
Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews - rpledge
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/06/08/bc-yelpreviews.html
======
yoda_sl
That particular topic about Yelp and their reviews have been discussed many
times on HN. Yelp is a major scam company that absolutely do not care about
the business owner. They are in it for the money -doh- and what matters for
them is Page Views, and regular users posting more reviews, thus more page
views. Their filtering system is a total mess but since it is a secret on how
it works they can say whatever they want... As long as their filtering system
goes into promoting page views. Nowhere in there they care about the small
business that are badly hurt by their lack of common sense.

Simply don't use Yelp for posting reviews or reading reviews, this is the best
thing anyone can do.

PS: I speak from close personal experience with my wife small business being
hit hard by Yelp algorithms for filtering review, and Yelp scammy sales
people.

~~~
irishloop
Out of curiosity, what is the alternative? Just allow twenty five-star or one-
star reviews to show up and say hey, if business owners want to scam the
system by putting in fake reviews, then great? Or just open-source their
algorithms?

I guess to me it seems infinitely easier to criticize the way someone else
does it than to present a more efficient way of doing it.

~~~
Philadelphia
One possibility would be to allow users to manually flag reviews, instead of
trying to do it algorithmically. They could also have some sort of confidence
rating for reviews, or possibly a reputation system for reviewers. From
looking at the hidden reviews for a couple of stores while I've been trying to
find a place to get new glasses, they seem to be hiding a good number of
legitimate reviews with their current system.

~~~
yoda_sl
You are correct. Such simple change will be already going in the right
direction. It is amazing to see all the reviews hidden that are legit: you can
see if the reviewer use Yelp often by checking the number of reviews posted.
The current filtering system seems to ignore that most of the times, but
reviewers with no previous review prior giving 1 star will see that review
stick.

------
aaronsw
This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see:

\- a woman owns a shady company

\- she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp

\- Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't
filled with spam opinions

\- the woman is upset

The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.

~~~
andrewcross
Agreed. Not to say there isn't a problem with Yelp's practices (as have been
documented elsewhere), but this article does not make a good case against
them.

From an algorithmic standpoint, filtering out reviews from new users makes
sense. Otherwise you'll get the owner and friends stuffing in good reviews.

Just look at what the data might look like for the 17 people. -They all sign
up in a period of a few weeks. -They all review this one place and nothing
else. -16 of the 17 never sign back in again.

It's pretty clear that it's a blatant rating stuff, so filter it out. Again,
I'm not saying that the algorithm is perfect, but it makes sense to at least
filter out these reviews.

~~~
twoodfin
> (as have been documented elsewhere)

I don't think that really has been documented elsewhere. There have been
lawsuits and allegations, but no proof, as far as I know, that Yelp has
offered to compromise their reviews for cash. Yes, they give business owners
willing to advertise some editorial control over their listing, but the extent
of that control is fairly well-understood and not much more nefarious than
Google's text ads. Correct me if there's documented evidence otherwise.

Instead, we get article after article of business owners complaining because
their Yelp reviews suck and their obvious attempts to game them have been
thwarted. But that's exactly what Yelp should be doing. They're useless if
they can be gamed. They're also useless if it becomes well-known that they're
pay-to-play, but again, I don't think there's actual evidence of that. They'd
have to be pretty stupid to take that course.

------
cleverjake
[http://eater.com/archives/2011/07/20/yelp-accused-of-
fivesta...](http://eater.com/archives/2011/07/20/yelp-accused-of-fivestar-
review-extortion.php)

[http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-
of-e...](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-business-of-
extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635)

[http://consumerist.com/2010/02/yelp-accused-of-more-
negative...](http://consumerist.com/2010/02/yelp-accused-of-more-negative-
review-extortion.html)

[http://jonathanturley.org/2010/02/27/yelp-accused-of-
extorti...](http://jonathanturley.org/2010/02/27/yelp-accused-of-extortion-in-
trading-positive-review-for-advertising-money/)

<http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/04/yelp-lawsuit-extortion/>

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/17/complaints-against-yelps-
ex...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/17/complaints-against-yelps-extortion-
practices-grow-louder/)

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/190231/yelp_hit_with_class_ac...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/190231/yelp_hit_with_class_action_lawsuit.html)

[http://www.wired.com/business/2010/04/yelp-fights-fraud-
alle...](http://www.wired.com/business/2010/04/yelp-fights-fraud-allegations-
by-unfiltering-reviews-killing-pay-for-favorite-feature/)

Yelp has a pretty shady history with this. The class action suit from a year
or two ago was dismissed, so I assume what they are doing is legal in some
sense.

