

Interview: Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp CEO - wayne
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15228114?nclick_check=1

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jamesbritt
Compere this: (from [http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp-and-the-
business-...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/eastbay/yelp-and-the-business-of-
extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635))

"During interviews with dozens of business owners over a span of several
months, six people told this newspaper that Yelp sales representatives
promised to move or remove negative reviews if their business would advertise.
In another six instances, positive reviews disappeared — or negative ones
appeared — after owners declined to advertise."

... with this answer from Stoppelman:

"So, a typical case history might go like this, 'OK, I got a call from Yelp
advertising' — because we call pretty much all the local businesses, so
everybody gets a call — and so that business owner declines advertising that
time, looks at the site and then sends out lots of e-mails to their friends
and family members and preferred customers, and they say, 'Hey I found out
about this Yelp thing; it's great; review me.' And it's a success, they get 15
reviews up on their page. But that's also extremely biased, and if every
business could do that, the site wouldn't be useful. And so what happens?
Well, all those reviews get filtered. And so then they are convinced that if
they had paid, those 13 reviews would have stayed up."

No, they are convinced that if they had paid, the _already existing_ good
reviews would have stayed up.

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tptacek
Another Yelp data point: the CEO saying that there is a definite correlation
between people getting Yelp sales calls and their positive reviews being taken
down. But it's for the site's own good. Yep.

