The Credibility of Yelp

So after reading this article on Yelp.com, you really have to ask yourself if this website that makes or breaks a business is really everything it seems to be. In the ideal world, Yelp is there for customers, consumers, and your average Joe to visit when he or she wishes to write their opinion on a specific place for everyone in the world with an internet connection to read.

The problem this article brought up was, can Yelp be trusted? As I'm sure you read, mom and pop stores have reported basically harassment from Yelp. Why? For the money!!! It's always about the money. Basically, if you need a recap, these moms and pops are saying they get constant calls from Yelp employees stating that they have a few bad reviews and for 299$ a month they could either move those posts or remove them altogether.

The interesting part was that after saying no to these Yelp representatives, more bad comments seemed to show up on their Yelp page. Well isn't that just the darndest coincidence? As the article reads...

Because they were often asked to advertise soon after receiving negative reviews, many of these business owners believe Yelp employees use such reviews as sales leads. Several, including John, even suspect Yelp employees of writing them. Indeed, Yelp does pay some employees to write reviews of businesses that are solicited for advertising. And in at least one documented instance, a business owner who refused to advertise subsequently received a negative review from a Yelp employee.

So this is obviously just another one of those money hungry purple mom and pop business people eaters stomping around town strangling the breath out of small businesses. The part that makes me really angry, if any of this is true, is that these employees call to get businesses to advertise aka pay to get their bad comments taken down; if they don't, Yelp supposedly and probably has their own employees write more bad reviews so maybe next time they'll change their answer. Well, as the article points out, not all businesses are ready to believe that Yelp can strangle them and they keep saying no, trying to survive in a tumbling (hopefully slightly stabilizing) economy. Then at the end of it, since they don't pay to advertise, their store goes out of business because the entire world checks Yelp before setting foot anywhere.

So either bow to the review god or walk the plank to financial disaster. So in the credibility closet, based off of this article, Yelp is not a credible source of consumer reviews because they care more about money than honestly trying to help the community venture somewhere nice, with good service and good people and good atmosphere. Also, the reviews cannot be counted as credible anymore because Yelp may pay people to write them.

Even not based on the article I question the credibility of the reviews because say I have a friend named Bart. Bart works at a tanning salon, flaming, my best guy friend so I worry about his existence. Wanda is the twat that works down the street at the competitor tanning salon, hate her guts. In a totally unrelated circumstance, the two find themselves at the same store, trying to buy the same sweater. Bart gets there first and Wanda is furious. So to get Bart in trouble at work she writes a nasty review using his name and the name of the place. On top of that, she makes an alias and does the same thing.

Even though this had nothing to do with tanning, service at the salon, anything at all, the business is still going to take a toll because of a personal vendetta. I feel like people may do this more often than we might think which makes, minus the whole article deal-io, Yelp not necessarily the best place for reference.

I'm going to stick to the old school; word of mouth.