Yelp tried to strong-arm us | Hacker News Reader

Yelp tried to strong-arm us

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88 pointsz0a43 comments

It's a sad but predictable pattern you see from everyone from the Better Business Bureau to more recent companies.

Being established isn't enough, eventually they have to push on those whose information / access they provide.

Personally I gave up on Yelp as years ago I could see so many reviews for places by people who clearly had no clue what that place even was. Such as if you go to a Neapolitan pizza place... you really shouldn't complain that the pizza is "just thin crust". Or the always great "this place isn't as good as X" where X is a place that costs 3x as much....

Its not just enough to make money, you have to make increasingly more money every year.

This sounds like a misleading / high-pressure sales call, but if you read into it carefully there's nothing that indicates to me anything illegal, scammy, or even anything that would back up the claim that Yelp penalizes businesses that don't advertise.

A charitable interpretation is that the salesperson is basically claiming there were 21,000 searches the business showed up in, where they could have been shown at the top if they advertised.

I've directly noticed Yelp penalizing a local restaurant down in their search results for a key term and when I asked them about it, they told a nearly identical story to what this Reddit poster describes.

They had paid for Yelp advertising, and after deciding to stop suddenly their search result priority dropped, bad reviews were prioritized in their profile, and good reviews started being removed.

There are many cases of yelp doing these actions (we obviously don't have the source code as hard proof):

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2018/01/09/yelp-accused-hiding-posi...

https://raymondfong.net/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-...

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/yelp-filter-positive-rev...

For my clients they basically said that if we didn't purchase and edit our page with them. That our competitors ad's would show on or page. (No mention that yelp basically puts them there.) So if we paid and setup our page they would cease to show our competitors? Nope, they would move to the bottom of the page where most visitors end up anyway.

Why should I believe a self post? There's a weird anti-Yelp cult but never can the people who claim Yelp is involved with nefarious business practices provide any actual proof.

Yelp employees don't know about these practices.

Yelp says it doesn't have these practices.

And these people can't ever offer substantive evidence for the outrage porn they're writing.

I'm thoroughly convinced after reading countless of these types of posts that the anti-Yelp sentiment is purely born out of salty business owners who don't like the fact that they get terrible reviews from an experienced audience.

This post does not belong on HN. There is nothing worth discussing about this story except to fulfill someone's outrage porn fetish.

I agree, an unsubstantiated self post shouldn't be spread on HN.

AFAIK, it's more than just yelp employees that don't admit knowing about such practices, ex-yelp employees also don't admit knowing either. So far evidence points to yelp extortion being the work of independent scammers.

However, hasn't Google reviews pretty well made Yelp irrelevant at this point? And while there's lots to be concerned about Google's business model, I'm not aware of any potential for conflict-of-interest in Google reviews as with Yelp.

> However, hasn't Google reviews pretty well made Yelp irrelevant at this point?

If it were a race to rate everything as close to 5/5 as possible, yes. Google, Facebook, and Tripadvisor are all winning that race.

Yelp typically has lower ratings and is easier to filter/search.

It's far from the perfect platform, but certainly less astroturfed than the others.

You don't have to believe it. I believe the post because I have experienced this similar behavior with two clients that were involved with yelp. And both times yelp tried to use scare tactics to get me to purchase their services on behalf of my clients. I won't go into detail. But this is more than some anti-yelp cult like some people from yelp would love for you believe.

>You don't have to believe it.

I know I don't. I asked why I should. The principle behind the question was providing rational evidence to lend credence to these stories. Your statements don't offer anything that help with this.

The only "rational evidence" you could ever get is Yelp stats and they're obviously biased.

Or you could compile anecdotes into actual data, read between the lines of their reports on retain rates.

>Or you could compile anecdotes into actual data,

So we should believe the IRS does actually call people and ask for their information? Because if you think listening to these types of posts are the equivalent of massaging anecdotes into actual "data", that's the conclusion you're going to come to on either subject matter.

Or we could realize the fundamental ego-stroking absurdities of these posts, take into account there's no evidence, take into account that no employees former or current say that Yelp is involved with nefarious business practices, and take into account the business' own statements on this matter, and come to the very rational conclusion that these posts aren't based on any actual actions taken by Yelp.

