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Yelp Founder Says "No Extortion — Just a Misunderstood Algorithm"
Early last year, a story in the East Bay Express reported that review site Yelp's ad sales force was using hardball tactics that amount to extortion — essentially, suggesting that negative reviews would remain prominent on the Yelp page for a particular restaurant or other business, unless the business bought advertising through Yelp, in which case Yelp could "do something" about the negative reviews. In a recent interview with the New York Times (the questions seem rather softball, but they do address this issue), Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman says it just isn't so, and blames unhappiness by business owners with the review site on the site's "automated and algorithmic" review-filtering system, which he describes as "counterintuitive." Stoppelman also says that Yelp's advertising salesmen have no connection to that filtering system, which doesn't quite answer the question of whether the salesmen claimed to be able to influence the reviews displayed, as some business owners allege. Updated 22:09 GMT by timothy: As reader AKMask points out below (now corrected above), that's the East Bay Express, rather than the East Bay Examiner.
Only Chicao even comes close to the corruption there.
Yelp is a sham. They'll soon be swept into the dustbin of unprofitable dot-com businesses that were born out of massive venture capital and hype, but die quietly after a few years of losing money. I'm a small business owner and I don't care about Yelp. If a business owner is so out of touch with his/her business that they don't know if they have unhappy customers, then they're doomed to failure, anyway.
I don't respond to AC's.
Blackmail is not extortion. While both may be dubious business practices, the former may be defensible from a free-speech perspective.
On a related note, Yelp co-founder Stoppelman's name seems strangely germane to the affair: estoppel
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Sales people are liers. Maybe thats why.
Sure it is ... the businesses they were extorting misunderstood that their voluntary participation was optional.
Advances in technology, such as our precious intertubes, will always bring advances in criminal activity. I hope no one hears them yelp as they go out of business when their next round of venture capital begging fails miserably. If they want to deal on business' reputations they'll need one of their own.
liars just won't fucking quit
you quit yelp, all your reviews disappear, hows that for magic
You mean "maxim", not maximum. (Although it's more like a soundbite than a maxim really)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
One Mr. Corleone, respectable private citizen, wishes it to be known that there was "No Extortion - Just Big Vinny's misunderstood mood swings."
Yelp has been bullshit for some time. It's a neat idea, but they've censored several of my negative reviews which were all factual.
As such, Yelp holds no value.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
So they were not extorting, they just wrote an algorithm that does the extortion for them. Great blame game, if they hadn't written the algorithm themselves...
It's not "extortion". That's such an ugly word. Clearly, there has been a misunderstanding. Yelp is merely offering "protection". You know, 'cause if youse don' have protection, t'ings coul' happen. You know, "t'ings". Maybe somebody trips and falls. Maybe a bun warmer overheats and there's a fire. Maybe people decide the food sucks and write about it. Like a whole lot'a people. You know?
But it probably is useful primarily in highly dense urban areas like NYC (where I, too, live, using Yelp almost continuously).
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Salespeople are the biggest fuck-ups you'll ever work with. They always make all kinds of bullshit claims about a product that you, if you the technician, will get to correct and thus take the wrath of the customer. I worked in a tech support call center a few years ago and I'd always get two or three calls each day where the customer would complain that the sales person told him that the program did X and Y, but he couldn't make it do X and Y. I would then inform him that he was misinformed and the program really did not do X and Y, and then I'd sit through a barrage of abuse directed at the company.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
My first reaction on hearing about the lawsuits against Yelp was to lump it in with the idea of suing Google because you don't like your search position. But the more I read from the Yelp side of this, the shadier their practices seem. And this article, while pretty fluffy, did nothing to improve Yelp's standing in my eyes.
In fact, it made me think that beyond everything else, Yelp just doesn't get it. Stoppelman sure doesn't:
When a consumer encounters a business’s page, the reviews they’re seeing aren’t necessarily every review that’s been written about the business. It’s a selection of those reviews. It ensures that the consumer sees generally useful, trustworthy information that gives them a good idea of what to expect when they patronize that business.
So they have an "algorithm" that randomly and seemingly arbitrarily changes what reviews are visible on a business's page. Great, I am sure there are plenty of other sites that follow a similar approach. But there's nothing in there about any kind of system to ensure that their "algorithm" isn't abusive. There's no mention of oversight, nor of feedback. It'd be interesting to hear a general outline of how this "algorithm" does its thing.
