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Restauranteurs Say Yelp Uses Extortion To Ply Ad Sales
Readers Mike Van Pelt and EricThegreen point out a story in the East Bay Express alleging that online restaurant review site Yelp is doing more than providing a nice interface for foodies to share their impressions of restaurants. Instead, says the article, representatives from the site have called restaurants in the Bay area to solicit advertising, but with an interesting twist: the ad sales reps let restaurant owners know that, if they buy advertising at around $300 a month, Yelp can "do something" about prominently displayed negative reviews of their restaurants. If the claims are true, it sure lowers my opinion of Yelp, which I'd thought of as one of the good guys (and a useful site). I wonder how many other online review sites might be doing something similar.
That's rather disappointing for a community based effort. My girlfriend and I use a similar site but it skimps on the advertisements: http://ottawafoodies.com/
Bored at work? Play Game!
So the restaurants would be buying protection from negative reviews? Interesting . . .
Paying protection money . . .
Wow.
If Yelp removes negative reviews for a fee, it seems to me that they have given up their common carrier status and have made themselves liable for errors in the reviews they leave up. Restaurants that receive negative reviews could sue Yelp for libel if they can demonstrate errors in the reviews.
People manipulate online review and rating systems all the time, whats interesting is that this is on such a local level that it brings the corruption much closer to home. That being said, it does not seem that this is a very uncommon occurrence.
The musings of just another geek and his junk.
Maybe you don't like to look at ads. Maybe you wants them to go away. Let's say you become a member. I would not be at all surprised if you found yourself +1 Insightful in the very near future. Think about it. Let me know.
A friend who manages a restaurant in Watertown MA asked me what Yelp was... She was contacted by someone claiming to be from Yelp with the same pitch.
I knew of Yelp, and used to trust the reviews. But I had already lost respect for them when they obviously sold my e-mail addy, despite claims of confidentiality and my opting out of their mailings.
Thankfully my town has a really great local source for impartial reviews of every restaurant in town so we don't have to deal with yelp or citysearch or whatever:
http://www.santabarbara.com/Dining/
What they're allegedly doing is scummy, but not extortion. Or rather, it's only extortion if Yelp itself is generating the negative reviews. Accepting cash to remove legitimate negative reviews is just slimy.
Their advertising side dominates their editorial side, just like the respectable old media guys. Web 2.0 made good, I think I'm tearing up...
In related news, Yelp has announced that it has reached a $300 cross-advertising relationship with Slashdot to "do something" about a prominently displayed news item.
We all now know what the ... step is: Extortion.
Shake down marketing, in desperate times men do desperate things.
And then thinly slice it and place it in a broth that perfectly balances sweet, sour, salt and heat.
Four stars.
I lost confidence in Yelp after I posted a negative review of an Italian bistro in Haddonfield, NJ (which I won't name to avoid giving them any free publicity) and it was removed after about a week. Over time other reviewers for the restaurant made references to their previous negative reviews being removed as well. My girlfriend and I had dinner at this place for Valentine's day last year and the experience was miserable. The food was bland and overpriced, and the kitchen manager was making very rude sexual comments about his dating life and experience with women. I wrote to the owner first explaining the problem and he responded with suggestions that I'm a prude, obviously don't know good food, would not be happy anywhere, and suggested that if I'd like to come back sometime (I live in PA), he'd be willing to settle this outside. So since I wasn't getting anywhere with that route, I posted both my and his emails into a yelp review. Gone a week later. I've watched the review section since then and have noticed several negative reviews go up and are then removed shortly after. Currently there are only two reviews up, with 3 and 5 stars. My only idea at this point is that the owner of the place (whose email address looks suspiciously like the word "douche") badgered Yelp into removing them.
Anyone else have this experience?
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
First things first, what Yelp is doing is not the most respectable thing, but should not surprise a single person that understands business. Next, what they are doing is not extortion, at least not yet. When they call companies and tell them that a competitor bought a sponsorship to promote themselves and if they don't up the ante along with them, then they 'wont be able to do anything about those negative reviews,' then you have a case for extortion. It could come in many flavors, but you should get the idea.