~~~
ig1
The suit was dismissed because of lack of evidence of extortion.

~~~
pbreit
Not only is there a lack of evidence from the plaintiffs, Yelp has mountains
of evidence proving the opposite.

------
bapbap
I've been running a business review website for about 4/5 years and I
absolutely hate it.

If I had $1 for every time a business owner writes a review for themselves
(signing up for an account with their business email address no less), our
system removes it and then they email me _within minutes_ complaining that a
genuine customer had written them a review, where has it gone...

There are lots of variables our algorithms track to try and make a decision on
whether to filter a review or not and of course it will get things wrong but
if there wasn't any filtering in place, the amount of spammy reviews would be
overwhelming.

I feel somewhat for Yelp, even with all their millions of dollars to throw at
the problem as there is no easy solution, ignoring any potential pay for stars
type nonsense. That is something I would never do and am very proactive when
it comes to protecting small businesses.

Like I said though, after years of seeing people try to pull a fast one, the
warmth in my heart fades.

------
crikli
I keep seeing articles like this. I read the article, then I find the company
on Yelp and read through the reviews.

 _Every single time_ it's been very clear that Yelp is telling these
businesses that they have a problem. But rather than acting on this
extraordinarily valuable feedback the owners/managers react by blaming Yelp
for the bad reviews or accusing Yelp of hiding the good reviews.

This behavior frequently exposes the characteristics about which customers are
complaining: there's a problem, the owners have been told about it, and
they're killing the messenger.

EDIT: I have no connection to Yelp whatsoever. I'm communicating the scope of
my experience and the conclusions I've drawn. These conclusions may be grossly
flawed. It wouldn't be the first time today. :)

~~~
yoda_sl
Clearly you have not been running a small business. Some reviews are posted
from time to time by people that are not even customers or stopped by the
business; for some dumb reason they post a 1 star review.. And that review
usually stick and doesn't get filtered out...but other reviews from true
customers posting 4 to 5 stars reviews disappear usually in less than 24 hours
after they were posted.

What kind of explanation do you have?

~~~
timtadh
Spam filtering is hard? You are a programmer, imagine trying to find a way to
objectively and fairly filter reviews. Unlike with emails you don't know whose
labels to trust. There are good business owners who will only report spam
reviews as spam. Then there are bad business owners who will report negative
ham as spam to try and boost their reviews. Finally, there are bad business
owners who will use shell accounts to submit positive spam and then mark it as
ham.

In general the labels from business owners are not trust worthy which gets
them into these situations. Thus they try and create other ways of identifying
spam: like user engagement on the site. However, engagement doesn't always
work as a metric as spammers can cultivate spam accounts by posting lots of
"legitimate" reviews on unrelated businesses and then sell reviews from the
accounts to attack (boost) specific businesses. Finally, users who have a
tremendous experience at a business and go on Yelp to give them 5 star reviews
may have no history with yelp except as a passive browser. The engagement
metric will weight poorly for their review.

So what is to be done? I don't have a good answer for that. This seems more
like a human problem than a technical one. The best course seems to be: act
ethically, serve your customers with compassion, write responses offering
assistance to negative reviewers, and if you feel Yelp (and similar review
system are a bad idea) put your advertising dollars elsewhere.

~~~
yoda_sl
They are various ways to solve the problem but again it is not in Yelp's
interest. Yelp's business is about selling Ad and they don't really care about
the underlying issues. One simple thing that could be added to their system
was a way to verify that a reviewer did really have a business relation for
posting a reviews. They are various ways for solving that.

