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Yelp Founder Says "No Extortion — Just a Misunderstood Algorithm"

Posted by timothy on from the trust-us-no-really dept.

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.

4 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. new lie, same as the old lie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    liars just won't fucking quit

    you quit yelp, all your reviews disappear, hows that for magic

  2. Stoppelman doesn't get it by sweatyboatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
  3. He's lying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. He's not lying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.