It is also important to remember that bad ethics is not evidence enough alone to throw around the extortion word. In this case, you merely disagree with how Yelp handles sales, sponsorship and their relation to the reviews on their site.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
I'm wondering if they can be sued for that. If they really write bad reviews for restaurants that don't advertise, I would think that this would count as libel, even if you can't sue for extortion.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Does Jack White have another side project?
Hahaha!! Oh man, I crack myself up....
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
after RTFA I am not so sure what's going on is clearcut, so take this story with some salt.
Clearly the sales reps are 'shaking down' some restaurants, but I think it's more likely that they are trying to inflate their own numbers and don't have the power they pretend or are wording it in such a way that it seems they can do more than they can.
What you get is just the ability to choose one review to be 'front and center'. Otherwise all reviews are placed by an algorithm. So a sales rep says 'we could help with that negative review' but what they mean is 'because you get to place one featured positive one at the top'
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Also, who else thought it was this yelp
How is this article 6 pages long? I cannot help but snicker reading the first paragraph. I get the image of a restaurant owner cringing every time the phone rings, dreading the voice of Henchman Number 24 on the other end.
"Would you like to purchase advertising on our site? We can rearrange the order of your ratings. The Monarch Mobile will be right over with the paperwork."
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
I live in Texarkana AR. I eat mostly in Texarkana, TX. The Bowie County has this nice report http://www.txkusa.org/health/Food-Report.pdf
It lists: Establishment, Address, Date of Inspection, Type of Inspection, and Score. My wife and I check it every time we consider trying something new. We first look 'em up. If they don't have an A; we don't eat there.
I just wish Miller County had the same thing. Heck, it would be nice if there was an easy federal health website that it was trivial to search for this info. Heck, it would be nice to have those GPS units be able to poll for that info when you are "out of town." Just so you are sure to pick a clean place to eat.
I use Yelp regularly and have found some good restaurants through Yelp that I would have never visited on my own. It seems like they can't simply leave good enough alone.
Absolutely true. I personally know a restaurant owner in San Francisco that complains about these suggestive calls.
Yelp = crap.
Facebook is the new AOL
Link:
http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/02/kathleen-richards-east-bay-express.html
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
A LOT of sites still in "start up" mode (it still is in start up mode, despite what anyone may think) rely on these types of tactics.
My response to a crappy meal and poor service is to just not go there again.
Why write the letter? Was it the leacherous nature of the manager what did it? It seems a letter just adds to the waste of your time beyond just a crappy meal.
Perhaps a letter to the local editor of whatever rags your town has might be a better use of your time.
Of course all companies in this situation would claim its the actions of a rouge sale's person. But I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Think Deeply.
Hey, Yelp. For the right incentive this whole Slashdot thread can go away.
Please name names.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Well, yes and no.
1. That some businesses would want to slander (or libel) the competition, yeah, that probably goes all the way back to the dawn of time. Which is why most countries have various numbers of laws to contain the phenomenon.
2. There's still something distasteful about being the guy who tries to cash in on that with a "if you don't pay 300 a month, we'll show bad reviews of you at the top." That's no longer even about competition, it's a plain old protection racket. It's not just a betrayal of the public's trust, it's really trying to blackmail someone with a threat to their public image and reputation.
We're in an age where someone's reputation is probably the most important asset of their business. I wouldn't be surprised if some restaurants would lose less money if you threw a molotov through their windows, than if you convince half the town to not even give them a try. Doubly so since you can insure agains the former, but there's no insurance I know of against just not getting customers. So basically I see no fundamental moral difference between, basically:
- "Nice restaurant you have there. It would be a shame if anything happened to it. It's a rough neighbourhood, you know? Lots of evil people out there. Some vandals could tear the place down one night. But we're nice people. If you pay us 300$ a month for our efforts, we could keep an eye out that it doesn't happen."
