Understanding YELP In February of 2009, I received a phone call from a chipper YELP salesman named Alexander, the first in what would later become a hard sell campaign of phone calls and emails from Alexander. The pitch? If I agree to pay $300 per month to YELP (with a 12-month mandatory commitment or - gulp! - $3600 annually), I would receive heightened access to my account, including: -special offer announcements -slideshow & message capabilities -exclusion of “competitor” ads on my business profile page while simultaneously placing ads for my restaurant on the profiles of my “competitors” -”featured review” capabilities (this means they would choose one ‘special’ review and highlight it at the top of my YELP profile page) -“maintenance” for my account, which, Alexander implied, meant that they would cleverly slide the better reviews to the top and bury or delete the poor reviews. At the time I received our first sales call from Alexander, we were at a 4 1/2 star rating on YELP, so this last feature didn’t have much appeal to me. I felt like I didn’t need them to manipulate my reviews. Also, many of these “competing” restaurants (whose pages I’d be surreptitiously advertising on) are, in fact, my neighbors, my business community, my friends. After 23 years working in restaurants in this town, I’ve met quite a few people in this industry. These are restaurant owners who can call me in a panic to borrow a CO2 tank on a busy Friday night, and likewise, I can count on them to loan me a cook for a weekend. These are people I trust and rely on. These businesses are not my “competitors”; these are people in my community. I don’t want to splash my advertisement over the top of other people’s business profile page. I mean, bringing other businesses down does not lift mine up, right? I want my business to be surrounded by other thriving businesses, including restaurants. So I informed Alexander I would not be paying to advertise with YELP. Besides, who’s got $3600 laying around? Certainly not me! But over the next few months, a funny thing started happening. Our rating started to drop, and many of our 5 star reviews started to disappear. When I emailed them about it (note: you cannot call a customer service representative at YELP; if you want to speak with them, you have to send them an email at feedback@yelp.com), they sent me a pat response directing me to this FAQ section of their website: Q: I'm a business owner and some reviews disappeared from my business' page. What happened? A: Reviews may come or go for a few different reasons: -A user may have removed his or her review. -Yelp may have removed the review for violating our Review Guidelines or Terms of Service. -The review may have been suppressed by Yelp's automated software system. This system decides how established a particular reviewer is and whether a review will be shown based on the reviewer's involvement on Yelp. While this may seem unfair to you, this system is designed to protect both consumers and businesses alike from fake reviews (i.e., a malicious review from a competitor or a planted review from an employee). The process is entirely automated to avoid human bias, and it affects both positive and negative reviews. It's important to note that these reviews are not deleted (they are always shown on the reviewer's public profile) and may reappear on your business page in the future. Note: Our support team cannot manually restore reviews that are not currently displayed, should you contact us about missing reviews you will receive the information above. Did you catch that? “It's important to note that these reviews are not deleted (they are always shown on the reviewer's public profile)”. That means, if you review us and they delete your review from our business profile page, it still appears on your personal profile page - so unless you log in under somebody else’s account, you don’t know that your review has been deleted from the business’ profile page. So who complains? Well, a few reviewers complain when they figure it out and are annoyed that they spent the time to write a review but have discovered that nobody can read it. But honestly, for the most part, it’s the business owners who complain. The business owners are the ones who are the most deeply affected by these reviews mysteriously and randomly coming and going from their business profile page. The other point I take issue with is this: “The process is entirely automated to avoid human bias, and it affects both positive and negative reviews.” Well, Alexander told me straight out that this process is NOT automated, and that “select” reviews would be placed at the top of my business profile page if I paid the fee. And in fact, very specific reviews are moved around the profile, and very specific reviews are deleted depending upon the business’ relationship with YELP. There is a growing suspicion among the business community that YELP is, in fact, using the manipulation of the reviews to extort business owners who refuse to buy into a contract with them. The short story? You pay us $300 every month, we make you look