
Anecdotal but I did reputation cleanup for a company. I never recalled any
'we'll remove low star reviews' offers from the Yelp sales team. My guess is
some sales guys get desperate and the Yelp ad package was not cheap/scaleable
like Google ads so they definitely had to dig.

Incidentally removing low star reviews from some sites is easy(prove review
violates TOS) .... I remember Yelp being strict on not doing so.

If you want to see some real grade A con games....look up Groupon. Great idea,
greedy as hell execution.

------
troncheadle
I've moved twice in the past four years and I have gone to yelp for food
recommendations a few times -- totally useless, sadly. Always wants me to go
to Papa Johns or some other chain. The days of interesting food discovery via
yelp are over. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

~~~
frandroid
That's why I use Foursquare.

------
kirykl
Waitress friend told me about her restaurant's zero tolerance Yelp policy.

If you are explicitly named in two negative reviews (in some un-defined time
period), you are fired.

~~~
jonwachob91
Your waitress friend should submit a few (fake) bad reviews explicitly naming
her boss (or whomever wrote the policy). Not to get the person fired, but to
make them face the reality of that shitty policy and get it changed...

------
unclebucknasty
> _Unlike Yelp — they have several thousand people who dial the pizzeria and
> the bar to try and get them to pay each month. Our ratings are really
> neutral._

WTH kind of punctuation is that?

~~~
TheDrizzle43
Are you referring to the em-dash?

~~~
unclebucknasty
I'm referring to the entirety of that which I cited.

------
gxs
I'm not a huge yelp fan. I think there are elements of their product that are
done sloppily, and I even dislike some yelpers that I've personally interacted
with.

That said, it would be nice if someone presented some evidence to back up
claims that yelp is doing something "corrupt".

I don't doubt their AE's are assholes, which is where I'm guessing a lot of
business owners' negative feedback is coming from, but there's never been
actual data driven proof that yelp does something shady.

~~~
Analemma_
> That said, it would be nice if someone presented some evidence to back up
> claims that yelp is doing something "corrupt".

This is an extremely difficult standard to meet. A lot of the accusations
against Yelp involve phone calls with their sales reps, which is not public
data that can be aggregated and parsed. All we really have to go on are
anecdotes.

Speaking personally, I've heard from two people I know who have small
businesses- a wedding photographer in Seattle and a small restaurant in
Concord, New Hampshire- who separately told me how they had good Yelp reviews,
and then watched them get pushed down and bad reviews pushed to the top
shortly after they declined to buy Yelp ads. These two people didn't even know
each their and would have no way or reason to coordinate their tales, and they
told me identical stories. I never use Yelp anymore, for this reason.

Anecdotes might not be scientific data, but if the circumstances are such that
scientific data is impossible to obtain, they're better than nothing.

~~~
eqleriq
Same exact thing happened to me. I ran a small custom design shop and due to
it, I knew all of my customers personally and didn't have many jobs a month.

Then, there was a door-to-door canvas trying to get businesses on my block to
join some yelp ad subscription. I know this because we all would go down to
the pub after work and chat about it, we're in an artsy corridor / community.

I was one of the only ones who had a discussion with this ad subscription
salesman. And they offered me a package that I could sign up for where we
could change the order of our reviews and "effectively hide the bad ones on
later pages" as well as responding to the reviews in a way where it would be
prominent.

I responded that I don't have any bad reviews, my business doesn't work that
way, not interested.

And surprise, surprise literally the next day I had my first one star review
sitting at the top of the page. The review in question had a picture /
reviewer I had never met with and their description of the "problem" didn't
even state any specifics. You would not be able to tell what I do from the
complaint. When I responded to the complaint asking for any insight and very
verbosely responding to them, never a reply AND my response was hidden from
sight.

None of this made any sense: I offered a lifetime guarantee and did
electronics modifications to the person's specs. I've never missed a deadline
or had anything fail at a bad time. If I had, I'd be notified of it obviously.
I just happened to have a storefront accessible from the street so they
thought I gave a flying fuck about "walk-in traffic" or something.

I am not dumb enough to claim that this is a widespread practice, sanctioned
by yelp, or anything like that. But the system definitely empowers their
"sales team" to extort businesses by leaving bogus negative reviews, as well
as competitors. Just a shit system in general that cannot be taken seriously.
Hell, even a shady landlord could start a campaign against a tenant if they
want to try and break a lease.

But hey, don't believe me: I could be just leaving a bogus negative review
about yelp, here, and sounding very convincing. AKA, that's my entire point
about how crappy it is in general and not to be trusted.

Look at grubhub reviews as well. They're nonsense largely, but you don't
really want to ignore them... there's no accounting for taste, etc.

~~~
ryuker16
Some Sites Allow you To Remove Bad Reviwws For TOS violatioNs. Check Yelp
PolicY.

------
rajacombinator
Such a shame all these entrenched web monopolies are focused on squeezing out
profits with salespeople instead of continuing to innovate.

------
sidcool
The billion dollar bully documentary is a good documentary on this.

------
photonray
What's a good alternative to Yelp (other than FS)?

~~~
askafriend
Nextdoor just rolled out a recommendations feature. Give it a try!

FourSquare used to be good but I stopped using it a while ago. It might still
be pretty decent.

~~~
gnicholas
Have you seen anything worthwhile on ND? Where I live (near Redwood City, CA)
there isn't anything useful. It's mostly people posting about their
own/friend's restaurant. Without photos or star ratings, I can't see it taking
off—and I say this as a frequent ND user.

