Foursquare’s CEO says Yelp is shaking down local businesses | Hacker News Reader

Foursquare’s CEO says Yelp is shaking down local businesses

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75 pointsstunod61 comments

This is nothing new. Kathleen Richards, an investigative reporter with the East Bay Express, reported on this at length back in 2009.

See "Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0" => ( 2009 ) http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-...

EDIT 2: Mobile view (1st page only) if browsing from iPhones, Droids... https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbaye...

I remember being alarmed that time when I read this. So I asked a local Indian Restaurant owner located on 2nd Street and Market Street here in San Francisco, with who I had become good friends with, since he was from the same city as my dad (Bombay).

The restaurant used to be called "Bhindi". The owner pretty much confirmed everything in that report. He even told me that the Yelp Marketing guy threatened to display his low star ratings on top and completely hide true 5-star ratings if they (the restaurant) did not buy at-least 300$ worth of ads from Yelp every month. Eventually that restaurant went out of business (don't think it was related to the Yelp Extortion 2.0 though, definitely didn't help either) and now there's Mehfil in it's place.

EDIT: Her follow up story: "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up" https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastba...

I know that place! It's been the same restaurant but with different names for, what feels like, every few months from 2011 until about 2013 when I moved out of the city.

I first thought it was a front for something shady, but now it makes sense to why they kept changing their name so often!

Unfortunately the link to that story is entering a redirect loop on my iPhone.

Does anyone have a link to that story which works on an iPhone?

You're right. on mobile phone (iPhone) it goes into endless redirect. Crashed my safari also.

Here's a mobile URL I found on the internet archives. After it loads, tap the "Reader View" on the browser so you can see the story properly. https://web.archive.org/web/20160709054149/http://m.eastbaye...

Are there any recordings of such calls?

I know, I thought of the same thing, and I did ask the "Bhindi" owner about that (voicemails) in 2009. He said that he had a bunch of emails from the marketing / sales guys, but he was wary of sharing it with me for obvious reasons. Most restaurants still live and die by yelp ratings, because people google a restaurants name and the 1st thing that comes up is the Yelp page, since most restaurants also do not have a decent website, if at all. So if someone sees 3* or lower at the top, they look for something else. "Bhindi" owner even told me that hipster yelp reviewers used to ask "extra chicken" in their 5$ Chicken Korma lunch box, and would threaten to write a low star review on yelp if they were not given it. I don't think Yelp has any control over such people or behaviour though.

Anyways, I had written to Kathleen Richards and remember connecting the two of them at that time, since it was way out of my league to investigate and report on something like this.

Few months after this story, Kathleen Richards wrote a follow up on her original story titled "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up" which was a more or less "defensive story" because Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman critisized her original story and trashed her. That story is going to a 404, but I was able to pull it up from the Internet Archives => "Yelp Extortion Allegations Stack Up" https://web.archive.org/web/20090616170118/http://www.eastba...

Here's Yelp's CEO's response on Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremys/status/793159598651736065

Quite unprofessional in my opinion. Could have exercised a bit more restraint as a public company CEO.

EDIT: Here's a screenshot in case it gets deleted --> http://imgur.com/a/ViqX8

Wow very unprofessional indeed. Makes me glad I don't use their service very often.

Knowing their business practices makes me not use it at all.

Look at his profile picture, would you expect any less? This isn't the first time they've done it, and it surely won't be the last.

https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/opinion/2364585/court-rule...

The term bahramdipity comes to mind...

bahramdipity - the suppression of a discovery, sometimes a serendipitous discovery, by the often-egomaniacal act of a more powerful individual who does cruelly punish, not merely disdain, a person (or persons) of lesser power and little renown who demonstrates sagacity, perspicacity, and truthfulness.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/19271/...

What was the Foursquare CEO exercising when he made unsubstantiated allegations against Yelp?

LOL Stoppelman's response sounds like something you'd hear from Trump - at the very least it's his platform of choice (twitter).

Exactly. He originally trashed the whistleblower reporter in 2009 instead of addressing the allegations (see my comment in this thread for links)

It's interesting to see how, over the years, service industry like that became dependant on user reviews on certain sites. About a week ago I was in a five-star hotel in Dubrovnik (Villa Dubrovnik, I absolutely recommend if anyone cares) that's had over 90 million Euros put into its new decor and stuff. That's some serious money. Yet, one of the first things guy told me there they are proud of their tripadvisor rating and, of all the things and ratings they have, that's probably the most important one to them.

These multi-national big corps have their nuts in hands of sites like these. Lots of potential for abuse, among great stuff for users of course.

I rely on Tripadvisor reviews exclusively when I travel, they've been spot on, and I've never heard of Tripadvisor being accused of abusing the system like Yelp. If they were to abuse service providers like Yelp does, I'd drop them in a hot second.