- "Nice reputation your restaurant has. It would be a shame if anything happened to it. It's a tough world, you know? Lots of evil people out there. Some bastards could plaster the reviews page with really nasty stuff. But we're nice people. If you pay us 300$ a month for our efforts, we could keep an eye out that it doesn't happen."
Both essentially threaten you with a bigger loss unless you pay the protection fee.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There are pretty fair reviews on the very expensive restaurants in my city on Yelp, especially the Big Burrito owned restaurants. Maybe there is something to this because in Podunk, PA Big Burrito owns/runs the nicest places in this city. A lot of the independently owned gems aren't even on there, which is a shame. There are a lot of kind of hole in the walls places which are very clean and arty in our city that have great Indian, Filipino and Thai food. I would pick those places over Soba any day.
The same behavior has been going on in print magazines and newspapers probably since the they started. Ever notice how whatever band or establishment is reviewed in a magazine also ends up advertising? What they print and what is advertised is often very related. That's how they stay in business. The cover cost of magazines rarely pays for anything besides distribution costs and its the ad revenue that actually lets print happen. Thus, ad dollars often dictate was is or isn't in print. Sometimes the print media is extorting money out of others, and sometimes they're selling out and accepting the money offered to them for services. If they're really lucky, they're being offered money by people they really like and they don't actually have to edit stories. Even newspapers run into this because what news and stories they cover can offend their advertisers so it must be edited. It's the sad truth of print.
The web is just another form of print. Many websites get their money from advertising and so you see the exact same behavior that exists in dead tree media. Difference in media doesn't mean there's going to be any difference in how the operations are run as businesses. An establishment like Yelp might have their reputation matter somewhat, but only the clicks and the dollars will determine if it is enough.
This better fits the description: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
And, considering that it is/was practiced by our pals in the Big Music Industry . . . doesn't make it any more palatable.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
even without this article, Yelp sucks from the perspective of a business owner. The root of the problem is that there is no way for a business to respond to misleading reviews. Businesses are barred from reviewing themselves, which makes sense, but there's no other way to post a comment other than in the form of a review!
As a result, there's no way to respond to information that is simply wrong. For example, if a reviewer says that a retail store doesn't carry 'brand X' when in fact the store carries the complete line, there's nothing the store owner can do to correct the misinformation, short of setting up a shill account and posting a new review.
when they meet the REAL mafia..
Call up some local italian joint in Chicago and do this offer. Pretty soon yelp will pay THEM to make sure their kneecaps stay whole.
I can't stand Yelp. Many times the reviews don't match the reality of the restaurant. And what the CEO says about not being true 'coz there are some bad reviews, the question is how many bad are taken out and if only the less bad reviews are left... And probably the restaurant he posted in his blog as an example was one which didn't pay the bribe fee! DOWN with YELP!
ROTFL. I'd be very curious to know what you think a "common carrier" is. God save us from amateur lawyers!
The word is restaurateur, not restauranteur.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/restaurateur
If you live in Buffalo, NY, check out Bill Rapaport's Buffalo Restaurant Guide. It's put together by a CS professor at the University at Buffalo. Although the web design is right out of 1995, but it's extremely fair, useful, and informative site, and a model for other grass-roots restaurant review services to emulate.
I read a blog post about this case pointing out that East Bay Express also happens to run a restaurant rating service. Conflicts of interest don't always lead to problems, but the conflict should be kept in mind when evaluating the article's claims.
A link to the post.
"Preceded by itself yields falsehood" preceded by itself yields falsehood.
Jamie Zawinsky talked about the dirt under the shiny Yelp logo recently: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html
The LA Times had this "scoop" a week ago. This is old news!
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus11-2009feb11,0,6849007.column
Yelp is now known to all of us, and Im sure more of us will probably use this service to find restaurants when we visit other citys. Such a sham.
Am I right or am I right? I'm right.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Evidence please? Could it be a competitor that is making these claims?