Of course, he follows up with this:
The more that we explain about the algorithm, the less effective it becomes.
Which makes it sound like either the "algorithm" isn't all that complicated or they don't exactly know how the algorithm works and they fired the guy who wrote it. On second thought, this just makes it sounds like they're making the whole "algorithm" thing up. Maybe "the algorithm" is twenty interns sitting in the basement sifting through reviews about coffee houses and dry cleaners.
Any way I think about it, I cannot imagine using their service or trusting the reviews I read on Yelp.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
You're currently rated "Troll". Write to me to get your point across more effectively. How does +6 "Awesome" sound? Send email to: lockinsubscriptions@cmdrtacoretirementfundslushdotfund now!
Not the East Bay Examiner. Writer was thinking about the San Francisco Examiner, which did not run the story.
I can't be bothered to dig up the link, but there was a story about a restaurant in San Francisco that was so mad at Yelp they had all their employees wear satirical shirts. I looked up that restaurant's Yelp page, and discovered a large number of extremely positive reviews and the usual comments by people who hate everything. All in all, Yelp is a big driver of business for these people. Some people just go ballistic at the slightest hint of criticism.
One thing that does bug me about Yelp is the way people suddenly develop enthusiasms for businesses of limited merit. Three or four times I've gone out for lunch based on Yelp reviews and been a little puzzled as to what all the fuss was about. One was a Halal restaurant that serves OK food, but is a little on the pricey side for what they serve. (Following religious law in food preparation drives up the overhead a bit.) Needless to say, the staff are a little confused by this sudden influx of non-Muslim customers!
not to condone them, but all of that could be an automated algorithm, one that changes modifiers based on the relationship between Yelp and the thing being looked at. "ohh paying customer, subtract 4 from all of the reviews before sending them along to verify the rating(below -5 gets tossed), show only the ones that come back, and then add back the 4 we took away. ohh ex paying customer, same thing but add 4, and drop all that are not within 0+-5." Sales guys have no direct influance on that, apart from being able to make you a paying customer.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Based on a visit I made to a Yelp-popular breakfast restaurant a month ago, I don't think Yelp is tailoring the reviews for favorable restaurants. I went there when I visited Chicago for the first time because newspaper articles and Yelp alike were hailing their pancakes as the best in town, and I love breakfast more than anything. I was extremely disappointed with the quality of their food (which was a basic omelet and pancake breakfast; kind of hard for a popular restaurant like theirs to screw up), and wrote a very scathing review on Yelp about it. I wasn't the only one either.
Weeks later, the review is still up, along with other similarly low-rated reviews.
I will agree with fm6's post and say that Yelp is excellent for delivering hype! That wasn't the only time I left a Yelp-recommended restaurant with a sour tongue; a friend of mine and I went to a small tapas bar (oh, how I hate them so...give me REAL spanish dinner, please!) that was also highly recommended on Yelp, only to find the food mediocre at best, and significantly paling in comparison to other Spanish restaurants I've visited, some of which are in my home town!
In spite of those run-ins, Yelp has helped me find a LOT of great places to eat, date and have a good time. Their forums are also quite interesting as well and have helped me tremendously when I went on my recent travel expeditions. I've heard their Elite events are even better, but I haven't made time to post reviews lately.
He's not even bending the truth. Yelp is a scam for business owners. The sales people can and do influence the ratings directly. I've personally seen this with my business's reviews and have talked to Yelp sales people.
I had 5, 5 star reviews, got a 6th review with 4 stars, amazingly about a week after that review, I got a call from a Yelp sales person saying that he's taken care of that review and if I'd like that to continue that it would cost me $300/month (their lowest cost plan). That payment would also keep my competitor's information from being displayed on my page when visited.
I blew them off yet again and that 4 star review showed back up.
I like the concept, but Yelp would only be useful if it wasn't a company trying to generate revenue for themselves standing behind it. A "community based" review system will only work if
1) people can't post anonymously or if they can then negative or positive anonymous reviews don't hold much weight
2) there is a review system in place to dispute slanderous claims.
3) there isn't a company behind the system trying to make a buck off of selling advertising.
and probably a 1/2 dozen or more other things in place. Nothing is perfect, but Yelp is useless if you want honest reviews about a business and that business happens to be a paying customer of Yelp.
How is this offtopic? It's a joke about extortion. May not be hilarious, but certainly not offtopic.