I like them too, and I haven't heard about them abusing their position either. It's just that too much power is being concentrated into sites like that. For better or for worse, that's how it is now.

On the other hand, every shop in Vietnam has printed off a "rated #1 on Trip Advisor!" sign and stuck it to the front window. It can go both ways.

I love places with "Rated on TripAdvisor" stickers. Technically true- they probably ARE rated. not quite a lie, but totally meaningless.

People play all kinds of games with TripAdvisor reviews here in SE Asia, most notably stuffing the box with good but bogus reviews from friends or family or trashing competitors with fake bad reviews.

But I've never heard any complaints of TripAdvisor itself shaking businesses down the way Yelp is often accused of.

I heard rumors that Google tried to shake down tripadvisor when google tried to enter the hotel review business few years ago.

Here is a great example of how Yelp tries to bully small businesses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C67Lh4LE5LY I suggest you watch this even if you like Yelp. It was definitely eye opening.

Eye opening indeed. On a lighter note, I recommend the South Park episode "You're Not Yelping" (S19e04). The full episode is on Youtube (at the moment) and http://southpark.cc.com/ . It has plenty of the usual South Park toilet humor, but it's a brilliant take on the whole Yelp phenomenon.

That guy is super long-winded.

Doesn't surprise me at all. I have stopped using Yelp for recommendations and went back to asking locals whenever I'm traveling. Not only is their search algorithm terrible (seems completely arbitrary to how or why places do/don't show up), the reviews and ratings seem to be a completely random and often times unreliable.

Part of the issue is that it's an oversimplified rating that doesn't allow for refinement. I can't recall how many times I see a place that has really good food only getting 3 stars because people don't like "the ambience" or the "service is slow" - two things that I, for example, don't care about as much.

We were in Vienna recently and wanted to find a good café to eat dessert. So of course I pulled out my phone and started searching for reviews. My wife just walked over to a fat policeman and asked him for a recommendation. Her technique seems to work pretty well.

I used to trust and find gems with urbanspoon, but it feels like since the zomato change it misses niche places in small towns I know exist from previous experience. As stated above, ask a local. If they say Applebees, ask someone else.

I'd love someone to point to evidence of this beyond pure anecdotes. Yelp clearly allows negative reviews on accounts which advertise with them which can be seen with this Google search [0]. Furthermore an independent Harvard Business School study showed no evidence of fraud [1]. Sure Yelp gives a hard sell, but until some disgruntled ex-employee blows the whistle, or multiple businesses record evidence of this extortion, I'm not ready to believe this is any widespread fraud. I'm sure there are isolated cases, but surely someone would have come forward to back up claims that Yelp can manipulate reviews and ratings? [0] https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Ayelp.com+%22thi... [1] https://www.yelpblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/hbs-stud...

They claim ignorance of how their algo works, under oath in courts of law. The lawsuits and settlements have been mounting since 2010, AFAIK. Google yelp+lawsuit+algo.

Anecdotal but I did reputation cleanup for a company. I never recalled any 'we'll remove low star reviews' offers from the Yelp sales team. My guess is some sales guys get desperate and the Yelp ad package was not cheap/scaleable like Google ads so they definitely had to dig.

Incidentally removing low star reviews from some sites is easy(prove review violates TOS) .... I remember Yelp being strict on not doing so.

If you want to see some real grade A con games....look up Groupon. Great idea, greedy as hell execution.

I've moved twice in the past four years and I have gone to yelp for food recommendations a few times -- totally useless, sadly. Always wants me to go to Papa Johns or some other chain. The days of interesting food discovery via yelp are over. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

It's still moderately useful, if you know how to read for bullshit reviews and the usual disturbed people, as a way to find out if the place you're thinking of getting food from is alright.

That's why I use Foursquare.

I don't know if anyone remembers the old days of Yelp ( talking 2006-2007-ish ). It was a fun community to be a part of. As a reviewer you had a great feeling like you were appreciated. There were community organizers setting up get-togethers at bars, sending swag to you in the mail, and earning stars and badges. It's really too bad they threw that all away.

My thoughts on Yelp is that you are getting the average recommendation instead of exceptional ones because of the law of large numbers.

I use Yelp all the time when I'm in a part of the city I don't know well. I mostly ignore the star rating and just look at the pictures and skim individual reviews for relevant info. Works great for that purpose.

Waitress friend told me about her restaurant's zero tolerance Yelp policy.

If you are explicitly named in two negative reviews (in some un-defined time period), you are fired.

Wow I guess she wouldn't want to piss off any coworkers either, since fake reviews are so common.

Your waitress friend should submit a few (fake) bad reviews explicitly naming her boss (or whomever wrote the policy). Not to get the person fired, but to make them face the reality of that shitty policy and get it changed...

