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