I spent a lot if time making quality "fake" accounts with pics, friends, profiles, a range of reviews and then made a review on our page. It stayed up for a week then was filtered out. So that idea doesn't work.

Strange thing is that all the other reviews that account left are still up. Only the one for us is filtered. Yelp hates us.

Totally spitballing here, but it could be related to an IP/ cookie match to you being an administrator of the account.

That was the first thing I thought as well.

They definitely IP check.

Welcome to the world of 'advanced entity management' where sites, screen names and associated IP addresses are all kept in neatly managed spreadsheets along with dates of posts, targeted keywords, etc.

Half of the internet is made of monkeys. The other half is an illusion created by people for profit.

Yea, I am sure it was flagged by a script running in the db and flagged for manual review and it took a week to get around to filtering it.

It is still surprising at times though the people who you would think are doing the obvious things correctly, but are actually monkeying it up in several ways.

All done on separate computers from different states actually.

You have to temper the velocity, too.

When some local restaurant that has 6 reviews total in the past 3 years, just got negged and is suddenly deluged by 40 positive reviews in 7 days, you think they don't know what's going on or that they don't know how to automate something like that for human examination?

Yelp is a racket. The only thing I can suggest is that anyone going into a local business, establish 20-30 Yelp accounts from different local IPs, build them up over a couple years with reviews of other places and then use them as needed, spread out over the first year your business opens.

Horrible it has to work this way but Yelp runs a reputation extortion racket.

I left only 1 review and was building other accounts. So just 1 was posted. It's not like I did multiple positive reviews at once or in a short period of time.

It's a joke!

Totally. Their sales people are the worst. Total scammers.

Is it illegal to do fake reviews or just a TOS violation?

The CFAA is a horrifying thing.
Probably a very low risk sort of thing but crappily written laws are crappy for a reason and the government has shown a total willingness to abuse that law.

Then the other side is that yelp should be cited for filtering legitimate reviews. Riduculous. Yelp is just a racket. The for-profit motive corrupts their service.

They do publisher-side edit their content so arguably, they may lose CDA safe harbor provisions but all of this is test case territory. It boils down to who is willing to fight it to the end and what will courts- run by judges who just learned how to use email in 2011- going to rule.

Yup, absolutely.

There needs to be a community option available, and I'm sure it will happen eventually.

How about just run an honest business with great product and good service.

Most times I see Yelp backfire is due to dumb ass owners or management when the company provides terrible service or product and offer no remediation to fix it when given the opportunity, or their management or ownership is inept and don't understand how online marketing or social networks work and choose to fight it, game it, or go against it (ha!).

Yelp is not perfect, and you are always going to have to deal with idiot customers whether its online or face to face, but if you are running a local business within a large market, the smart play is to keep your head down and provide quality product/service and not make lame attempts to game the system or even worse, provide the online community with ammo to not like your business.

You should be active with a profile for your business to respond to both negative and positive reviews alike. It's kind of amazing to see how beneficial Yelp has been to a lot of small businesses (with no paid for advertising) and if it's working against your business then you most likely have bad service, management, or product details which need to be worked out.

Simplifying mantra.
Not how it always works in the real world.

Ever seen what a vengeful adolescent can do to the reputation of a 30 year old small business with a few hit blogs and Ripoff Reports calling the owner a pedo and a thief and a tax cheat and a kidnapper?

You can run the best business in the world, one psycho disgruntled customer can cost you huge. If you're not set up to counteract that (you don't know how to be in touch with fixers without reaching under digital rocks and seeing what you pull out and you can't afford to write a huge check to pro Reputation Management firms) then you're vulnerable.

It's just a crappy reality of the information age where proposed defamation laws are still shouted down with mantras about FREE SPEECH! and every half ****** in his mothers basement is nuclear capable.

People who don't understand this usually display the naivete of the unaffected. I hope you never learn the hard way.

Of course in today's world every business and even person, is vulnerable to online attacks. Welcome to the internet. As you well know this didn't start, nor does it stop at Yelp.

I recently employed a designer to work with and while vetting them, a simple online search of their name and business yielded multiple attacks in the form of multiple harsh reviews and rip-off reports which mirrored across multiple sites. It was pretty easy to see it was a lunatic customer and the designer wrote a very controlled and diplomatic response to all accusations as much as they could, so it was quite easy for me to discern the situation as simple being a stage 5 maniac customer with nothing better then to tear this person apart.

