Yelp ..... Hate is not a strong enough word.
 

Yelp is a joke. We have a family business that is on yelp. We get customers that leave us 5 star ratings that never make it on yelp or they are filtered and hidden. Yet we get fake customer with extremely bad feed back or some made up by our compititon that leave bad feed back that is aloud to stay on even after we have called and complained to yelp. That is complete BS. There is no way to prove that what is written on yelp is from honest people or real people or real customers. If someone leaves bad feedback you can reply as the business owner, but only a short line or two is shown. If the customer replies again, you can't reply back at all.

SO, Yelp make money in advertisement and they wants us to advertise with or through them. Well since we do not want to pay them money for this BS our yelp reviews reflect that. Yelp claims that if we advertise (pay them money) our Yelp reviews will get much better...what, how? HUH This is a form of black mail if you ask me. This really pisses me off.

Google search Yelp lawsuits and see for yourself.

Who else has a yelp issue out there.

My only issue with yelp is that most of the reviewers think they are funny. Just tell me if its a good business, restaurant, etc. i dont need to hear about why your cat thought this was the best used book store in town or something.

But yeah, yelp isn't great for all business owners. My only suggestion would be is to play the game. Its not the most moral play, but everyone is doing it right now.

I've heard this many times before.

A friend that owns a local restaurant has said the same thing. He said that mysteriously great reviews are somehow not able to be posted but yet poor reviews make it on yelp no problem. When he inquired about it yelp told him that Yelp go's through the reviews and weeds out or removes reviews that could be fake. Some business owners have their friends post up Rave reviews about their business and yelp sees them as plants. Try having your friends family and customers post reviews that are good but not over the top in any way see if that helps.

Report it to Yelp, They usually get back to you within a couple days. They will sort it right out.

Problem is that their filtering algorithm isn't always accurate....What we did is generated an event (partially compd) and invited the local Yelp Embassador to bring a crew over. That fixed our issues

I think thats an issue... How is that any different than bribery. If it takes special events and favors to the person running the show in your town then the logic behind the site is corrupt... similar to the extortion the mob does.

2 seperate solutions.
1) Letting Yelp know about this oversight will help with their filtering
2) No, Yelp Elite members have been nominated by other Yelp members who feel that their reviews have good merit. So therefore if a Yelp Elite reviews the restaurant it is more likely that this review will be read...

Isn't bribery what advertising is? Paying a select group of people to show your product by..Commercials on tv... newspapers...radio ads..Coupons to bring people in for one thing and sell them more than that....?

"Isn't bribery what advertising is? Paying a select group of people to show your product by..Commercials on tv... newspapers...radio ads..Coupons to bring people in for one thing and sell them more than that....?"

HaHa... Good Point!.. I never thought of it in that context...

So is buying flowers and entertaining an exquisite dining experience, a form of payment?....... LOL..

I have the same issue
we have done two things

we hired a company to manage our website, they also contact yelp posters and try to get them to remove the posts themselves

also, we've used the owner comment option a few times not to dispute the post, but to expose yelps extortion tactics to the public

both have seemed to help

Haha, that's rad! It is a form of payment.... :P