Yelp’s Yowling

I don’t believe for a second that Yelp has decided to drop ‘favorite review’ (a feature that allowed paying advertisers to pick a glowing review to appear above all others) out of the goodness of their hearts, or that it was causing confusion. It was intended as a goad to make small businesses advertise, perhaps after bad reviews started to show up from supposedly unhappy customers, who might have been ad salesmen for  Yelp, in fact.

Even the wording of the post raises questions:

We’re Increasing Transparency and Eliminating ‘Favorite Review’

Posted by Jeremy, Yelp CEO User trust is the foundation on which Yelp is built and the reason 31 million consumers turned to the site last month to find a great local business. Today we’re announcing two important product changes to reinforce that trust and make it even more clear that Yelp treats review content equally for all businesses, with no connection between advertising and reviews.

Specifically, we’re adding the ability to see reviews filtered by our review filter and we’re discontinuing the “Favorite Review” feature that’s part of our advertising package.

Why? Because while Yelp has seen tremendous growth in just a few years, we’re still new to a lot of people. Despite our best efforts to educate consumers and the small business community, myths about Yelp have persisted. We’ve said all along we believe these incorrect notions stem from the combination of the filter and this advertising feature — and we’re practicing what we preach. Lifting the veil on our review filter and doing away with “Favorite Review” will make it even clearer that displayed reviews on Yelp are completely independent of advertising — or any sort of manipulation. We also hope it will demonstrate the importance of a safeguard such as our filter and the unique challenge we face daily to maintain the integrity of the review content on our site.

Now you can take a look at any business listing on Yelp and see for yourself the work the review filter has done behind the scenes. Perhaps helping to protect one business from malicious reviews that might stem from a competitor.

Sounds like the legal defense aginst the class action lawsuits: “It’s those malicious competiros, your honor, I swear it!”

I’ve been following this for years, and I can’t believe that there isn’t a systematic campaign to coerce advertising and other activities based on threats by sales staff. See

Is Yelp The Mafia?

Is Yelp Committing Extortion?

Yelp: Leading The Way In The New Rudeness

More Complaints About Yelp Business Practices, Now In Chicago