[thomasdub]

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...

[ryuker16]

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.

[tunap]

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.