From personal experience Yelp is a company I do not respect or trust in anything.
Yelp absolutely don't care about small business and how their filtering system works. My wife is running a small business and she has been facing exactly the problems described in the article. Real customers posting real reviews but quickly disappearing in the filtered reviews for unknown reasons, some of her customers have been on Yelp for a while but still their reviews are filtered, while some competitors (we guess) post a negative review with what is most likely a fake account stayed, and are never filtered out.
Like in the article, my wife was contacted by Yelp to advertise, and she declined... Soon after some of the positive reviews vanished!
Yelp until a year or so ago didn't even let business owner reply to a negative review, so the power was in the hand of the reviewer. What is worst is that even with that in place, even if a fake review is posted and advertising for a competitive business which is against their TOS, Yelp simply do not care of removing such review.
Another area wher Yelp is doing a really poor job: it is still possible to review a closed business or a business that change name BUT the business owner can't reply to any such post. So the communication is borked and Yelp does't care to fix that. They do mention "freedom of speech" which my wife and I do get, but then how come someone can post a review on a close business, but the previous business owner can't reply to it?? If people are able to review but owner can't reply, it means that their back end system has some logic to handle that, but the code for the owner to reply has most likely been disabled ! Why? That's not really how freedom of speech work!
Yelp is NOT at all for promoting small business, they are in the business of selling ads and having the most page views. Trying to be a fair and honest business is not at all on their business plan.
From what I heard from other small business owner here in the Bay Area, they have experienced mostly the same.
Yelp is what I consider a SCAM and as a software engineer I will never consider a job in this unprofessional company. Sooner or later I think the truth will be shown on how Yelp manipulate their system for their own benefits.
Finally to conclude this rant, my wife business is still going on even with some negative reviews because we made sure that she was not dependent on Yelp for getting customers. She had many happy returning customers for the past 3 years, even if their positive reviews disappeared.
Yelp are in a hard place, they show negative reviews about peoples businesses. People who work there, or own the business absolutely hate this, because it could cost them there business. Nobody likes having their work threatened.
And most people who own businesses think they are doing a good job, and don't like criticism. They take it very personally, and blame Yelp rather than the reviewer.
It looks like either you have never been interacting with a business owner you know and trust, or you are a Yelp employee.
Believe me, my wife can handle negative review when they are truthful but when you see a negative reviews that is clearly advocating for a competitors and Yelp doesn't do a thing to remove it, you have to wonder what are they up to.
Additionally even without getting all the information about a review that Yelp is getting (IP address, frequency of visits, etc), we saw a few times similar negative review being posted on the same day with similar wordings for 2 newly created accounts. Interesting enough the same day one real customer (with many Yelp reviews) posted a 4 stars reviews... Guess what?
Yelp 'algorithm' filtered out the 4 stars reviews and left the 2 one star reviews... Sorry but as an engineer with over 15 years of experience it sounds fishy to me.
Since my wife started her business, she has met various other business owners with similar experience...
Hard to believe that their filtering system is not directed toward the good of Yelp business plan for selling ads.
Someone who sees anyone arguing Yelp's side as an employee sounds a little paranoid. I am inclined not to believe you, and surprised you would put forward that argument. Of course your are expected to think the best about your wife, and how she handles business.
You may even be correct, but you are too biased in this issue to offer an honest and objective opinion, surely you see that?
Now I am not saying Yelp do not do some dodgy filtering, but it would be incredibly stupid of them if they did. I have seen many arguments before, but no actual proof. And this article from the WSJ, after further investigation, indicated that Yelp are not doing anything dodgy. The negative reviews seem to be honest, from a decent reviewer, not a fellow dog trainer.
Yelp absolutely don't care about small business and how their filtering system works. My wife is running a small business and she has been facing exactly the problems described in the article. Real customers posting real reviews but quickly disappearing in the filtered reviews for unknown reasons, some of her customers have been on Yelp for a while but still their reviews are filtered, while some competitors (we guess) post a negative review with what is most likely a fake account stayed, and are never filtered out.
Like in the article, my wife was contacted by Yelp to advertise, and she declined... Soon after some of the positive reviews vanished!
Yelp until a year or so ago didn't even let business owner reply to a negative review, so the power was in the hand of the reviewer. What is worst is that even with that in place, even if a fake review is posted and advertising for a competitive business which is against their TOS, Yelp simply do not care of removing such review. Another area wher Yelp is doing a really poor job: it is still possible to review a closed business or a business that change name BUT the business owner can't reply to any such post. So the communication is borked and Yelp does't care to fix that. They do mention "freedom of speech" which my wife and I do get, but then how come someone can post a review on a close business, but the previous business owner can't reply to it?? If people are able to review but owner can't reply, it means that their back end system has some logic to handle that, but the code for the owner to reply has most likely been disabled ! Why? That's not really how freedom of speech work!
Yelp is NOT at all for promoting small business, they are in the business of selling ads and having the most page views. Trying to be a fair and honest business is not at all on their business plan.
From what I heard from other small business owner here in the Bay Area, they have experienced mostly the same.
Yelp is what I consider a SCAM and as a software engineer I will never consider a job in this unprofessional company. Sooner or later I think the truth will be shown on how Yelp manipulate their system for their own benefits.
Finally to conclude this rant, my wife business is still going on even with some negative reviews because we made sure that she was not dependent on Yelp for getting customers. She had many happy returning customers for the past 3 years, even if their positive reviews disappeared.