It's easy to come down against Yelp, but small businesses have been trying to "game" Yelp in unsophisticated ways for some time.
We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be submitted by friends. They get angry at Yelp for allowing bad reviews to show up and think they can fix it with reviews written in all-caps with text like "Bob and Jane ARE THE NICEST, WARMEST, MOST AMAZING PEOPLE I KNOW and the person who wrote the review above DOESN"T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT." We always advise them not to use these tactics but to instead put a sign up asking their customers to leave reviews on Yelp (since all reviews on the site trend to 4.3, they're probably improving their position with every new review).
To recap:
- So a business has a small amount of reviews online, one negative from someone who has left more than 400 reviews.
- The business asks their loyal customers to leave positive reviews all at the same time.
- Yelp sees abnormal traffic and abnormal acceleration of overly-positive reviews from brand new users (OMG. Best Dog Trainer EVER!! A+++++ Would recommend).
- Yelp's algorithm flags this activity as abnormal since it looks similar to spam/paid/fake reviews and won't alter their algorithm to accommodate an attempt to game their system.
The reality is small businesses do this kind of "gaming" all the time and sometimes it's benign, sometimes it's malicious or fake. I once worked with a client who had left dozens of reviews about themselves and complained that Yelp always took them down which "wasn't fair". Yelp sees way more attempts at gaming reviews than you'd realize and I imagine they've gotten pretty good at it. Like Google's algorithms, Yelp's algorithms may occasionally flag real reviews. Both have an incentive to improve.
The other thing is that if I'm a sales agent at Yelp (responsible for bringing in $8k in revenue this month), I'm going to call on customers who have bad reviews (and thus show up lower in searches) first. This is not because I'm trying to scam anyone. It's because the folks at the bottom are usually the most eager to pay to show up at the top. The guys who already sit in the top 5 spots of an organic search have trouble justifying the expense. If I call on someone who is on the first page of a Yelp search, their first thought isn't going to be "this guy's trying to scam us". Likewise, the companies that buy Google ads aren't the ones who show up first in an organic search either (unless they demonstrate that the ROI justifies it. SMBs aren't typically as sophisticated).
This isn't extortion, it's not a scam, and it's not wrong. It may appear obtuse from the outside, but nothing would harm Yelp more than for these allegations to be true. It would be downright irresponsible of Yelp to try to do things this way from a shareholders' perspective.
TL;DR: SMBs try to game Yelp all the time. Yelp's built algorithms to look for this kind of behavior. This business hit a lot of triggers.
TL;DR: You're wrong. And you sound like someone from Yelp trying to "game the system" and write positive reviews about yourself. Maybe PG's algorithms should censor you without any evidence?
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My parents had the exact same experience as in the article.
- A few years ago, they didn't really know what yelp was, but a customer was surprised that the reviews up there were pretty bad, mostly just from customers who were upset we had to send them letters after they didn't pay their bills.
- We encouraged people to review the business on Yelp. Despite numerous people (including a couple Yelp Elites) writing positive real reviews, interestingly, none of the reviews showed up on Yelp.
- Customers told us their reviews had not shown up, and when we called Yelp to find out why, a few reps either claimed there was no way to put the reviews back or they denied their existence. The one thing they did have in common was they promised things would be "fixed" if we advertised with them. I'm pretty sure that's closer to extortion than smart business.
- Last week, my dad finally caved and placed some ads on Yelp.
- Within an hour, there were suddenly dozens of additional reviews on there for the business, and the rating had shot up from 2 stars to 4.5 stars.
So let me ask you, if Yelp really thought those hidden reviews were trying to game the system, why were those reviews placed back when we agreed to spend some ad money? Yelp can't argue that their reviews are unbiased when stuff like this happens.
I have no affiliation with Yelp. Click on my username anytime if you want to read who I work with and some background. It's right out in the open. However, I had to look at your posts to learn that your new startup is in the local review/recommendation space which is something you should actually disclose when bashing a competitor.
If what you're saying about Yelp's ad reps and software is truthful, then you should be spreading your father's story far and wide (call your local newspaper, they'd love the story), and you should feel comfortable recommending that your father cease to do business with them (why did he?).
I didn't think you worked at Yelp, but you were defending them just like my parents' customers were defending them. And as you point out, it's wrong of me to accuse you of gaming the system without any evidence that you work for them. Doesn't feel that great, does it? You actually illustrated my point quite nicely.
Also, we're not really competing with Yelp at all, so I think it's all fair game. In fact, we're integrating with Yelp's API, since we do recognize that despite how screwed up I may think their business is, people still trust them.
And my father did it because the few hundred dollars he spent is paid back if it prevents a couple customers from leaving, or even if he doesn't have to spend another hour on the phone with them. Doesn't mean what they did is fair, though.
That doesn't surprise me.
Depending on the business, Yelp is powerful and you may have to play by their rule.
See my previous post earlier, at least my wife small business is not too dependent on Yelp because customers are signing for classes spread over 10 to 12 weeks.
But it's terrible to see the effect of purchasing Yelp ads change Yelp system so much!