The basic elements of common carrier status are:
(1) A business operating under a license issued by the government;
(2) The business offers to provide non-discriminatory service to the public; and
(3) The service provided is considered a "public convenience and necessity".
According to Wikipedia (my Black's is at home):
"A common carrier must further demonstrate to the regulator that it is "fit, willing and able" to provide those services for which it is granted authority. Common carriers typically transport persons or goods according to defined and published routes, time schedules and rate tables upon the approval of regulators."
Common carrier is also often used in the telecom sector to describe a similar service, whereby the cell phone company (for example) offers you access to the publicly owned radio spectrum according to a rate schedule.
In short -- nothing about Yelp relates in any way to common carrier status.
Please don't use technical terms you don't understand in posts without doing some research first. I don't go around flining technical jargon about compiling techniques, why do people insist on trying to use (or should I say misuse) tecnical legal terms???
Yelp Yelp (as in search for yelp), then sort by rating you'll see shit going waay back.
My gf works in the restaurant industry. When I showed this to her she told me that because Yelp just valued themselves at like 10million the news media are getting interested.
Yelp directly competes with East Bay Express for restaurant reviews, and their "Best of" awards, so no surprise that the Express would run a Hit piece against Yelp. Moreover, the Express has also had controversies of its own in how it does reader "rankings" of local restaurants. And for those of us trying to improve local public transit, the author of this EB-Express article is very well known for her slanted and inaccurate hit pieces against AC Transit (the local bus service).
If it really is as blatant as this, then this is a trivial problem to correct. Put one of those prerecorded messages on your phone saying "To ensure quality, conversations may be monitored or recorded". Next time a Yelp employee tries to shake you down, record them. Post it on your store's website and make a YouTube clip of the audio. When Yelp attempts to force the message to be removed ... Behold, the Power of Streisand.
1-Create Restaurant rating site 2-Make it collaborative and make people review it so you don't have to hire staff 3-Extort restaurateurs 4-.... 5-Profit!!!! (for a while) 6-Getting your site discredited. 7-FAIL
Let's face it, no review by anyone that you do not personally know is worth anything.
Professional reviewers 'do it for the money' and can therefore be either bought, or just recognised and given preferential treatment.
Reviews by members of the public can be faked. Anyone can sign up and claim anything.
Some people just love to complain, and will do so in every forum at every chance. Negative reviews will always dominate. (This very article is a negative review, in a way). Satisfied customers have no reason to leave a review.
i own a bakery and yelp weirdos told us we could have some negative reviews "dealt with" if we advertised with them
I know a couple of restaurant owners. Reviews are only half of the story. Positive word of mouth is really vital; restaurants are by their very nature dependent on the bricks & mortal business style. They can't even do mail order, so a bad reputation leading to the loss of repeat business can destroy them.
This one place in my town was making an easy million per year, most of that from repeat customers eating there a couple times a month, some as often as two and three times a week. Then the owner cashed out and the new owner let things slide. You can make a LOT of money on a successful restaurant, or you can lose a lot of money on a restaurant very fast. It only takes a couple of bad experiences for a patron to stop coming around. If 100 regulars take away their $20 to $50 per week, then that's a catastrophic loss just on it's own. But that means 100 people are no longer saying, "I know this great place. . !" and are instead saying, "My favorite place is under a new dick-head owner and it totally sucks! Don't go!", then the damage can be almost impossible to recover from. The restaurant in question went from being a fifteen-year gold mine success story to closing its doors within just 18 months.
In the restaurant biz, word of mouth really matters, so the place you're talking about is probably already suffering.
-FL
While this practice may not legally be extortion (or may be, that remains to be seen), accepting advertising dollars from companies that are being reviewed is, itself, a conflict of interest. That is a system that cannot help but to be dishonest!
I wrote a negative review on Yelp for Linn's in Cambria, CA last year. That review is now gone.
Wonder why...