That Times story is incredibly self serving for 'Yelp'. The questions asked are phrased in ways so that the answer can only be positive to or about 'Yelp'. Furthermore this reads more like an informational advertisement than actual reporting. Im kinda disappointed that I wasted my time reading the f***ing article, since it offered no information whatsoever about why their salesmen have had the finger pointed at them, nor does it even directly inquire what their 'sales' campaign actually involves. BS story IMHO
If you listen to the owner of Yelp and their PR people, every time they have an interview or talk to the press, the whole Yelp crew sounds like they've been taking private bullshitting lessons from Darl McBride over at SCO. Over the past couple years, there have been many, many, accounts from businesses that have been involved with Yelp's "marketing practices" that all have pretty much the same story about a Yelp "account executive" have either inferred or directly stated that negative reviews would not be a big problem if only said business would buy some advertising spots from Yelp. I can understand how maybe some non-techie business owners might be fooled when Stoppelman talks about unfortunate misunderstanding about their business practices, algorithms, etc., but when he's talking to the tech establishment and trying to pass off that nonsense as legitimate information, I have to be wondering if someone should be over there looking for roach clips next to the ash trays or rolled up dollar bills laying around.
Cheers! - Steve from MyBrotherSteve.com
I know a gent from Vietnam who runs a small restaurant. Super nice dude. He directly and flatly stated Yelp told him they would make the negative reviews prominent and fake more if he didn't cough up the dough. He could be lying, but what would he gain by telling a random customer?
Fuck Yelp and it's snobby yuppie fans.
We own a small business which depends heavily on Yelp for traffic (as in, our business doubled when Yelp came around). This is good. What isn't good is the subtle attempts and bullying that have come from the Yelp salesteam. We get calls every few months from salespeople making obvious comments about "controlling our image" and other such things -- and amazingly every time we turn them down we find that many of our positive reviews are removed from the system with no explanation. We currently have 5 5-star reviews (we're a small company with very personal service -- all of our reviews are overwhelmingly positive so far) out of at least 30 that have been written over the last two years....reviews written often at great effort and length by our customers. Every time we ask Yelp about it they say "reviews get removed because our algorithm detects abuse" and then "would you like to purchase a business plan from us"? They don't directly link the two, but the linkage is obvious.
I'm sure the salespeople aren't directly going into the system and removing reviews because we don't buy from them -- I'm ALSO absolutely sure that they've manipulated their "algorithm" so that people who aren't paying will have positive reviews yanked very frequently. Maybe this isn't direct extortion but it sure is shady.
"This Yelper's account has been closed."
We saw a restaurant on Yelp that had great reviews. We went to that restaurant and it was completely empty. Right after we sat down the waitress asked us where we heard of the restaurant. I don't like to answer questions like that, so I said nothing. My dining companion also kept silent. Immediately, the waitress asked us if we heard about the restaurant through Yelp. We nodded yes.
The food at that restaurant was lousy. I am very suspicious about that encounter. Of course, I can't draw any conclusions from a single data point. However, I have no desire to go out and collect more data. The restaurant sucked, and if a top rating at Yelp doesn't guarantee at least a decent meal, then I'm done with Yelp.
Like www.foodaroo.com! Way better in that it is open and anyone can add anything. Sadly not much on it :(
looks something like this:
if (business_has_paid_for_ad) {
review_minimum_threshold = 5;
} else {
review_minimum_threshold = -1;
}
I've read way too many posts in so many different places that Yelp is an extortion game at the least. Numerous people have written that their posts of negative reviews have either never appeared on Yelp or disappeared in a day or so. They even reposted a bad review and that too disappeared. That along with numerous restaurant owners claiming Yelp reps have visited them promising to make bad things "go away" are just too many to ignore. This latest claim of an "algorithm" is just absolutely absurd. Hopefully everyone will get smart and ignore this piece of crap business.
If you live in an area covered by Yelp, ask the owners of the next 10 small businesses that you patronize whether they've heard from Yelp and what they thought of their sales pitch. You'll hear the same story over and over.
Hi. I'm an engineer at Yelp. I know for a fact that salespeople cannot influence reviews in any way. They have no access to the internal Yelp administration pages; they use a separate Salesforce site for doing their work. In fact, they are not even allowed to post reviews to the site.
