

Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up (March 2009) - TrevorBramble
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp-extortion-allegations-stack-up/Content?oid=1176984

======
zzzmarcus
I stopped using Yelp and uninstalled it from my iPhone when I read the article
last year.

Yelp's business model doesn't sit well with me. Even if the allegations of
good reviews disappearing for businesses who don't pay up aren't true, the
idea that there is a service out there that you don't want but you're almost
forced into paying for since it's affecting your business directly feels to me
like paying the mafia to 'protect' your business.

If Yelp really does want to help both businesses and consumers, give
businesses the ability to respond to reviews for free and don't artificially
alter results, be like Google and let your algorithm work. Make money selling
ads.

It reminds me of the whole GetSatisfaction drama with 37 Signals from a few
months ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=540540>). This type of
business model where you provide a business a "service" they didn't ask for
then try to charge them for it will never go over well.

[Edit] FWIW this page, found below in relme's comment
(<http://www.yelp.com/myths>) directly answers every one of my concerns with
Yelp. If it's true then great, sounds like they're doing things well. I find
it hard to write off all the complaints as fictional though.

~~~
poutine
I seriously doubt good reviews would just disappear. The reviewer would
complain. I'm a Yelp Elite in my city and I'd scream murder if any of my
reviews disappeared.

~~~
akeefer
It just happened to my wife this weekend: she'd written a review of her
trainer that showed up at the time, but at some point in the last few months
it disappeared from the trainer's page, even though it still appears within
her profile. She updated the review and it then appeared to her when viewing
her trainer's profile, but it didn't show up if she logged out or when logged
in from my account.

Simply deciding not to show reviews you've written and/or randomly taking them
down after they've been up? Sketchy. Showing those reviews to you so you think
they're there even though no one else can see them? Ultra-sketchy.

~~~
andrewvc
The same thing happened to me. I created a yelp account for the express
purpose of reviewing a local business that has food that's beyond shitty. I
wrote a scathing one star review, and it was put in purgatory. Only when I
logged into yelp was it visible.

Now, I can understand why they'd be wary of an account that only posted a
single negative review, but if you ban someone, you should let them know.

------
timcederman
My wife and I both recently posted negative reviews at businesses that were
advertising with Yelp. Neither review (which were both fair and truthful) ever
showed up on site.

edit: Just to clarify, I spoke to Yelp about it. The reply I got was "[The]
spam algorithm can filter based on how established user is. [Your post was]
not deleted & can re-appear on biz page. Still live on your profile."

------
brandnewlow
The small business owners I know in Chicago say Yelp calls them incessantly,
offering to let them take over their profile pages for $500/month (don't quote
me on that price).

Their biggest issue with Yelp is that they tell their customers to go review
them on Yelp. The customers do. Then Yelp deletes the reviews because the
people who posted them weren't "true Yelpers." So only reviews from people who
post lots of reviews are valid? WTF.

~~~
wushupork
That's basically what happened to us. We had all our customers Yelp about us,
many who haven't even heard of Yelp. Then they took them all down because
those people only wrote one review, basically for us.

~~~
pyre
No offense, but that does tread into dicey territory. It comes rather close to
businesses offering customers discounts for positive Yelp reviews. How do you
draw the distinction? If there is no distinction how can you be sure that Yelp
reviews are true?

~~~
chubbard
But, is it any more dicey that only accepting reviews from a small population
of yelpers that are more loyal to yelp than to the business they review? Think
of it this way a yelper whose never heard of your business vs. many loyal
customers who've never heard of yelp. To some degree it turns into a yelps
loyal customers vs. a business' loyal customers and yelp with always side with
their loyal customers on it. Advantage yelp. If they don't let everyone
participate in the conversation equally then a business can't put their best
foot forward.

I did find it that the salon owner was much wiser about how she approached
yelp than the bookstore owner. The bookstore person wasn't listening to her
customers, and blaming the wrong person.

~~~
pyre
I'm not saying that the alternative of only accepting reviews from a small
population of regular/power users is necessarily a good thing either. I'm just
stating that it's not a black-and-white issue with an easy answer.

------
dmgrossman
Sales operations where you need many customers, each consisting of low price
point "buys" typically require a large salesforce of relatively low-paid
junior people who make most of their money on commission (similar to
classified sales at newspapers). Basically a boiler room style operation where
people "dial for dollars" all day. It's not a surprise that some sales people
may have attempted these tactics without management's knowledge or approval.

