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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.
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.
As a note; *imagine* if Slashdot were to succumb to that.
CmdTaco calls MS: "For one meallllionn dollas we'll post Pro-MS articles"
MS Drone: "Deal, cash or licenses?"
Bored at work? Play Game!
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.
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.
Does Yelp also make sure that the restaurant's plate glass doesn't get broken by rocks thrown through it and that the head chef's knees don't get broken in an "accident" with a thug?
Or is that a possible future service offering consistent with their current portfolio of services?
Hmmm.
I didn't think it was a 'well guarded secret' or anything. Squelching negative reviews of your business and dampening the highly positive reviews of your competitors has been the dominant practice ever since the dawn of two businesses selling similar products.
From the article it seems like Yelp had gathered a reputation of being impartial and fair. It understandable that people's confidence will diminish.
Face your daemons!
Unfortunately, "community based" is something of a farce when there is an owner standing in the background and counting the money. Just because the crowdserfs are doing the work, doesn't make an institution "community based".
We all now know what the ... step is: Extortion.
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
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)
It looks like the CEO has posted his response to the piece. It appears to be quite well documented and researched. Possibly more so than the original article:
http://officialblog.yelp.com/2009/02/kathleen-richards-east-bay-express.html
check out the best blog ever:
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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.
Common carrier is a legal term with a specific technical meaning. Any "extension" of the term is a misapplication of the term. It misleads people as to the actual legal specifics of a case, and should not be done.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
...should not surprise a single person that understands business
And people wonder why the economy's in the toilet.
Free Martian Whores!
The CEO's response makes mention of "anonymous sources" as being an issue with the article and mentions one interview subject as having posted "fake" reviews. He doesn't mention the other business named in the article that talk about being contacted by Yelp sales and given these terms. There are several mentioned.
This is coming from someone who has submitted a few Yelp reviews in myself. If this is Yelp's response I would have to say I'm still leery.
If you want the technical legal terminology, the question is whether Yelp is a "conduit", "distributor", or "primary publisher". Primary publishers are strictly liable, conduits are not liable at all, and distributors are liable under certain circumstances. The risk to Yelp is that by removing negative reviews they control content and become a primary publisher. It seems very likely, though, that few Slashdot readers know these terms but that most understand what a "common carrier" is in telecommunications and in the extended sense.
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.
Apparently the Better Business Bureau operates the same way, but with more obfuscation.
Membership in the BBB allows your company to 'respond' to customer complaints, which means that your company no longer has a nasty "complaints unresponded" number. You don't actually have to do anything about the complaints; you just have to respond, which requires member$hip.
MBAs are wrecking our society.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
If I understand everything correctly, it looks like advertisers get to choose one review as a "sponsored review" and this is shown as the first result. Couldn't this be what the sales people are talking about when they offer to change the order of reviews so that lower reviews are moved down?
I could easily see "For $300 you can choose one review to appear at the top" becoming "For $300 we will make your bad reviews go away". To me, it sounds like a game of telephone combined 'investigative journalism' and angry restaurant managers.
Dude, chill.
We're talking about restaurant reviews here. Don't jump into full Wikipedia-defense DefCon 5.
No cross-referencing of information is required, just a quick visit to the cafe, bistro, or bar in question and you'll know whether Yelp is honest or not.
And by-the-way, they're not. I've read bad reviews that were later pulled, and tried out the restaurant only to discover that the reviews weren't pulled because the food/service got better. I've also written bad reviews that were later pulled. I don't use the site anymore, since (much like the vaunted Wikipedia) it seems the content can't be trusted.
When your experience at a store, restaurant, or other service is bad enough to cause you to explicitly avoid them, telling the owner lets them know that there's a problem. They might have been unaware that their employees were rude, or that service was poor, or that the food is uncompelling or overpriced. This allows them to know WHY they're losing customers, rather than wondering why they continue to do poorly. This could conceivably lead to the restaurant's service/food/attitude improving, thereby improving the experience of all future customers (and potentially yourself, if you ever go back).
Sure, sometimes the owner is a jerk, and already endorses the establishment's bad behavior. You're then just informing him that you are no longer part of his customer demographic; the chance of restaurant improvement is much much smaller in this case, and I can understand the "why bother?" perspective in this case.
If you're EVER unhappy about an experience anywhere, it's often fruitful (or at least cathartic ;)) to tell the owner that you had a poor experience. Even if it's something like, "We love your restaurant, but service was especially poor this past Friday night." Being polite is bound to be morefruitful than telling them off, as in almost all communications, of course.
From the CEO's response it seems like some sales droid was being overly pushy and overstating the facts, which is SOP for a salesmen in many fields. The actual practice of allowing a single positive review to be pinned and labeled at the top of the stack is perfectly acceptable IMHO. Personally I discount half of all negative reviews online since people tend to only go online if they have had a really good or bad experience, unless someone says they have repeatedly had bad service or food or almost all of the reviews for an establishment are bad then it's probably at worth at least trying out once.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
...it seems like some sales droid was being overly pushy and overstating the facts, which is SOP for a salesmen...
Ah, the good old "overzealous staffer" defense. That supposed salesman is acting on behalf of the company. The company is responsible for making sure that nobody gets "overzealous", and is culpable when somebody does.
You mean a site that thrives on geeks having too much free time on their hands, and money from showing them ads, survived an event where masses of geeks lost their jobs?
Shocking, I tell ya. Shocking! ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.