Yelp’s Trust Problem
By Matt McGee on Mar 12, 2010 in Local Search
ClickZ is running an article today about Yelp’s current legal troubles. I’m quoted in the article (at the end) and I come across as a staunch defender of Yelp.
While I do admire the loyalty they’ve built up amongst users, I’m actually more in the middle than the article portrays. I really believe Yelp needs to improve its overall messaging to small business owners if it wants to gain wider adoption and acceptance as a marketing channel. And, as I posited in my earlier post on Yelp this week, I definitely wonder if “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” applies to Yelp. It very well could.
But aside from how I feel about Yelp, the bigger issue is the impact of these legal troubles and claims on Yelp’s trust. The ClickZ piece gets into that a bit, but I think this post by Mike Blumenthal today says a lot more about it. Mike interviews a small business owner about reviews, and here’s what the business owner says about Yelp:
We avoid them like the black plague. You can find a lot of articles on the subject so I won’t get on a soap box…but we’ve had around 30 satisfied customers post positive reviews on Yelp and none of them posted to our profile. When we asked why we were told that the customer has to be an “active Yelp user” or the reviews will not show up. When we asked what constitutes an “active Yelp user” we were told that formula was proprietary and confidential. Of course, this didn’t stop them from making a sales call and offering us assistance in getting more positive reviews on our account. After doing some research and realizing this was a much bigger problem with other business owners, and that they were involved in a class action lawsuit for similar accusations, we just decided to avoid them all together.
I’m guessing that attitude is more widespread than we think. And it speaks to one of Yelp’s fundamental flaws: The mysterious algorithm has a natural bias against first-time reviewers. It’s the old job search catch-22 — you need experience to get a job, but you can’t get experience if no one will hire you.
How can Yelp reach its full potential if it regularly punishes new users by not posting their reviews? There’s a trust problem here with small business owners who see real reviews from real people being zapped from the site, and from people who’d like to become regular users, but have a bad experience when their first taste of Yelp is essentially, “We don’t care what you have to say.”
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4 Comment(s)
By MiriamEllis on Mar 12, 2010 | Reply
Agree with you, Matt, that Yelp has developed a great product, but news, rumors and hearsay about them have been bad for as long as they’ve been around. Starting with the notion that they paid people to leave the initial reviews that made up their website and then, over the past couple of years, allegations of extortion…it just doesn’t leave me with a yummy taste in my mouth about Yelp.
What I find especially tough is that, as with Google, SMBs find themselves being rolled over juggernaut-fashion because Yelp is so large and not being held accountable for any policy they choose to make, no matter how it may affect business owners and their customers. This lack of accountability and transparency seems to be becoming inseparable from large-scale Interent-based operations and, while it mimics the off-line world, it’s still disheartening in a media I hoped might have a second chance to do things differently.
Good post, Matt!
By Tom Crandall on Mar 13, 2010 | Reply
Matt,
You nailed the key issue when you cite the “mysterious algorithm has a natural bias against first-time reviewers.” While Yelp’s intentions are in the right place, this obstacle alienates local businesses and may lead to their demise as local businesses become more proactive in their local online visibility.
I have been a great admirer of Yelp but it is no longer a directory I advise clients to recommend to their customers to provide reviews–specifically because of their “frequent reviewer” algorithm.
While I hear (third person) some unflattering things from SMB’s about Yelp sales tactics from time to time, I hear much more venting about IYP’s and a few other interactive directories.
By Don Campbell on Mar 13, 2010 | Reply
Great article Matt.
This is precisely why we don’t advise businesses to ask their clients for reviews on Yelp – Yelp frequently just removes them based on the mysterious algorithm you mention.
Yelp can help businesses but I’ve seen several businesses be hurt by them as well. If your business is not the right type, you probably don’t get a lot of Yelp reviews. (Restaurants and Shopping make up 52% of Yelp reviews.)
So if a business in the wrong industry gets a bad review, they can’t even get their best customers to help them, because if they are not avid “Yelpers” their reviews will just be removed.
I feel like Yelp needs to have a better interface with the business owners because of the effect they can have on them. Many businesses are left frustrated, and this deteriorates their trust in Yelp.
By irina on May 16, 2010 | Reply
Yelp can no longer be trusted. The reviews in yelp.com are manipulated to business owners to buy adwertising