Having Yelp Reviews Removed

[RobertFisher]

Since we all work with Yelp on a local basis, I believe many are aware that if a review is placed by a non customer about a company, Yelp will typically remove them if you show that it isn't valid, etc. We all know they made a show of outing those who posted fake reviews as well. Here is a question I have though: Have any of you been aware of Yelp taking down valid negative reviews for companies?

I have just run into this and find it somewhat perplexing. If you know of this, I would love to hear how it happens? Thanks,

[EGOL]

Thanks for letting me know about the New Yorker article.  That does make a difference.

[RobertFisher]

The Search Engine Watch piece is a bit misleading. It makes it seem as if the plaintiff's proved that Yelp was doing this and the court said it was OK and was "hard bargaining." If you read the piece by Vauhina Vara in the New Yorker, "The Terrible Yelp Ruling Is Not So Bad," it points out that the biggest reason for the appeal failing was the plaintiff's failed to prove Yelp had done any of the things they were claiming. The judge appears to have gone a little beyond with the... and if they had ... hard bargaining. I paraphrased that last bit.

I have to believe if it were a case where the claims were proven up, and the judge found that it was OK as here, there would be a push to a higher court with a real chance of reversal. At least I hope there would be!

Best

[EGOL]

Just read this interesting article about Yelp on SearchEngineWatch.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2364585/Court-Rules-Yelp-May-Demand-Money-for-Adding-and-Removing-Reviews

I can't believe that this would be considered a permitted form of "hard bargaining".

But, hard bargaining or not this is something that a "good business" would not do.

[AdamCan]

If you have concerns about company ethics, I highly recommend reviewing Glass Door's Yelp profile. Past employees can shed a lot of light in the cons section.

[MiriamEllis]

Lovely to hear, Robert! Couldn't agree more that being nice goes far in making the business world so much pleasanter for everybody

[EGOL]

Sorry to hear about that.  I know it feels to see a good answer go up in smoke.  Thanks for giving it a shot.

[RobertFisher]

I responded twice and it said "response cannot be blank." And wiped everything off.

Short version is you cannot review Yelp or the BBB. I wonder why???
Best

[RobertFisher]

Miriam, 
This is why Moz is still worlds apart from so many online organizations whether SEO, SEM, directories, SaaS, Etc. Honesty. Frankly, I would not care if Yelp showed some favoritism to their paying clients: Just let me know you will occasionally work with a paying client to ameliorate a bad situation. (Yes, even keep it a bit obtuse. Then at least it is no harm no foul...somewhat.) If more companies would understand that you selling a trillion in whatever does not always have to be negatively affected by doing the right thing.

At some point we all must ask ourselves as business people: What are we going to stand for. To this day, I give Rand and the Moz crew huge credit for all they did to get their beliefs out early and to stand by them when it was surely not expedient. Just be nice.

Thanks,

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Robert,

Thanks for clarifying about not cutting and pasting. I didn't think it likely that you'd do that, but just wanted to be sure

If Yelp publishes policies like the ones I've quoted, then I feel you should have a case for holding them accountable for sticking to what they say. These are their own policies - if they believe in them, they should uphold them. And should be willing to explain to customers the reasons why they have done something that appears at variance with their own stated guidelines.

I really do hope you will get an answer!

[EGOL]

Interesting discussion.  I have been watching it.

I have a couple of questions?

Are you, Robert, able to write a review on Yelp about Yelp?   It would seem only fair that such reviews should be allowed there.  However, I can say that on Amazon, you can review the performance of every marketplace seller and every product -- but you can not review amazon's performance as a seller.   I called the company to complain and the person who receives complaint calls didn't know that you can't review amazon.

I'd think for a company like Yelp that they should have two (or more) categories of reviews.  Those from consumers (which will probably be mostly glowing) and from biz owners (which will probably be mostly snarling).

Second, have you seen this WSJ article about a carpet cleaning biz owner, how a Yelp review case is in the Virginia Supreme Court and about SLAPP and Anti-SLAPP suits?

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303847804579477633444768964

[RobertFisher]

Hello Miriam,

Thanks for posting the "We is soooo Good" blurb from Yelp. I hesitated to do so. The issue with overstating is it comes off as less than genuine and Yelp way overstates. I know that when there are review issues that are pointed out, you can talk with your rep, show them a problem, and they in some way deal with it. It is disingenuous for Yelp to say there is zero relationship between Yelp Sales and other departments.

1. Agreed on the close manual management. The issue is it is a ___ management firm. (Left blank as I prefer not to identify them here as I am in ongoing talks on a major issue and at this time there has been positive change so far on that side.) They have changed some management, but that should not allow you to carte blanche say: "We got rid of the bad actors and the new team are all well dressed. Take down bad reviews." Obviously, Yelp would have no way of knowing the new "team" will be any different. Also, if that works for one, it should be done for anyone with a bad review.