~~~
diego_moita
It may valid, but it doesn't exonerate the business (yelp, in this case) from
responsability.

I think the real troubling issue is that they demand openess from other
businesses but don't show their algorithms or give open access on their pages
for response.

I wonder how long it will take for businesses to start using Mechanical Turk
against this Yelp.

------
JCThoughtscream
It is actually fairly plausible that Stoppelmann has no idea at all that his
sales representatives are using such shady tactics.

That is not, however, good news for Stoppelmann. Not in any sense. It would
indicate that, at the client-business level of interaction, there is no
functional oversight at all. That Yelp's management's either willing to turn a
blind eye, or are so negligent as to allow this to occur even in the face of
growing criticisms.

Incompetence or malevolence; either way, they're in trouble.

~~~
wonlove
or it could just not be true

~~~
houseabsolute
You do have to view the claims with some skepticism considering those making
the claims stand to benefit substantially from people believing them, true or
not.

------
aaronblohowiak
This is actually racketeering and not extortion.

~~~
bobbyi
Can you explain why this doesn't quality as extortion?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
To some people, racketeering is a subset of extortion. To me, extortion is the
simple extraction of money by coercion. Racketeering involves the protection
from both the racketeer but also from other aggressors. The Yelp model fits
this nearly exactly, whereas extortion is a much broader term.

From the wikipedia article on protection racket:

>In some cases, the "protection" is little more than extortion, with no real
service rendered unto the victim. Otherwise, the racketeers will warn other
criminals that the client is under their protection and that they will punish
anyone who harms the client. Services that the racketeers may offer may
include the recovery of stolen property or punishing vandals. The racketeers
may even advance the interests of the client, such as muscling out unprotected
competitors.

------
wushupork
We had a similar issue over at Extreme Kung Fu where I teach out of. A Yelp
rep called (this was maybe a year or year and a half ago) and same thing: We
notice you have a lot of positive reviews and we drive a lot of traffic to
your site. The implication of the conversation was that if we wanted to stay
that way, we better sign up as a sponsor.

I even wrote a blog post about it, and that got picked up when the whole Yelp
thing blew up last year. I used to recommend Yelp to everyone, now I feel
dirty even talking about it.

------
relme
<http://www.yelp.com/myths>

~~~
rosser
"I am not a crook." -- Richard M. Nixon

------
blasdel
JWZ has gotten the shakedown too: <http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html>

------
BigDamnDeal
This is why I want Foursquare to start handling reviews. (Foursquare lets
people "check in" at a bar, restaurant, or other venue and notify friends.)

Foursquare's developers say they're working on winnowing out false checkins
with GPS, which should give them a good idea of where their users are actually
going, and when. I'd trust reviews written on the spot more already.

I'd also trust reviews from my friends. And since Foursquare is a social
network first, I've built an actual collection of real-world friends, not a
network of people I only know through a web site. These are people who largely
share my taste in venues.

It's obvious that a lot of people want an alternative to Yelp. I'd try out
others, but I particularly want one that verifies reviewers were actually
there, and one that pays attention to what I already like and my friends like.

I want a Pandora for places.

------
teye
Bad reviews -> self/friend posted shill review -> shill reviews removed ->
"Yelp removes my 5-star reviews!"

I'd expect a little exaggeration from the frustrated party, and these
conversations sound like they're just barely more than benign. I'll have to
ask my friend in Yelp ad sales how pushy they get.

~~~
DenisM
By the same token: note enough ad revenue -> promise removing bad reviews in
exchange for buying ads.

So why did you chose one narrative instead of the other?