You literally proved his point by saying "I won't go into detail".

> It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

This quote has never been more relevant here.

> Yelp employees don't know about these practices.

> Yelp says it doesn't have these practices.

And both of these parties have skin in the game. Their incentives are, of course, to pretend they do not have dishonest and extortionate practices and to perpetuate the status quo.

> I'm thoroughly convinced after reading countless of these types of posts that the anti-Yelp sentiment is purely born out of salty business owners who don't like the fact that they get terrible reviews from an experienced audience.

I'm thoroughly convinced after your post that not only do you not understand how Yelp works (that they have the ability to arbitrarily move reviews to and from recommended and not recommended, affecting a businesses' score), but you also do not understand that Yelp is generally a bad medium for non-biased reviews, because most people will only leave a review if they're ecstatic about the business or have a gripe with it.

For every piece of feedback you see, there are probably at least 400-500 normal business interactions with regular people, despite whatever arbitrary rating Yelp has chosen to display on that week.

> And these people can't ever offer substantive evidence for the outrage porn they're writing.

You don't get to play arbiter on the height of the bar set for evidence. There have been multiple accounts over the years from business owners detailing the nature of their phone calls with Yelp. Until their algorithm for rating is open sourced, the burden of proof is actually on Yelp to showcase that the ratings are not being manipulated in any way. What's stopping them from removing a 5 star review and citing that it "doesn't follow guidelines" and pretend that it's ok?

> This post does not belong on HN.

Indeed it is your post that doesn't belong on HN. It is indicative of poor research, victim blaming and vague goalpost moving.

>And both of these parties have skin in the game.

I think you need to avoid using conspiracy theories. It's a rating system, not a secret government project.

>There have been multiple accounts over the years from business owners detailing the nature of their phone calls with Yelp.

You and I have very very different standards on what constitutes evidence on any subject matter. It's simply not rational to take people are their word when they're so emotionally invested in this subject matter, or what's more likely is they're just being scammed. Small business owners tend to not be the brightest bunch of people. And there is a sizable population of current and former engineers all saying Yelp does not do these things. There has never been evidence of anything the actions people accuse Yelp of taking. It's either scammers or rather, as I've come to see, business owners just being salty they get negative reviews.

Based on how you're thinking about this, you'd think the IRS and the scammers who call people over the phone pretending to be the IRS are one in the same. That's how insane you're being.

>Until their algorithm for rating is open sourced

You seem to be under the impression this would mean anything, but it's an opinion born out of a dearth of knowledge on technical systems and security in general. The code being published isn't necessarily the code being run.

>It is indicative of poor research,

I think you need to really have a big think about what opinions and solutions you think are worth considering.

>victim blaming

What? There are victims here?

>vague goalpost

Now you're just throwing words around.

But repeated allegations of these practices remain, e.g.

https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business...

There is more evidence in the filings for Curry v. Yelp.

Nothing about this seems credible or interesting enough to be posted here. These stories emerge every so often, and they rarely seem to exist beyond Reddit. I’d be interested in this if it could be verified, but as it is this is internet rumor momgering.

What would you require for verification?

I’d trust a reputable news outlet to do the vetting of the story, but that never seems to happen with these Reddit posts. They just become cultural artifacts and get repeated ad nauseum.

Even if it is perfectly true and exhaustively verified, 'one business had an interaction with Yelp they are unhappy with' is not a that story belongs on HN because it's not interesting.

This sounds like a scam call. Did the user verify that the agent was in fact in any way associated with yelp, and not just someone trying to blackmail a business owner? As a domain owner, you get these scammy SEO agents pretending to be affiliated with google all the time.

really? Based on otherwise pristine reputation for Yelp?

No, of course not. But over the years I’ve heard tons of anecdotal and second-hand stories about yelp doing variations of this but nothing concrete or well-documented. That, and knowing that these kinds of scammers exist.

I ask this every time a Yelp story emerges: where is the evidence commensurate to the claim about Yelp’s reputation? It would make a fantastic news story, any reporter would leap at it, so where is it? Every time I ask this people “cite” Reddit and a bunch of blog posts, so I’m still waiting for evidence.