Holy shit talk about perverse incentives. Giving away free food avoids negative yelp reviews.

That seems more like one tolerance.

>Unlike Yelp — they have several thousand people who dial the pizzeria and the bar to try and get them to pay each month. Our ratings are really neutral.

WTH kind of punctuation is that?

Are you referring to the em-dash?

I'm referring to the entirety of that which I cited.

I'm not a huge yelp fan. I think there are elements of their product that are done sloppily, and I even dislike some yelpers that I've personally interacted with.

That said, it would be nice if someone presented some evidence to back up claims that yelp is doing something "corrupt".

I don't doubt their AE's are assholes, which is where I'm guessing a lot of business owners' negative feedback is coming from, but there's never been actual data driven proof that yelp does something shady.

There's been plenty of smoke ...

https://consumerist.com/2014/04/04/yelps-controversial-busin...

> That said, it would be nice if someone presented some evidence to back up claims that yelp is doing something "corrupt".

This is an extremely difficult standard to meet. A lot of the accusations against Yelp involve phone calls with their sales reps, which is not public data that can be aggregated and parsed. All we really have to go on are anecdotes.

Speaking personally, I've heard from two people I know who have small businesses- a wedding photographer in Seattle and a small restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire- who separately told me how they had good Yelp reviews, and then watched them get pushed down and bad reviews pushed to the top shortly after they declined to buy Yelp ads. These two people didn't even know each their and would have no way or reason to coordinate their tales, and they told me identical stories. I never use Yelp anymore, for this reason.

Anecdotes might not be scientific data, but if the circumstances are such that scientific data is impossible to obtain, they're better than nothing.

Same exact thing happened to me. I ran a small custom design shop and due to it, I knew all of my customers personally and didn't have many jobs a month.

Then, there was a door-to-door canvas trying to get businesses on my block to join some yelp ad subscription. I know this because we all would go down to the pub after work and chat about it, we're in an artsy corridor / community.

I was one of the only ones who had a discussion with this ad subscription salesman. And they offered me a package that I could sign up for where we could change the order of our reviews and "effectively hide the bad ones on later pages" as well as responding to the reviews in a way where it would be prominent.

I responded that I don't have any bad reviews, my business doesn't work that way, not interested.

And surprise, surprise literally the next day I had my first one star review sitting at the top of the page. The review in question had a picture / reviewer I had never met with and their description of the "problem" didn't even state any specifics. You would not be able to tell what I do from the complaint. When I responded to the complaint asking for any insight and very verbosely responding to them, never a reply AND my response was hidden from sight.

None of this made any sense: I offered a lifetime guarantee and did electronics modifications to the person's specs. I've never missed a deadline or had anything fail at a bad time. If I had, I'd be notified of it obviously. I just happened to have a storefront accessible from the street so they thought I gave a flying fuck about "walk-in traffic" or something.

I am not dumb enough to claim that this is a widespread practice, sanctioned by yelp, or anything like that. But the system definitely empowers their "sales team" to extort businesses by leaving bogus negative reviews, as well as competitors. Just a shit system in general that cannot be taken seriously. Hell, even a shady landlord could start a campaign against a tenant if they want to try and break a lease.

But hey, don't believe me: I could be just leaving a bogus negative review about yelp, here, and sounding very convincing. AKA, that's my entire point about how crappy it is in general and not to be trusted.

Look at grubhub reviews as well. They're nonsense largely, but you don't really want to ignore them... there's no accounting for taste, etc.

Some Sites Allow you To Remove Bad Reviwws For TOS violatioNs. Check Yelp PolicY.

In an ideal world, employing people to regularly be assholes to small business to extract profit would itself be shady. I want my local ramen place to worry about making delicious ramen, not about how to placate the guy on the phone making threats, regardless of whether the threats are credible.

Such a shame all these entrenched web monopolies are focused on squeezing out profits with salespeople instead of continuing to innovate.

The billion dollar bully documentary is a good documentary on this.

What's a good alternative to Yelp (other than FS)?

Posting to that city's sub-reddit (if there is one) ?

Nextdoor just rolled out a recommendations feature. Give it a try!

FourSquare used to be good but I stopped using it a while ago. It might still be pretty decent.

Have you seen anything worthwhile on ND? Where I live (near Redwood City, CA) there isn't anything useful. It's mostly people posting about their own/friend's restaurant. Without photos or star ratings, I can't see it taking off—and I say this as a frequent ND user.

If you're in one of their cities (NYC,DC,LA and a few others look) into https://www.theinfatuation.com . It's curated instead of crowd sourced and definitely caters to a younger audience.

Try http://www.chowdrapp.com it's got more of a social twist to food discovery

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