Even a simpler approach: why hide those reviews. Keep them here and introduce
a way for other viewer to rate the reviews aka 'X people found that review
helpful'. That way all reviews are visible and the random person reading the
Yelp page can decide for themselves. Unfortunately Yelp and their filtering
system have a different approach and instead usually end up filtering real
customer reviews and leave the more 'spammy' visible. Then after a few weeks
like that, you will receive a phone call from Yelp sales folks telling you
that if you purchase 'ads' then your potential 5 stars review (if any are left
visible) will be pushed to the top.

Sorry but for me I consider that a scam!

~~~
timtadh
There is no relationship between the sales calls and the filtering algorithm.
That is what the dismissed class action lawsuit was about. All "evidence"
people have is purely anecdotal.

Verifying a "business" relationship may work but it still won't solve all of
the problems. You can still pay people to show up at your restaurant, pay with
their credit card and write a five star review. You can still pay people to
show up at a competitors restaurant, pay with their credit card and write a
one star review. It simply increases the cost of the spam (which is a good
thing). They should probably create a way to do this but it won't solve the
fundamental problem: the reviewer pool is an unreliable source of information.

"X people found that review helpful"

A helpful review is not the same as an accurate review based on experience. I
would find a well written review helpful. However, the review could still be
inaccurate or fake just well written. This is simply another data point for
spam detection and one with many confounders at that. One has to simply google
around about the state of Amazon reviews to see the flaws in this approach.

Once again. I stand by my assertion, detecting spam reviews is extremely
difficult because it is a _human_ problem.

------
lincolnwebs
I'm on the opposite side of the equation: I quit using it after I discovered
it was hiding my positive reviews of establishments I frequent. I refuse to
trust anything on that site now.

------
neovive
This does demonstrate the value of third-party "professional" reviews (e.g.
Consumer Reports, Zagat) and a big reason why Google bought Zagat -- the trust
factor.

You never know if personal reviews on various sites were driven by ulterior
motives. Although it's likely that the majority of personal reviews are
genuine, you should try not to be swayed by just a few reviews without further
research.

~~~
eevilspock
Are you saying professionals are not prone to bias or influence?

~~~
lallysingh
Professionals have a reputation, which should reduce bias or influence. If
Zagat was known to take bribes, they wouldn't be around for very long.

It may happen, but is less likely to happen than non-professionals. You have a
much larger issue with selection bias for reviews, and a much easier way for
vendors to bias them. I've been in shops that insist, rather persistently,
that I write a good review for their store _on their computer, at the shop_.

~~~
neovive
Great points! The issue of selection bias is very real on many review sites.
Especially with the volume of reviews being so low for most products and
services.

------
irishloop
I don't really see a good logistical way to deal with this kind of problem.
Any algorithm is going to see a bunch of sudden reviews of extreme positive or
negative opinions as possible spam, and for users who never review more than
once, I'm not sure how the filter is supposed to know what is and is not
legitimate.

Yelp does seem to have a conflict of interest with advertisements, but
considering the only alternative seems to be a subscription-based model, and
people don't like paying for things on the Internet, I suspect that this is
still the best possible case at the moment. Plenty of room for innovation,
though.

~~~
ig1
There's a well known solution for this and it's called a chinese wall. You
segregate the ad team from the other teams and restrict the data flow between
them.

It's what Google and many others use to stop ad revenues biasing their
product.

~~~
tomkarlo
How does this in any way mitigate the issue of fly-by / socket puppet
reviewers?

------
moderation
718 Cyclery in Brooklyn, NY has had long running issues with Yelp. Some detail
at [http://brooklynian.com/bk/2012/01/25/digital-shakedown-
is-71...](http://brooklynian.com/bk/2012/01/25/digital-shakedown-
is-718-cyclery-in-gowanus-being-screwed-by-yelp/)

------
Symmetry
It seems like social networking could be used to good effect to try and filter
reviews, or at least let me see review from people I trust first.

