[ilikehurdles]

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.

[jordache]

really? Based on otherwise pristine reputation for Yelp?

[ilikehurdles]

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.

[gotocake]

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.”