Agreed. If there was one terrible review written a year or two ago by someone with a reviewing history, and then suddenly twenty gushing all caps reviews filled with superlatives and exclamations of personal affection by reviewers with no other review history, all posted within the same week, I'd be upset if yelp didn't filter them out.
If some business tells all of their best customers to post a review on Yelp, a site they had never used before, then they actually are straw reviews and worth nothing - and this business owner admits that. Case closed. Filter working perfectly.
This is not to say that the one bad review characterizes this man's business in any way. He probably just doesn't have a tech-savvy, hip clientele, and the first yelper he ran into may have been a spoiled curmudgeon. What offsets the damage is that since he isn't drawing from that hip clientele, the review is likely not driving away any significant business.
The best response would probably be to put a Yelp sign in some prominent space, which might trigger someone who is familiar with their business to add a few more reviews. If he gives good service, the preponderance will be good. Much better idea than calling for a favor from your affectionate regulars.
All true, but note that the "other 18" in this case are not all posted in the same week, with all caps etc. Several are in the same week, but others are spread over multiple years and are not overly gushy, all-caps-y, or anything else (although it's possible they were one-time posters). Reading through the filtered posts, my thought was that if these were the work of someone gaming the system, that person is A LOT more subtle and meta than one would normally expect. More likely is that the majority of them are totally legit.
That implication is based on the fact that he has reviewed seven dog trainers, given two of them one star reviews, one of them a five star review, and the other four reviews weren't worth mentioning in the article for some reason.
Is it at all unlikely that this guy took a dog to two trainers, didn't like them, then went to a third that he thought was great? Or does it have to be a conspiracy?
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edit:
and from the article, the business owner's opinion: "The whole thing is odd," Frank Brader said. "It certainly seems to me that he's been to so many other dog trainers that nothing you can do is going to satisfy this person."
Does anything even look vaguely suspicious about it? His average rating is four stars, and contrary to the article, he went to four dog trainers in 2010, and gave two of them five star ratings, and two of them one star ratings.
"The Chicago Tribune article could go evan a lot further to expose Yelp for the extortionist business model they employ. I and thousands of hard working small business folks around the country who deliver exceptional quality and service every day to our customers are being victimized by this extortionist buiness model."
"Score one for the small business owner not happy with Yelp's horrible filter algorithm. Yelp is a horrible business and if they don't fix things fast they will simply disappear (we can only hope) its amazing how there filter has managed to alienate all of their users (businesses and reviewers). Great article in the tribune, shine more light on Yelp's craptastic system. By the way we are animal lovers too!"
The question is: Why doesn't Yelp have a flag for someone whom is posting a significant number of negative replies and one positive reply for the same business category?
Would make me question whether or not the owner of the business receiving a positive reply is trying to game Yelp's system.
We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be submitted by friends. They get angry at Yelp for allowing bad reviews to show up and think they can fix it with reviews written in all-caps with text like "Bob and Jane ARE THE NICEST, WARMEST, MOST AMAZING PEOPLE I KNOW and the person who wrote the review above DOESN"T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT." We always advise them not to use these tactics but to instead put a sign up asking their customers to leave reviews on Yelp (since all reviews on the site trend to 4.3, they're probably improving their position with every new review).
To recap:
- So a business has a small amount of reviews online, one negative from someone who has left more than 400 reviews.
- The business asks their loyal customers to leave positive reviews all at the same time.
- Yelp sees abnormal traffic and abnormal acceleration of overly-positive reviews from brand new users (OMG. Best Dog Trainer EVER!! A+++++ Would recommend).
- Yelp's algorithm flags this activity as abnormal since it looks similar to spam/paid/fake reviews and won't alter their algorithm to accommodate an attempt to game their system.
The reality is small businesses do this kind of "gaming" all the time and sometimes it's benign, sometimes it's malicious or fake. I once worked with a client who had left dozens of reviews about themselves and complained that Yelp always took them down which "wasn't fair". Yelp sees way more attempts at gaming reviews than you'd realize and I imagine they've gotten pretty good at it. Like Google's algorithms, Yelp's algorithms may occasionally flag real reviews. Both have an incentive to improve.
The other thing is that if I'm a sales agent at Yelp (responsible for bringing in $8k in revenue this month), I'm going to call on customers who have bad reviews (and thus show up lower in searches) first. This is not because I'm trying to scam anyone. It's because the folks at the bottom are usually the most eager to pay to show up at the top. The guys who already sit in the top 5 spots of an organic search have trouble justifying the expense. If I call on someone who is on the first page of a Yelp search, their first thought isn't going to be "this guy's trying to scam us". Likewise, the companies that buy Google ads aren't the ones who show up first in an organic search either (unless they demonstrate that the ROI justifies it. SMBs aren't typically as sophisticated).
This isn't extortion, it's not a scam, and it's not wrong. It may appear obtuse from the outside, but nothing would harm Yelp more than for these allegations to be true. It would be downright irresponsible of Yelp to try to do things this way from a shareholders' perspective.
TL;DR: SMBs try to game Yelp all the time. Yelp's built algorithms to look for this kind of behavior. This business hit a lot of triggers.