Obviously I did not hear the conversation you had with the Yelp salesperson, but it would be VERY surprising if they suggested they could influence your reviews. Every new Yelp advertiser gets an orientation call within days of signing up for advertising. As part of this call the advertiser's account manager goes over the fact that advertising does not influences reviews in any way. If a salesperson were suggesting that they could influence reviews, the account manager would find out during this call and that salesperson would be fired. See this blog post for more information: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/03/additional-thoughts-on-last-weeks-lawsuit-or-how-a-conspiracy-theory-is-born-.html
As to your other points:
1) The entire purpose of the review filter is to make untrusted reviews hold less weight: http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/03/yelp-review-filter-explained.html
2) You can respond both privately and publicly to reviews of your business: http://www.yelp.com/business/review_response
3) I think that we can make a useful site and use advertising revenue to pay for our meals. At least Google has managed this feat, so it is not impossible.
We try really hard to make Yelp a useful/funny/cool site that balances the needs of both business owners and consumers. We definitely don't always make everyone happy, but we are always listening to feedback and trying to make things better.
Hi. I'm an engineer at Yelp. I know for a fact that salespeople cannot influence reviews in any way. They have no access to the internal Yelp administration pages; they use a separate Salesforce site for doing their work. In fact, they are not even allowed to post reviews to the site.
Obviously I did not hear the conversation you had with the Yelp salesperson, but I would be VERY surprised if they suggested they could influence your reviews. Every new Yelp advertiser gets a call within days of signing up for advertising. As part of this call the advertiser's account manager goes over the fact that advertising does not influences reviews in any way. If a salesperson was suggesting that they could influence reviews, the account manager would find out during this call and that salesperson would be fired. See this blog post for more information.
As to your other points:
1) The entire purpose of the review filter is to make untrusted reviews hold less weight
2) You can respond both privately and publicly to reviews of your business,
3) I think that we can make a useful site and use advertising revenue to pay for our meals. At least Google has managed this feat, so it is not impossible.
We try really hard at Yelp to make a useful/funny/cool site that balances the needs of both business owners and consumers. We definitely don't always make everyone happy, but we are always listening to feedback and trying to make things better.
if you can't give good service, then have your employees write nice reviews on yelp. no, i don't want the system to be gamed, but there's going to be people doing it.
my former landlord SCREWED ME for $1000 by taking my rent money then changing the locks on the doors and not letting me back into the place even though all my shit was there. so HELL YEAH i posted a negative review in yelp. they could give me my FUCKING MONEY BACK those dirtbags. the cops said it was a civil matter, not a criminal one, so for me to get my shit back or my money, i'd have to hire a goddamned lawyer and take them to court - which would cost way more than $1000 so I just took it up the ass.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
This interview was from within a few months of the East Bay Express expose "CEO Jeremy Stoppelman talks about the online review site's success, and how often he's asked to remove bad reviews." Part 1: http://www.pressheretv.com/?cat=1&subcat=1&video=87 Part 2: http://www.pressheretv.com/?cat=1&subcat=1&video=89
I've been pretty happy with TripAdvisor.com. They don't seem to manipulate the reviews.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Does anyone here remember when Yelp was first starting up? They used UCE/Spam to advertize themselves. My personal account got three or four duplicates across several of my aliases, which told me at the time that they had been using harvested addresses.
So where on yelp.com can write a review on yelp.com?
Jeremy is right, that algorithm is so convoluted and complicatedly random that they COULDN'T rig the votes, even if they wanted to. Nobody understands how it works anymore. BUT the story is right too... The sales people DO make those claims.
He's not even bending the truth. Yelp is a scam for business owners. The sales people can and do influence the ratings directly. I've personally seen this with my business's reviews and have talked to Yelp sales people.
I had 5, 5 star reviews, got a 6th review with 4 stars, amazingly about a week after that review, I got a call from a Yelp sales person saying that he's taken care of that review and if I'd like that to continue that it would cost me $300/month (their lowest cost plan). That payment would also keep my competitor's information from being displayed on my page when visited.
I blew them off yet again and that 4 star review showed back up.
I like the concept, but Yelp would only be useful if it wasn't a company trying to generate revenue for themselves standing behind it. A "community based" review system will only work if
1) people can't post anonymously or if they can then negative or positive anonymous reviews don't hold much weight
2) there is a review system in place to dispute slanderous claims.
3) there isn't a company behind the system trying to make a buck off of selling advertising.
and probably a 1/2 dozen or more other things in place. Nothing is perfect, but Yelp is useless if you want honest reviews about a business and that business happens to be a paying customer of Yelp.
http://bit.ly/SpecialTreatmentForAdvertiserMythDebunked
Could you explain?