I sent a promo code to appcrave for them to review an iPhone app I wrote -- they replied back essentially saying "No guarantee, unless you give us $50. We don't publish bad reviews if you give us money. Advertising starts at $400, and you get a free good review" Yick. Bad taste in my mouth.
http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html
Hey, you with the finger on the down-moderation button! No, JWZ isn't just some schmuck with a livejournal account! In fact, he is probably the one person who it makes the most sense to link to in this discussion*.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
*(and not just because he will hate it)
They have a lot of preasure to break even, they need to make money...but at any price? they are risking their reputation. Here is a free alternative to Yelp for local businesses: www.rateitall.com/promote
There is no such word as "restauranteur" - no letter "n" in it x
Like most small business owners when you add your business to a website like Yalp you check in once in a while to see how things are going. I went from 8 positive reviews down to 2, no reason. All legit reviews from existing happy customers.
So ya Yalp is very shady but this is common knowledge now. In fact I was warned against putting my company on Yalp by others because of how shady they are.
I've heard anecdotal evidence of this behavior in NYC as well. A good friend explained his experience with a Yelp salesperson as a thinly-veiled shakedown. He didn't take the bait and is staunchly anti-Yelp at this point. Personally I rely on Yelp when I travel for business but I use it like any intelligent person should use a review site - with deep skepticism and concerted effort given to spot instances of manipulation and fanaticism. Kinda like I use Slashdot!
ANCILLARY MAGNET, LLC IS A SYNDICATE
I just read the article. What a shame. I immediately deleted the Yelp App from my iphone and gave them a 1 start rating on my way out. Thanks but no thanks.
Relevant to this topic is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
I had a terrible experience with a restaurant. I posted my story on Yelp and it disappeared. I contacted Yelp several times to find the reason they had taken my post down. Yelp claims they will contact you before they take your post down and if not you can contact them. Still I never heard back from them. I posted it again and it immediately disappeared. I don't use Yelp anymore and find their black box approach disingenuous.
All glory to the Hypnotoad!
There's enough supporting comments to convince me this crap is going on. Bye bye....
I posted a negative review on yelp and not it's not there unless I sign in. Here is the link: http://www.yelp.com/biz/driscolls-package-store-inc-andover
I know a user called Gus had his comment removed about the owners of the Mid City Nursery in American Canyon, California supporting prop 8. He wrote to me that it had been removed shortly after I posted a similar comment. Today, I got a notice that my own comment was removed.
In my post, I expressed that I would not be shopping there anymore because their owners open supported for prop 8, that the owners hurt many of its patrons' families, and that it tarnished my ability to appreciate the products I had purchased there. I even went as far as to say I did not blame the employees and that their products as a whole were not bad but that I did not want to have the money I spent there used against my family. I am not sure how this would not be appropriate for a consumer review. Wouldn't conservatives want to know if a local business that they were spending money on was supporting abortion, gay rights, or stem cell research. I would like to point it that they owners sent a letter to the gay community in the area using their company name and stating that they supported prop 8. It was not about their ideology, it was about the fact my money was going to be used to support causes that were causing harm to my family.
After reading about this and looking at the reviews of this establishment, I notice they are all positive to very positive. Now they are not a terrible nursery but they do have problems. I have seen mislabeled varieties, invasive weeds in their plants, and their water themed area is decayed and smells. It is not god awful, but I doubt everyone who goes there would find it awesome.
This is the link to the comment page where my comments were removed.
http://www.yelp.com/biz/mid-city-nursery-american-canyon
Here is the letter they sent me about it. I would like to point out I was on the site the day they said it had been flagged, there where no flags that I saw. There were none for Gus either.
Hi Robert,
I'm writing to let you know that we decided to remove your reviews of Mid City Nursey after it was flagged by the Yelp community. It is undoubtedly a controversial issue for a business or one of its employees to take a stand on Proposition 8. While we encourage you to exercise your free speech rights with respect to this issue, consumer reviews are not the place to do it.
As our review guidelines (http://www.yelp.com/faq#great_review) state: "Reviews aren't the place for rants about a business's employment practices, political ideologies, or other matters that don't address the core of the normal customer experience." We trust you recognize that our decision impacts both sides of this debate equally, and that our policy has been in place long before this issue emerged.
