[nathan-io]

Yelp has always been a thinly veiled extortion platform, overrun by spam, yet surprisingly quick to filter legitimate five-star reviews.

I tried their paid advertising for a client in 2017, and have avoided it like the plague ever since.

Not only did the trial yield no leads, but Yelp billed substantially more than the defined monthly campaign spend.

It took repeated complaints and escalation to a sales manager to even get part of the overage credited.

My experience was:

* Near zero detail or transparency in campaign reports

* Deceptive and confusing budget rules

* Absurd cost per click (even compared to Google Ads)

* Sudden filtering of all the legitimate 5-star reviews on one listing, after we declined further sales efforts