
Yelp Claims Google Broke Promise Made to Regulators - IBM
https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-rival-yelp-claims-search-giant-broke-promise-made-to-regulators-1505167498
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ballenf
Don't know if Yelp does allow any search engines to scrape, but if they'd
allow duckduckgo to scrape and help build some marginal competition against
Google, it might give them more leverage overall.

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cabalamat
Looking at their robots.txt, they allow Google but not DDG.

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Ajedi32
Huh... Looks like they have a whitelist that allows Bing, Google, and Yandex
(among others), but not DuckDuckGo:
[https://yelp.com/robots.txt](https://yelp.com/robots.txt)

Does DuckDuckGo respect `robots.txt` files with onerous implicit restrictions
like that? If I were them, I'd probably just write it so that if Googlebot is
allowed then DuckDuckBot is too.

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strict9
Used to like Yelp as an alternative to Google owning everything, but they are
destroying their brand using shady app-hijacking tactics.

It's a dark pattern to limit access/force app downloads for access to content
on mobile. I hate rooting for google, but I'll root for open web any day.

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graphememes
Heh, you should hear their shady business tactics. It would be a shame if your
business suddenly had 1 star on yelp.

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krisdol
I'm unconvinced. I have read a ton of anecdotes and 2nd-hand accounts about
this, but I've never seen any experiment or any piece of hard proof that yelp
or its representatives hold your rating over your head if you don't sign up
for advertising. It seems like an easy scenario to test out.

I'm totally open to being convinced, but I'm skeptical right now that they are
in fact that shady. I'm more inclined to believe that it's a placebo effect
from suspicious people suddenly paying more attention to ratings after a sales
call, and also attributing any negative dip in rating to the phone call they
recently had. There are also third-party groups who call claiming to be able
to list your business higher or rate it better, and I'm suspicious that some
people confound these callers as yelp representatives.

And linked from elsewhere in the thread: [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-
fi-yelp-ratings-20140905-...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-yelp-
ratings-20140905-story.html) \-- it just seems like with no scientific study
backing the claims and case after case being lost, I think the onus of proof
is on the people accusing yelp of these threats.

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teen
I've seen it first hand. My friend is a veternarian who was working in a very
expensive neighborhood in California. Every time he got a 5 star review, it
wouldn't display on his Yelp page. A few 1 star reviews did appear though.
Yelp would call him and tell him essentially the 5 stars would reappear if he
advertised with them. He had no choice but to pay and they all appeared,
driving his average back up. How would you propose to prove it? And what would
proving accomplish since many folks already believe it?

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timr
It's trivially easy: link to the page. Put up or shut up. If what you're
saying is true, it will be obvious.

These stories are always about "friends" or "relatives", but nobody ever
provides the link to the _evidence_ , despite that being the easiest thing in
the world to provide.

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yorwba
Specifically, Internet Archive links that show the before/after situation,
with reviews appearing that were made before "before" but only appear in
"after".

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face_mcgace
Hmm these comments really bother me - people seem to miss the point that
Google is using its monopoly power to block out competition. This concept is
very, very frightening and we should all be worried. This is no different than
when railroads would block competition and promote their own products.

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tossaway1
Doesn't Yelp have a reputation for much shadier business practices (i.e.
extortion)? Maybe they're not a very sympathetic underdog in this fight.

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ocdtrekkie
Yelp is definitely not a sympathetic party, but that doesn't invalidate or
weaken their claim. Particularly if, as they claim, Google is specifically
violating an agreement with the FTC.

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sitkack
Yelp is indeed sht company and needs to be investigated for its own shakedown
techniques. But this doesn't mean that Google isn't behaving in an anti-
competitive way.

Side note, Yelp literally called my partner who ran PR for non profits art org
and asked to be paid $$ or else competitors ads would run on their page.
Literal words. One would pay for NOTHING except not having competitors getting
promoted on your own pages.

Partner laughed and hung up.

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latchkey
[https://yelp.com/robots.txt](https://yelp.com/robots.txt)

There is some fun stuff in there, like this?!

    
    
            Disallow: /biz/outlook-autumn-market-fundamental-catwalk-flimsy-roost-legibility-individualism-grocer-predestination-0
    	Disallow: /biz/outlook-autumn-market-fundamental-catwalk-flimsy-roost-legibility-individualism-grocer-predestination-1

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schwabacher
Be careful w/ these urls - I visited one and it appears my IP is now blocked
from accessing yelp.com.

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013a
That's really interesting. They might be trying to blacklist scrapers that
don't properly respect robots.txt files.

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tossaway1
Why would a scraper who doesn't respect robots.txt be accessing that file?

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beobab
If I was building an unruly scraper (which, in case our new overlords are
listening, I would never do), I would read robots.txt so that I had a clue
where the secret information that the company did not want me to read was
located.

I'm not allowed to look in /documents/source/? Perfect. Let's start there.

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henvic
Removing Yelp from my phone. Never liked it anyways.

Love Google and Foursquare.

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Avitas
I am guessing that this is going to end up be a PR nightmare for Yelp once
Google let's the hounds loose. They have been such an easy target in the past.

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dogruck
Can you elaborate?

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leeoniya
[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-yelp-
ratings-20140905-...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-yelp-
ratings-20140905-story.html)

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bl4ng
Did you know the name Yelp comes from "Yellow Pages"?

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samfriedman
Non-paywall link (twitter redirect):
[https://t.co/5sCeMykOWW](https://t.co/5sCeMykOWW)

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spraak
Yelp is a Rival to Google...? This claim surprises me.

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chaosite
Google is so big it's basically a rival to any company that sells computer
software or services.

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thefreeman
Since when is Yelp a Google rival?

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pirocks
Since Google+ reviews show up in search results for things like restaurants.

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option_greek
Yelp and Whiny seem to really rhyme together.

