[kailuowang]

I found that Yelp's reviews very unreliable. My business owner friends told me that they are constantly harassed by yelp's sales representatives to buy the right to "clean up" their reviews. I don't see how yelp can continue trash their brand like this and blaming Google for their low performance.

[tuxxy]

There's a bar nearby that has a "People Hate Us On Yelp!" sticker. I ran into the owner there one day and I asked him about it and he claimed that he immediately got it after the third or fourth call from the Yelp sales reps about cleaning up their reviews.

From then on, he started telling people to give bad reviews of the bar. It's not like it matters, it's a very popular bar.

[annexrichmond]

> I found that Yelp's reviews very unreliable.

followed by hearsay about your friends who told you about what a Yelp sales rep said.

How is this an argument for Google's business practices?

[bhldr]

Cleaning up reviews is actually not a Yelp feature. Paid or unpaid.

[JCzynski]

False. Squelching reviews that are "not relevant" or otherwise flagged, making them not show up unless the list of reviews is expanded to include the described-as-low-quality reviews, and IIRC not being included in the star-rating calculation, is SOP at Yelp.

It's done algorithmically by default, but there are people whose job it is to track places where the algorithms have gone wrong, and while ostensibly their latitude for independent decision is narrow it's actually pretty broad. Also that set of decisions is kept in a separate DB most programmers can't view or interact with, but which the customer support team could easily point the flaggers to.

Source: Worked there briefly.

[criddell]

It seems to be a sales tactic though.

[secabeen]

If these businesses are "constantly harassed" why has there never been published a recording of these harassing calls? There are 38 states in which either party can record a call without the consent of the other party.

[dep_b]

Their complaint is still just.