~~~
teye
I've only been on one side of the equation. :)

------
gursikh
There probably isn't a single business owner out there that feels comfortable
with the existence of an online directory where disgruntled customers can
collate and publish their opinions. I'm sure a good deal of them are willing
to lie to rid themselves of the nuisance. Just because Yelp is creates a large
headache for lazy business owners doesn't mean it's evil. It's creating an
environment where business strive to provide quality service. It does so by
creating incentives for doing so (good reviews) and disincentives for failing
to do so (bad reviews).

There are no facts in this article. Just allegations.

~~~
pyre
There are also incentives to disgruntled employees (for example) to publish
bad reviews to 'get back' at the business. In general, services like this are
only useful once they reach a critical mass so that the signal drowns the
noise. But as you grow you also become the target of spammers (i.e. Google's
problems with SEO, real estate scammers, link farms, etc).

------
RyanMcGreal
> As you have undoubtedly noticed, we've been doing some shuffling around
> here, and the page you're looking for seems to have gone missing.

Bad web designers, _bad_! There's no excuse not to ensure that old URLs return
HTTP 301 redirects to the new URLs.

------
alttab
I don't remember who it was or what their business was called , but someone
else got called out for something similar. It was under the guise of brand
management as the site aggregated social media, blogs, etc about what people
were saying about a company on the Internet then charging business owners to
make replies.

It came down to brands being held hostage and the story that broke was very
similar. I wish I could remember the guy. I remember his blog posts sounding
very proud though.

As far as yelp goes, Its probably only the sales or a small portion of the
operation (maybe). I have a friend that works at yelp and I'd be dissapointed
if he stayed there knowing this was going on.

~~~
brown9-2
It was Seth Godin and "Brands in Public":

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/launching-
br...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/launching-brands-in-
public.html)

(I had the same memory this morning and tried searching for it and couldn't
find anything, but thanks to your post I thought to include "brand management"
in the search)

~~~
alttab
Good look. Thanks!

------
neurotech1
The source is 404 Page Not Found [http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp-
extortion-allega...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp-extortion-
allegations-stack-up/Content?oid=1176984&showFullText=true)

Google Cache Link: [http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:DdZjkw-
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------
motters
Before reading this I'd never heard of Yelp. It sounds like a good example of
antisocial networking, of which we might see more examples in future.

~~~
pyre
You've probably seen Yelp stickers in business windows before but overlooked
them. I've seen them around, but I can only recall instances of businesses in
Portland or Toronto. I can remember specifically if I've seen them in other
places, but probably so.

------
acgourley
I was expecting to see something damning but this looks like what yelp has
been admitting to do for a while now.

~~~
brown9-2
They admit to letting you sort your negative reviews to the bottom if you
advertise? Or to restore five-star reviews which were "flagged as spam" if you
advertise?

Do you have a citation for this? I don't mean to call you out but I have no
idea what yelp has admitted to.

~~~
cnunciato
And even if they did admit to it, that seems about as "damning" as it gets for
a site whose value proposition is based almost entirely on its credibility.

~~~
nickpleis
I don't think that's even Yelps primary value proposition. They're much more
of a social network than anything else. Their proposition seems to be more
around providing a place for people to gain recognition for their taste. This
is why they have the elite yelper program and what-not.

The result of that play is a huge site with a TON of reviews that create a lot
of organic SEO traffic. The credibility of those reviews, while important,
isn't really their upmost concern.

That's why withholding positive reviews (under the guise of spam control) is
effective. They're effectively extorting you to create more content for them.

Is it intentionally designed that way? I have no idea, but I bet it's
extremely effective.

------
dzlobin
Now..two things. 1\. Can anyone comment on the legality of this internet based
extortion as opposed to "regular" extortion?

2\. Is this by any chance the reason why the Google deal fell through? I know
we heard otherwise but it makes me wonder.

------
marcusbooster
I would think with that many reviews the potential for libel is a concern.

------
prbuckley
What happened to the article? I am getting 404 errors? Is this some sort of
Yelp conspiracy? Maybe East Bay Express didn't pay up!

------
spolsky
old news ... march '09

~~~
TrevorBramble
Hi, Joel. I updated the title.

Maybe because I only recently moved to an area where Yelp has a presence, but
I hadn't noticed this article until today.

~~~
physcab
I hadn't heard of this before, so thanks for posting.