really, really good. You refuse to pay, we kill your business, capiche? Want more information about this? Read detailed article by Kathleen Richards Read follow-up article by Kathleen Richards On June 10, 2009, just 4 months after receiving my first phone call from Alexander, I arrived at work to find a message on my desk: “Call Nadine from YELP” with a telephone number listed. YELP? hmm. Maybe they finally hired customer service representatives and they just wanted to call me back about that email I sent them.. So I returned the call from Nadine. I was annoyed and disappointed to find that this was not a customer service call and no, she was not a helpful customer service representative. She was a "sales representative", and she was checking in to find out if I had finally come to my senses and changed my mind about advertising with YELP. I mean, our “rating” had gone down, hadn’t it? Maybe that contract seemed like a good idea now? I explained to Nadine that yes, I was upset that so many of my 5-star reviews had mysteriously disappeared over the past few months - since, in fact, March, when I had declined to advertise with them. She was quick to interject that their “algorithm” had flagged all these reviews as "fake" and removed them from my business page. I then told her that I had made a point of saving links to these “disappeared” reviewers’ profiles, and that some of them were Yelp's own "elite" members, people who frequently write reviews on Yelp and are distinguished from the rest of us by an "elite" status (which appears on their personal page). Since the bot flags “fake” reviews written by members who have just one or two reviews, doesn’t the “elite” status shield elite members from having their reviews deleted? She gave me the verbal "shrug" over the phone, telling me “Well, maybe one of our servers is down”. "The server with all the 5 star reviews?" I asked. Needless to say, she had no explanation for that. In the end, I guess it's just frustrating that YELP is simply not honest with their readers about how they manipulate the reviews. In April 2009, YELP started allowing business owners to respond to member comments (read great article by Lauren Smily about this change). This, of course, is a double-edged sword. There are many comments which deserve “the other side of the story” but then the business owner risks opening a can of worms, or worse, appearing trivial and whiny (read Kathleen Richards’ response to YELP CEO Jeremy Stoppelman’s spin on this issue). It’s best to just let sleeping dogs lie and hope that people take each review, both positive and negative, with a proverbial grain of salt. Everyone’s experience is personal, and it behooves us to keep in mind that things as simple as our mood or the relationship with our dining companion can affect the way we experience a particular place and event at any given time. I mortgaged my house to open my restaurant. My entire life is here. Since the “crash” of 2009, I am deep into my line of credit, looking at making some crucial decisions about finances for the coming business year. Being powerless against websites like YELP, who are manipulating my image and reputation because I refuse to pay them, is infuriating. If they want to run a website of reviews, I have no problem with that, but do us business owners and YELP members the honor of showing ALL of the reviews so that readers get a realistic view of each business and what they have to offer. Coming up against a wall of denial from Nadine (who would admit to nothing, only blathering on about "algorithms" and "servers"), I started to cry. Through my tears of frustration, I told her she should be ashamed of herself, working for such an immoral company, a company that is willing to tear apart small businesses in pursuit of their own profit. "You people have so much power," I said. "You will destroy my business, my life, and it's so sad to know that you don't even care." She did not dispute this last statement. Dear Mr. Stoppelman, If you ever read this, please remember that with great power comes great responsibility. Please use your power for good, not for profit. Small businesses are what make up communities. Take care of your community. -Connie (“Just Another Struggling Small Business Owner”) Every business owner wants to make their customers happy, but sometimes, despite superhuman efforts to the contrary, things go awry. If you are disappointed with your experience at Wild Mountain Cafe, please give us a chance to make it right. Call us at 206-297-9453 and tell us what we can do to improve! Is your business a victim of extortion by YELP? Click here to join the class action lawsuit against YELP Click here for news about the results of a lawsuit filed against YELP Click here for yet another article about the YELP lawsuit Click here to read about a second lawsuit filed against YELP Click here for yet another article about the YELP lawsuit Click here for information on YELP changing its practices because of the lawsuit Click here for an article about small businesses joining the fight against YELP’s fraudulent business practices