Regards,
Pam
Yelp User Support
San Francisco, California
I've found that most of the really good restaurants are filthy as all heck in the back. In fact when it comes to Chinese restaurants I won't eat there if the dining room is clean.
You're probably keeping yourself away from some perfectly fine restaurants that make great, safe food.
I have a number of friends who have worked in restaurants. Their stories are pretty uniform: 1. you probably don't want to know what's really happening in the kitchen, and 2. they don't care. A friend who loves telling horror stories about working at a particular major pizza chain still loves eating at that chain Another friend who told me about taking steps to actively thwart a health inspector maintains that the restaurant in question makes the best steaks in the city and continued to eat their after quitting for a better job. A restaurant can get dinged a few points and end up with a non-perfect rating for relatively minor slip ups. It's a kitchen, not a surgical theater. Put another way: unless you're obsessive about it, your own kitchen and food preparation would occasionally fail to get an A rating. The same goes for your friends whose food you've been eating. (Again, I'm generalizing. Perhaps Texarcana has particularly lenient standards.)
Do keep an eye on the reports! If a restaurant gets a particularly low rating (which is vary from area to area), yeah, they're probably a hole. But if a restaurant is near the top, occasionally bobbling, I wouldn't worry about it. And, not knowing much about the "critical violations" in your area, yeah, I'd be worried about those, even if the restaurant ended up getting an A.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I have received a number of spam messages from some author I had never heard of before, sending me to her Amazon listing. After the third round of spamming I decided to make a note of it on the page for the book, creating a review titled "Please don't buy books from this spammer." I used my real name and account, gave an accurate description of what had happened and a fairly objective review of what I could glean about the book. I also observed that the other reviews appeared to be shills, so I gave a little review of their reviews as well. None of what I said was mean or vindictive, just matter of fact.
It has been a week since I wrote that review and I thought to check for it today. There is no trace of it. I was not notified in any way that it was unacceptable or that it had been removed. If you are curious, you can check out the books here , but please do not buy from this spammer! I think you will see immediately how poorly the book is written and what obvious shills the reviewers are. It is almost funny, if it weren't for the spamming.
Of course any comments you leave about that book, or feedback you send to Amazon about their pulling reviews is up to you.
-Dan
There is no 'n' in 'Restaurateurs.'
That is all.
I honestly haven't used yelp a lot (Didn't have many reviews for the area I was in at the time) but I'm uninstalling the iPhone app.
I remember back before the appstore turned on there was a nice little review app available via Installer but i don't recall the name...anyone remember it?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Recorded audio conversation or it didn't happen.
Are my expectations for 21st century journalism just too high?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
I'm a small restaurateur in Portland OR that hosted a YELP party that rented out a portion of our restaurant. When it came time to pay the bill, the woman didn't want to pay the full bill because the entire guest list didn't show as she expected. We had made the food for the amount of guest she invited and so there was a ton of wasted food and a soured relationship with YELP. This is not an honest company.
One of the very credible TV stations in Dallas recently published a story and some followup stories alleging that the Ripoff Report attempted to extort a payment from a small company in return for removing or deemphasizing a negative report.
Story: http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/localnews/investigates/stories/wfaa090115_mo_ripoffreport.8a6931c.html
Uhhm, Jamie Zawinski blogged about this on Feb 11, slashdot. In case anyone was interested. He runs a club in SF; he received a shakedown from Yelp!
Perhaps most bad reviews come from picky eaters?
Online reviews simply are not trustworthy. No review is, really. You can't tell me what I like, and vice versa. We can probably agree that rats should not be running around the restaurant. We cannot agree on the proper seasoning levels and the drinks. Who knows what happened to your dish before it came out of the kitchen? If you dine out, you regularly place blind trust in the servers and the cooks. Why then compound this by trusting some guy with a yelp! account, who could be a shill?
"Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens." - Schiller