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Yelp To "Clarify" How Advertising Affects Listing

Posted by kdawson on from the former-lawsuit-is-an-ex-tort dept.

WrongSizeGlass writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Yelp is going to change some features in the wake of the class-action suit brought against it. Yelp has been accused of extortion; the Yelp co-founder denies all. The NY Times Bits blog has more details about the changes Yelp intends to make. According to Ars, the business that filed the lawsuit says that the newly announced changes do not address their original complaints at all."

1 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. The Yelp approach doesn't scale down. by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fundamental problem with user review sites is that they don't work unless the number of reviewers is large compared to the number of things reviewed. Yelp needs a statistically significant sample size per thing reviewed to work. Movies, yes. Resorts, probably. Major restaurants, maybe. Local plumbers, no. Joe's Plumbing will be reviewed by Joe, Joe's brother in law, Joe's plumbing supply house rep, and maybe a customer.

    That's bad enough, but Yelp sales reps "making you an offer you can't refuse" is worse. There are small businesses that live in terror of Yelp.

    Back in the 1990s, the SF Bay Area had a "rating service" which got into trouble for extortion. This was before the Web got big. They used window stickers in participating businesses, and heavily promoted their ratings. Their sales pitch to businesses was "your competitor has one of our stickers, shouldn't you buy one too?". They were shut down.