Understanding YELP

In February of 2009, I received a phone call from a chipper YELP salesman named Alexander, the first in what would later become a hard sell campaign of phone calls and emails from Alexander. The pitch? If I agree to pay $300 per month to YELP (with a 12-month mandatory commitment or - gulp! - $3600 annually), I would receive heightened access to my account, including:

-special offer announcements

-slideshow & message capabilities

-exclusion of “competitor” ads on my business profile page while simultaneously placing ads for my restaurant on the profiles of my “competitors”

-”featured review” capabilities (this means they would choose one ‘special’ review and highlight it at the top of my YELP profile page)

-“maintenance” for my account, which, Alexander implied, meant that they would cleverly slide the better reviews to the top and bury or delete the poor reviews.

At the time I received our first sales call from Alexander, we were at a 4 1/2 star rating on YELP, so this last feature didn’t have much appeal to me. I felt like I didn’t need them to manipulate my reviews. Also, many of these “competing” restaurants (whose pages I’d be surreptitiously advertising on) are, in fact, my neighbors, my business community, my friends.

After 23 years working in restaurants in this town, I’ve met quite a few people in this industry. These are restaurant owners who can call me in a panic to borrow a CO2 tank on a busy Friday night, and likewise, I can count on them to loan me a cook for a weekend. These are people I trust and rely on. These businesses are not my “competitors”; these are people in my community. I don’t want to splash my advertisement over the top of other people’s business profile page. I mean, bringing other businesses down does not lift mine up, right? I want my business to be surrounded by other thriving businesses, including restaurants. So I informed Alexander I would not be paying to advertise with YELP.

Besides, who’s got $3600 laying around? Certainly not me!

But over the next few months, a funny thing started happening. Our rating started to drop, and many of our 5 star reviews started to disappear. When I emailed them about it (note: you cannot call a customer service representative at YELP; if you want to speak with them, you have to send them an email at feedback@yelp.com), they sent me a pat response directing me to this FAQ section of their website:

Q: I'm a business owner and some reviews disappeared from my business' page. What happened?

A: Reviews may come or go for a few different reasons:

-A user may have removed his or her review.

-Yelp may have removed the review for violating our Review Guidelines or Terms of Service.

-The review may have been suppressed by Yelp's automated software system. This system decides how established a particular reviewer is and whether a review will be shown based on the reviewer's involvement on Yelp. While this may seem unfair to you, this system is designed to protect both consumers and businesses alike from fake reviews (i.e., a malicious review from a competitor or a planted review from an employee). The process is entirely automated to avoid human bias, and it affects both positive and negative reviews. It's important to note that these reviews are not deleted (they are always shown on the reviewer's public profile) and may reappear on your business page in the future.

Note: Our support team cannot manually restore reviews that are not currently displayed, should you contact us about missing reviews you will receive the information above.

Did you catch that? “It's important to note that these reviews are not deleted (they are always shown on the reviewer's public profile)”. That means, if you review us and they delete your review from our business profile page, it still appears on your personal profile page - so unless you log in under somebody else’s account, you don’t know that your review has been deleted from the business’ profile page.

So who complains? Well, a few reviewers complain when they figure it out and are annoyed that they spent the time to write a review but have discovered that nobody can read it. But honestly, for the most part, it’s the business owners who complain. The business owners are the ones who are the most deeply affected by these reviews mysteriously and randomly coming and going from their business profile page.

The other point I take issue with is this: “The process is entirely automated to avoid human bias, and it affects both positive and negative reviews.” Well, Alexander told me straight out that this process is NOT automated, and that “select” reviews would be placed at the top of my business profile page if I paid the fee. And in fact, very specific reviews are moved around the profile, and very specific reviews are deleted depending upon the business’ relationship with YELP. There is a growing suspicion among the business community that YELP is, in fact, using the manipulation of the reviews to extort business owners who refuse to buy into a contract with them.

The short story?

You pay us $300 every month, we make you look really, really good.

You refuse to pay, we kill your business, capiche?

Want more information about this?