2. On this, you know that I would not cut and paste. I did make multiple negative reviews, but all were different. Given they are the same complaint, one could say spun, but they were spun by me in a way that was, IMO, legit. The one thing here is they could say that the ones where I am not located are not reasonable and I would say OK. But, they should have the courage to tell their Reviewers, members, etc. that we took this down for this reason. Or, with someone who posts reviews and assists their property in doing so, at least realize that if you posted 50 plus reviews with all types of stars, good bad and mediocre, etc. that it is unlikely you have now become a review spammer.

I will share whatever I receive from Yelp, but I am not holding out any hope they will even respond. On other much less problematic issues, I have emailed, used contact form, etc. and failed to get even a response.

Thanks Miriam,

Best

[MiriamEllis]

Really good discussion going on here, gentlemen! Everyone on this thread likely agrees that Yelp's policies have made them the focus of a great deal of controversy over the years.

Their official stance on removing reviews for paying customers is:

Will Yelp remove or reorder bad reviews if a business pays for advertising?

No. You can’t pay us to remove or reorder your bad reviews — it’s just that simple. It’s worth pointing out some additional checks and balances that we build into the system: among other things, our sales team doesn’t have the administrative privileges that might allow them to remove a bad review for an advertiser; similarly, the folks who do have those privileges don’t have anything to do with sales and aren’t compensated on the basis of sales performance ... Our recommendation software treats advertisers and non-advertisers exactly the same. You’ll find plenty of Yelp advertisers with negative reviews, and plenty of non-advertisers with five-star ratings across the board ... In short, there is no relationship between reviews and anything having to do with Yelp Ads or the Yelp Ads sales process. Period.

(see: https://biz.yelp.com/support/common_questions)

My read of this is that Yelp is declaring that money can't influence review take-down because their sales department doesn't handle taking down reviews - but - that there are staff members who do have the privilege of taking down a review.

Robert, two things about what you've documented here are standing out to me:

1. It sounds like the company in question had multiple negative reviews that have now been removed. To me, this indicates some sort of close manual management going on on Yelp's side in conjunction with this business. Could legal issues be involved? Could there be some kind of extenuating circumstance that would warrant a general take-down of all negative reviews for the business in question? Maybe like a change of management, or legal pressure, or something along those lines?

2. You mentioned that you multi-posted your review. I am failing to find the guideline on this, but I am positive Yelp has a policy against re-publishing Yelp reviews on third party sites. Could it be that your mutli-publishing approach might have fallen afoul of this and looked to Yelp like you were re-publishing content (your review) that they consider to be theirs? Could this have happened with any of the other reviews that were taken down? Just a thought!

I think you've done the smart thing by personally asking Yelp for an explanation of what happened. It would be very educational, I'm sure, if you could share the reply you receive with the community as, clearly, there are some hard feelings about situations like this. Thanks for starting a good discussion!

[spencerhjustice]

Everyone says this, but having advertised with yelp for over $1000 a month for the past six months I completely disagree. We tried to get them to take down negative reviews with legitimate reasons as to why they should be removed and they were completely unhelpful. They also filtered a lot of legitimate good reviews. They're just frustrating in general in my opinion.

[LesleyPaone]

I cross posted this thread to reddit to get the hive mind opinion on the situation. A couple of people did mention a great point, you violated Yelp's TOS by posting multiple reviews on the same company / situation.

http://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/297rf4/it_looks_like_yelp_is_hiding_bad_reviews_again/

[LesleyPaone]

I think Yelp does work in a positive way a lot, I know many businesses it has helped, but at the same time I think once you get to know the system you realize it is rigged. Maybe it is on purpose, or maybe it is like the early days of Google before the algorithm was perfected, I don't honestly know.

It is interesting how they do their moderation though, I figured you would still be able to see everything, just the post would be hidden from the public view.

My best course of action would be to take it to social media, maybe a few posts / tweets yelps way might get them to respond.

[RobertFisher]

With yelp, when you sign into your account you can access any review or update you have ever posted. I checked and prior to my "unhappy" review I had posted at least a dozen times in the previous 4 months. So, not a piker.

So instead of having, say 34 reviews, I have 33 and the unhappy no longer exists. Not even a note that says, we removed due to _______. Just hey, let's take it down, he can go pound sand. After all..."You Cannot Pay To Have Reviews Fixed or Removed from Yelp!"

Whatev.

Actually, there are instances where Yelp does work for the business in a positive way: As a respected citation source, for Restaurants (especially new ones) it can be invaluable, etc. It is just when you start no longer being truthful people will lose faith. Frankly, right now, because someone took some action, I was going to amend the review and that is how I discovered it had been removed. Go figure....

