This article is 4 years old. Does yelp still employ these tactics? From what I gather it seems like a small sect of Yelps employees engaged in the practice.
The "average" rating that Yelp gives a business isn't actually the average. I discovered this accidentally one day. I tried a restaurant with a 4+ rating and hated it. Discovered later that night from the desktop interface that there were "hidden" reviews that I had to explicitly click to see. The reviews were highly unfavourable and their scores were not taken into account into the "average".
Not sure how the business managed to get these reviews "hidden". You could reveal them in the desktop interface but they didn't exist at all through the android app. After all the recent "Yelp mafia" stories, I assume that you can pay yelp to hide reviews?
Reviews are moderated via an algorithm. It seems that the ability of the sales force to moderate reviews as been completely removed and was a while ago.
Allowing business who pay to have better visibility/remove negative reviews. Might no longer be the case, but they've had a few "scandals" related to this.
Comments
How isn't Yelp ethical?
There have been many stories about Yelp like [this one](http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-...) alleging extortionary tactics.
This article is 4 years old. Does yelp still employ these tactics? From what I gather it seems like a small sect of Yelps employees engaged in the practice.
You're right, of course. I'm not claiming that Yelp does extort, only that these allegations are the source of their imperfect reputation.
The "average" rating that Yelp gives a business isn't actually the average. I discovered this accidentally one day. I tried a restaurant with a 4+ rating and hated it. Discovered later that night from the desktop interface that there were "hidden" reviews that I had to explicitly click to see. The reviews were highly unfavourable and their scores were not taken into account into the "average".
Not sure how the business managed to get these reviews "hidden". You could reveal them in the desktop interface but they didn't exist at all through the android app. After all the recent "Yelp mafia" stories, I assume that you can pay yelp to hide reviews?
Reviews are moderated via an algorithm. It seems that the ability of the sales force to moderate reviews as been completely removed and was a while ago.
Allowing business who pay to have better visibility/remove negative reviews. Might no longer be the case, but they've had a few "scandals" related to this.