Now I don’t like Yelp. Fakespot often finds loads of fake reviews and that’s a problem, but one unrelated to Yelp’s social media “reputation.”

Interestingly, the Reddit comments seem to mention Google as a better alternative.

Is Google automated in this space, like most everything else Google does, or does it have actual people to make the same threats that Yelp reportedly does?

Google has automated fear on the client side: some of their most important products are "not for sale", but ad-spend might be used a signal in ranking. And because the ranking works in mysterious ways, nobody can do an informed cost/benefit decision, nobody dares to reject the Google what the Google is due. Advertisers faithfully put their money in the sacrifice box, afraid of finding out what would happen if they did not. Google has effectively deified itself.

Follow-up question: was it all a cunning plan or was it discovered by chance? My guess is the chance discovery.

Google has plenty of issues on the consumer side, but from my experiences and everything i've heard they treat their advertisers well. At the very least, they're not an outright protection racket.

I found Google restaurant reviews in NYC to be generally very inflated. You'd think couple hundred reviews averaging out to be 4.6+ would mean pretty good experience, but I've learned to dial back my expectation.

Ratings are cultural as well. Compare to the traditional French scoring system where 19/20 was traditionally considered the highest attainable score as 20/20 was reserved for perfection (eg. something unattainable).[1]

I couldn't find a source for this but I once heard of an North American company which had opened some offices in northern Europe and used the same satisfaction survey across all offices. They were astonished to see satisfaction scores being so low in northern Europe so they launched an investigation into the matter. The result of the investigation was that satisfaction in the European offices was actually comparable if not higher than the North American offices, but culturally they would use a score like 3/5 to indicate that they had no complaints, reserving higher scores for when things were above and beyond great.

Someone with better Google-fu might be able to find a source because I probably got something wrong but I think that was the gist of the event.

[1] https://astoldbydana.com/2014/11/11/grading-on-the-french-sy...

Thanks for sharing. I wonder if Google should introduce option for users to view adjusted score. Meaning it would put higher weighting on users that have more balanced distribution of historical star ratings who have verified credential. I'm sure that may have some unintended consequences...

So this is where it gets frustrating. When I'm heading to a new city for business meetings (which happens often) Google is great about auto-magically surfacing restaurant names close to where I will be. It's much faster and easier to use than Yelp.

But Google's "reviews" aren't really reviews at all. They're one-liners that people type into their phones, without telling me anything about local specialties or WHY some particular dish was good or bad. (What's "too spicy" for someone might be just what I want, etc.)

The best Yelp reviews are really informative. They're quirky and opinionated, but that's part of the fun of reading them. I routinely collect a couple Google-generated names and then look up the places on Yelp to get the real deal.

I understand that Yelp's sales team plays dodgy games with merchants to "fix" negative reviews, or to shake down merchants who don't buy ads. Wish they didn't.

But from a consumer standpoint, a seriously flawed Yelp is still more useful than a deluge of momentary burps from a Google system that is practically insight-free.

Depth vs. breadth paradox.

Google has the annoying tendency to ask people to rate and review places they've been near. When they get it wrong you get reviews like "never been to this place 1/5 stars".

I wish Google would incentivise helpful reviews and better verify that a user has actually been to a place before prompting them to review it. Something as simple as creating a guide on how to write a meaningful review could probably go a long way.

I do wonder —with so many examples— how they avoid being charged with racketeering or extortion.

Because it isn't true? Because it's an unverified self-post on reddit, one of the least trustworthy places on the internet?

This is far from the first individual report of this, and what happens if you don't pay. It's allegedly been happening for years. See other comments in here for more.

And yet they've still avoided being charged with anything, which suggests that stories might be less credible than they first seem.

Good time as ever to mention that Foursquare is still great in every big city I try it in.

> Good time as ever to mention that Foursquare is still great in every big city I try it in.

Isn't their new business model basically track your location and sell the data to anyone with money? The title to their website it literally "Foursquare - The Trusted Location Data & Intelligence Company" (https://foursquare.com/).

Okay, you keep on going on about Yelp. Why do I care about Yelp? Seriously now, let's think about this for one second, okay? I've been in business for 24 years. Why do I care if Yelp has a review about me? Do you think I really care about Yelp? I don't give a fuck about Yelp!

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