[LesleyPaone]

My best guess in that situation is that the company is paying yelp and they are burying reviews. I don't post to yelp, so I have a couple of general questions about the whole thing. Can you see the review when you are logged in at looking at the page, but not see it when you are logged out? Can you see the review in your account? Also, is there a direct link to the review that you could send someone directly to the review?

[RobertFisher]

Again, I really do appreciate your input. The LA Times article is really more about  businesses who complain about reviews being incorrect and somewhat about the "you cant pay to have reviews removed." comment they try to repeat to a point of it becoming true. I agree, it will not. 
I do think there is a possibility since I placed it on the business in multiple locations they could have flagged it, but on the locations outside of where it occurred, I noted this occurred at other location and named it and stated that I was putting this on the non service location as a public service. 
So, one would think it would be reasonable (or at least within reason) to remove from locations of a national business that were not involved. Unfortunately, in some, they are allowing truly asinine "positive" reviews. I know the HQ location of the firm hired someone to handle the gazillion complaints and she is living on Yelp. Go figure.

I wrote yelp and told them I want an explanation. I am a Yelp semi regular and had posted a glowing review about a restaurant within a week of the negative about a "management firm." I have over 30 reviews, well written, several hundred words on many over 2 years. My thinking is that should give a reasonable signal. But, we shall see. I am truly bugged given people had written about them removing bad reviews from this company and then, boom, they remove mine.

Thanks,

[LesleyPaone]

Frankly, I believe in calling a spade a spade. I did misspeak on the issue though. Because of so many complaints about how they do their review system they are being sued in a state supreme court right now. http://investorplace.com/2014/04/yelp-stock-charts/#.U6xgBfldVHQ  But, that is beside the point to your issue.

From what I have learned they have an internal "rating" system of reviewers, something like you would imagine that Google uses for ranking and rating sites. Basically they use it to try to fight "spam" like if someone just creates an account and leaves a bad review some where and does not log back into their account the review will usually fall off. Or if a company is hit with a wave of bad reviews like an attack, they will moderate them off. One that I can think of locally that comes to mind is this story http://www.wsmv.com/story/24234919/reaction-swift-after-mortons-customer-with-cancer-told-to-remove-hat It went viral on reddit and generated hundreds of bad reviews, http://www.reddit.com/r/nashville/comments/1syt3t/going_to_mortons_steakhouse_dont_wear_a_skullcap/  People even noted that Yelp started removing the reviews, http://www.reddit.com/r/nashville/comments/1syt3t/going_to_mortons_steakhouse_dont_wear_a_skullcap/ce37y4z

Yelp really is controversial in our industry, here is another good post about them http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/22/local/la-me--banks-yelp-backlash-20130423 and an ama from a yelp employee on reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1vni7p/i_work_for_yelp_ama/

But about your issue, one thing I have heard, I cannot confirm myself, is that multiple reviews on the same company by a person or reviews that are out of your normal review area are hit by the filter a lot. I have seen other SEO companies complain to no avail when they have a client that is a tourist destination that gets reviews from people outside the area and they get removed.

I am sorry about the issue that you are having and that it was such an expensive issue, but that is the breadth of what I know about yelp.

[RobertFisher]

Prestashop,

While I appreciate the response, I never find name calling or creating derogative terms for people, companies, etc. to provide the clarity that we all need. (Calling them scummy or saying they should be damaged -sued- doesn't help things.)

I have clients who do have success with them and in most instances, when there has been an issue, I have found them to be mid range helpful. Certainly, if there is an erroneous review about a client company and you have the proof, they have removed them. My concern came when I was investigating an issue of my own and saw several people complaining about their reviews being removed.

I have been a regular Yelp contributor for a while and had a very serious $30K issue with the company who I was going to review. After I posted the review in several of their locations, the company began trying to resolve the issue for the first time. (It is still not fully resolved at all.) But, I just found Yelp had removed the bad reviews and I am positive they are valid as I wrote them and have the proof to all I wrote. But, just like the customers without my resources to fight back, my reviews were removed too.

I have written Yelp and requested a response from them. I am simply wanting to know if others have experienced the same or similar.

Thanks

[LesleyPaone]

Personally I haven't had it happen to me, but I have heard a lot about it. I think the main thing us as SEO people have to consider is that Yelp is a paid service. Their only real revenue stream is from businesses paying them for advertising. That being said I hear they exercise a lot of liberties with these businesses and their reviews that other companies do not exercise.

All and all Yelp is pretty scummy, someone really needs to take it to a point and sue them. They try to extort companies by making bad reviews go away if you pay them. They also make good reviews go away if you don't pay them.