Read detailed article by Kathleen Richards

Read follow-up article by Kathleen Richards

On June 10, 2009, just 4 months after receiving my first phone call from Alexander, I arrived at work to find a message on my desk: “Call Nadine from YELP” with a telephone number listed. YELP? hmm. Maybe they finally hired customer service representatives and they just wanted to call me back about that email I sent them..

So I returned the call from Nadine. I was annoyed and disappointed to find that this was not a customer service call and no, she was not a helpful customer service representative. She was a "sales representative", and she was checking in to find out if I had finally come to my senses and changed my mind about advertising with YELP. I mean, our “rating” had gone down, hadn’t it? Maybe that contract seemed like a good idea now?

I explained to Nadine that yes, I was upset that so many of my 5-star reviews had mysteriously disappeared over the past few months - since, in fact, March, when I had declined to advertise with them. She was quick to interject that their “algorithm” had flagged all these reviews as "fake" and removed them from my business page. I then told her that I had made a point of saving links to these “disappeared” reviewers’ profiles, and that some of them were Yelp's own "elite" members, people who frequently write reviews on Yelp and are distinguished from the rest of us by an "elite" status (which appears on their personal page). Since the bot flags “fake” reviews written by members who have just one or two reviews, doesn’t the “elite” status shield elite members from having their reviews deleted? She gave me the verbal "shrug" over the phone, telling me “Well, maybe one of our servers is down”. "The server with all the 5 star reviews?" I asked. Needless to say, she had no explanation for that. In the end, I guess it's just frustrating that YELP is simply not honest with their readers about how they manipulate the reviews.

In April 2009, YELP started allowing business owners to respond to member comments (read great article by Lauren Smily about this change). This, of course, is a double-edged sword. There are many comments which deserve “the other side of the story” but then the business owner risks opening a can of worms, or worse, appearing trivial and whiny

(read Kathleen Richards’ response to YELP CEO Jeremy Stoppelman’s spin on this issue). It’s best to just let sleeping dogs lie and hope that people take each review, both positive and negative, with a proverbial grain of salt. Everyone’s experience is personal, and it behooves us to keep in mind that things as simple as our mood or the relationship with our dining companion can affect the way we experience a particular place and event at any given time.

I mortgaged my house to open my restaurant. My entire life is here. Since the “crash” of 2009, I am deep into my line of credit, looking at making some crucial decisions about finances for the coming business year. Being powerless against websites like YELP, who are manipulating my image and reputation because I refuse to pay them, is infuriating. If they want to run a website of reviews, I have no problem with that, but do us business owners and YELP members the honor of showing ALL of the reviews so that readers get a realistic view of each business and what they have to offer.

Coming up against a wall of denial from Nadine (who would admit to nothing, only blathering on about "algorithms" and "servers"), I started to cry. Through my tears of frustration, I told her she should be ashamed of herself, working for such an immoral company, a company that is willing to tear apart small businesses in pursuit of their own profit. "You people have so much power," I said. "You will destroy my business, my life, and it's so sad to know that you don't even care." She did not dispute this last statement.

Dear Mr. Stoppelman,

If you ever read this, please remember that with great power comes great responsibility. Please use your power for good, not for profit.

Small businesses are what make up communities. Take care of your community.

-Connie (“Just Another Struggling Small Business Owner”)

Every business owner wants to make their customers happy, but sometimes, despite superhuman efforts to the contrary, things go awry. If you are disappointed with your experience at Wild Mountain Cafe, please give us a chance to make it right.

Call us at 206-297-9453 and tell us what we can do to improve!

Is your business a victim of extortion by YELP?

Click here to join the class action lawsuit against YELP

Click here for news about the results of a lawsuit filed against YELP

Click here for yet another article about the YELP lawsuit

Click here to read about a second lawsuit filed against YELP

Click here for yet another article about the YELP lawsuit

Click here for information on YELP changing its practices

because of the lawsuit

Click here for an article about small businesses joining the fight

against YELP’s fraudulent business practices