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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.
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.
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.