[kloncks]

Serious question.

Yelp's revenue model is a bad conflict of interest. They rank the destinations AND the destinations have to buy advertising too.

What revenue model could they do that would work and not be shady? I can't think of one. Charge users?

[ziszis]

It's not that strange. Google does the same more or less.

Search for "insurance" on Google. Google ranks a bunch of insurance companies: Geico, Statefarm, etc. They also show ratings for some specific agents. Google also sells ads if you want to drive more traffic and not just be in the organic listings.

You can find nuanced differences between Yelp and Google, but the problem is not conflict of interest. The problem is that businesses are not seeing enough value in the ad product that Yelp offers. Many advertisers dislike Google, yet they still advertise.

[dudus]

How is this different from google or Yahoo?

I heard they also accept payments to remove bad reviews, but I'm not sure it's true. That would be a worse conflict in my opinion.

[_dominic]

it's pretty much google and every other search engine model. I believe competition it's the only thing that can make it not shady.