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Yelp Uses Public Shaming To Dissuade Fake Reviews
While social travel review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor can be helpful for trip planning, one constant criticism is how easily it is for business owners to write or pay for fake reviews of their establishment to boost its rating. In Yelp's latest effort to discourage this kind of manipulation, they will be publicly shaming these businesses by displaying warning signs to readers (shown above).
The travel site is putting on their detective hats and watching for suspicious activity by business owners. For example, if many reviews are being submitted from the same Internet Protocol (IP) address, this can be an indicator. Once they find these "rogue solicitations," they warn users. According to Digital Trends, the alert will stay active for 90 days and will be removed after this period, as long as the business quits gaming the system.
"We want to make sure consumers are making informed decisions," said Eric Singley, Yelp's VP of Consumer & Mobile Products. "Yelp's automated review filter is working around the clock to flag these types of biased reviews, and we believe that you deserve the right to know when this type of activity is taking place behind the scenes."
Although this new idea has only been in place for a couple days, it's already working. For example, a Texan business owner who had purchased 200 positive online reviews was caught in Yelp's filter due to its overly "impressive results."
Mr. Singley notes that, while Yelp does have to be aware of these scams, for the most part their travel community is full of honest business owners.
For more information, check out Yelp's official blog post on the new initiative.
[Image via Yelp]
Filed under: Internet Tools, News
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
momo0501 Oct 20th 2012 2:43PM
I think Yelp leads the pack in fraudulent companies! they say they're going to stop fraudulent review..yet they charge $$ to companies and cater to those very companies and try to harm companies that do not pay them $$. How honest is that? My husband has a small painting business and because he doesn't subscribe to Yelp they will only post the one negative review written about him and they 'filter' all the positive reviews written by his customers. "filter' is their code word for hold the small business man hostage by not posting legitimate good reviews. Yelp should be shut down or at least audited by a legitimate company.
good_idea Oct 20th 2012 4:04PM
Interesting comment. I had a Yelp experience from the other side as a consumer.
I only bother to post reviews when the service is very bad or very good.
But Yelp has chosen to hide my honest negative reviews, which makes me now doubt the Yelp reviews as being "complete" and let readers chose for themselves. If anything the unfiltered reviews look like they were written by the business owner. Where Amazon keeps all reviews as long as they are not abusive - you can trust Amazon for a spectrum of reviews. But not Yelp.
Maybe these honest negative reviews were with companies that submitted to the Yelp fee.
I skip Yelp reviews now.
kath Oct 20th 2012 9:47PM
I agree with MOMO501. I have a friend who owns a restaurant and he was told the same thing by Yelp. They said if he didn't pay them for advertising, they couldn't guarantee that the reviews of his restaurant wouldn't be filtered. So now, as far as I'm concerned, Yelp has no credibility anymore, and I make sure that everyone who mentions them knows this.
Dan Oct 23rd 2012 2:58AM
Yelp Sales Reps are so pushy and scammy. They called my dad and tried to tell him that "thousands" of people are would be calling him from yelp and all he has to do is pay yelp few hundred dollars every month so yelp would feature his business. They are taking advantage of small business owners. I wish there was a 'review button' for Yelp Sales Reps.
Danny Oct 23rd 2012 9:22AM
Help is on the way people.
There's a new sheriff on his way to the town of Review Space. The name is RaveOrBash. It's all about providing consumers with a trustworthy and useful platform to find and share authentic experiences gained in the marketplace at local and non-local businesses.
We are very different in a lot of ways that we'd like you to try us when we launch to discover on your own.
We are launching in the new year. We will be beta testing early next year. Follow us @raveorbash for updates.
Kallie Oct 25th 2012 7:12AM
Though yelp may not use outright extortion to sell ad space, it is my opinion that they use IMPLIED extortion.
The thousands of small businesses who are having similar grievances cannot be discounted. There is something wrong here, and the law which protects yelp CDA SEC. 230 needs to be reformed.
martinW Oct 29th 2012 1:57PM
Just Google "yelp extortion" and see for yourself how yelp is hurting small businesses all over the country! Where is the FTC on this? Real people are suffering and being hurt by these extortionists!