If you are not pro-active in online marketing for your business (at least minimally) or don't create and monitor your own business listing pages online, or run Google notifications then you are just not a smart business owner, period.

The point is, the buying public will overall be able to weed things out just as I did, and if you run a good business with good service/product you most likely never have anything to worry about besides potentially that one maniac.

After spending a few minutes looking at any given business page on Yelp, I typically see Yelp reviews as a decent measure to what sort of expectations I can have on a business, but expecting it to be perfect or saying they are nothing more then extortionists is a bit irrational IMO and falls in a similiar category as some of the whiny, maniacal reviewers on Yelp slamming a restaurant for something really unreasonable.

Yea that's all fine and dandy, what happens when a fresh out of 50k/yr school Yelp employee making 30k/yr to sell $250/mo ad spots blows a gasket when you decide last minute to not sign with him?

Suddenly you see your favorable reviews start to get "filtered" out and your overall rating drops from 4-5☆ to 2☆ and said employee who knows exactly how to get around the automatic checks decides to negatively review your place.

Then you get a call next month from the same person selling ad space to "get found and help encourage more people to write positive reviews because they will realize you care if you are buying ads (wink wink)" and should you stop advertising or not purchase more when pressured, magically the positive reviews start to get filtered again.

Who's running an honest business with a great product and service now?

There has been a lot of speculation about that with no actual merit from what I have seen. I've known multiple people who own businesses and been pitched repeatedly by their sales force with none of that happening, and this topic has been hammered in my local "Talk" community feature on Yelp over the years which is pretty active with users and business owners alike.

Most of the time the complaints about filtering come from dumbass business owners who dont have a tech or social media bone in their body so they don't "get it", or they were trying to game the system with fake accounts or newbie accounts created by "customers" who are really just their friends after an actual few reviews sent their business rating plummeting and so they panic and become a huge hater of Yelp.

I certainly would not put it past a douchey sales guy to use sleazeball tactics or say/promise questionable things in order to gain a sale, in fact I expect that, but I am doubtful they have the control or the access to play god with someones account.

I am not trying to be the great defender of Yelp here, but as a user and knowing people with thriving businesses which Yelp has contributed a great boost to (with none of their in-house "advertising", which is worthless IMO) I just share an opposing view overall I guess.

It is way more valuable to both business owners and users then it is negative by far. This could change with time, but right now it is the best online review and local search system available.

I know businesses that have benefited greatly from excellent Yelp reviews.

Google "yelp scam" and decide for yourself if the stories are all made up.

Just because some people are level-headed enough to recognize a disgruntled moron (You, me, other posters ITT) doesn't change the fact that in a lot of cases, when the consumer decision is made casually and in fly-by fashion, something like that can be enough to put you damn near out of business. Of 10 customers, 2 or 3 recognize libel for what it is. The other 7/8 think it may be a problem with your product and patronize some place else.

Even more dangerous yet are the irrationally disgruntled morons who don't suck at the internet and are able to destroy your reputation without any hint that they're a kook creeping through their words.

Managing a professional/business reputation is what it is, and 'what it is' is an arms race of who can best control perception. Wish it didn't have to be this way but it is.

The thing that I don't get is that the negative reviews left are from newbie yelp users with no history and they don't get filtered.

I have seen this on many accounts. Now I rarely use yelp and find it hard to take them seriously. But from a business point of view, im lost.

Reiterating that you should focus on great service so bad yelp reviews don't happen in the first place is obvious and not controversial. The question is what to do when you find yourself with negative reviews despite your best efforts.

If there really is a type of person who will let their business suffer because they believe gaming yelp is immoral or illegal, then they are a pussillanimous sheep, and their business deserves to die. Period.

Though I don't think anyone seriously considering that in this thread actually runs a business , and to be charitable Ill assume thatif they did their mindset would change

Possibly interesting to denizens of this thread.

Good link.

In my mind, it is not a question of whether or not Yelp did this, it is only a question of how well they can cover their tracks internally. Even if they can, the overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence from 1st hand Yelp victims might doom them.