Yelp Kills ‘Featured Reviews’

Filed in Featured, Local Search by Matt McGee on April 5, 2010 1 Comment

This is a smart move: Yelp announced tonight that advertisers will no longer be able to promote positive reviews to the “featured/favorite” status on their business pages.

That should put an end to business owners who equate “advertise and you can promote a positive review” with “pay us and we’ll remove the negative reviews.” I suggested last month that Yelp had to do this in order to end SMB confusion and reduce the likelihood of lawsuits.

Another change Yelp is making is to show all reviews it has for a business — including reviews that its algorithm filters from appearing on the business page. Another nice idea, but you have to be Inspector Clouseau to find the link on a business page that lets you see all the reviews. (Hint: It’s at the bottom of the page, below the reviews, in a small text link on the left side.)

reviews

Sheesh, Yelp. What the …?

I’ve written more on this over on Search Engine Land, and you might also check out the discussion on Techmeme.

Comments (1)

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  1. Smart move by Yelp. You never want to give the impression that a company can pay you to remove negative publicity!

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