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Yelp Has a Wall of Shame For Businesses Caught Paying For Fake Reviews (engadget.com) 32

Posted by BeauHD from the called-out dept.
Yelp is releasing a new index that tracks every U.S. establishment it's ever caught engaging in "suspicious" activity to influence its reviews. Engadget reports: [T]he index is the first time the company has offered a single place where users can find a historical record of every business that's ever been subject to such a warning as well as a current list of businesses with active alerts on their pages. For Yelp, the index is both its latest move in a long-running war on fake reviews, as well as a nod to a changing regulatory environment in which fake reviews are attracting increasing scrutiny from regulators.
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Yelp Has a Wall of Shame For Businesses Caught Paying For Fake Reviews More

Yelp Has a Wall of Shame For Businesses Caught Paying For Fake Reviews

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  • Amazon should do the same thing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @05:43PM (#63864392)

    I want to see suspicious reviews tagged on all review sites.

  • Hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)

    by topham ( 32406 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @06:03PM (#63864428) Homepage

    Hilarious, because their sales reps used to run side businesses to do reviews, pretty much putting the businesses at gunpoint.

    • It was pretty much an open secret that Yelp ratings are for sale.

      "Hello, this is XXX from Yelp. I see your business has received some negative ratings recently. We'd like to help you out with that. If you were a paid member, we could work with you to monitor your ratings for accuracy...."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Hilarious, because their sales reps used to run side businesses to do reviews, pretty much putting the businesses at gunpoint.

      Nonononono... You don't get it, it's a wall of shame for businesses that didn't buy reviews from them.

      Yelp, Trip Advisor, et al. are just legal shake down operations for the hospitality industry (whom struggle enough to begin with, especially if you're not a chain). "It's-a nice hotel you've got there, it'd be a shame if someone were to review bomb it". If an Italian "man of honour" were behind it, we'd see them up on RICO charges.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Falos ( 2905315 )

        Yeah, leapt to my mind too.

        "Wall of shame for buying artificial boosts from someone else".

  • Good start (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @06:14PM (#63864440)

    Could we get the same for assholes who try to extort something from companies by threatening to post scathing reviews if they don't get their kickback?

  • Title is a Southpark reference btw. I got the impression Yelp used some shady tactics that drove business away, aka showed bad reviews, if they did not pay for Yelp services. Please correct me if I am wrong, I am not from the USA.

  • SEO Question (Score:3)

    by NaCh0 ( 6124 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @06:29PM (#63864462) Homepage

    Can a company use this newly published list as a fresh backlink to their website from a high PR site?

  • Do you even search? (Score:5, Informative)

    by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @06:34PM (#63864468)

    A quick check showed no way to do any filtering or searching. Clicking "Load More" simply refreshes the page entries, not expand it. As is, it's essentially worthless since it would take too much time to find someone.

    • That list is pretty much useless if you can't even sort it by geographical region. However, loading a Yelp page for one of the flagged businesses does show a popup warning of suspicious activity when you scroll down to the reviews. Search on Yelp for Dave's Hot Chicken in Northridge, CA, for example.

      • Yes, seems they don't want actual Yelp users to see these flagged businesses. They are in random sorted national mixed order, with no way to search or find anything...

        Usual Yelp..

    • A quick check showed no way to do any filtering or searching. Clicking "Load More" simply refreshes the page entries, not expand it. As is, it's essentially worthless since it would take too much time to find someone.

      It actually does add the new results to the bottom of the existing list; it just scrolls the screen at the same time so it looks like it overwrote. But yeah, this is completely useless for a Yelp user.

  • Abusable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @06:35PM (#63864474)
    This seems ripe for abuse. What's to stop me, company x, from paying for some obviously fake reviews for my competitor, company y, that will obviously get caught and get them put up on this wall of shame? Unless Yelp is operating a honey pot that can trap people trying to pay for fake reviews, there's no way they could determine who actually paid for fake reviews.

    Just remove the fake reviews and move on.

  • Waiting for a class action suit against Yelp for defamation because Yelp has to prove the accuracy of the results if they start selling such information to other companies.

  • Restaurant reviews are scams, no matter how (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Arnonyrnous Covvard ( 7286638 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @06:44PM (#63864490)
    People use bad reviews to get favors or just to increase their ranking on the review site. The worst visitors are the most eager to give bad reviews. Some restaurants use paid reviews to slander competitors. The moment you get a bad review, you get spammed with offerings to "clean up" your online reviews, i.e. have bad reviews purged, so you know even the scores that aren't bought with fake reviews aren't guaranteed to be realistic. The only winning move is not to play. Ignore Yelp and all the rest. The people you want in your establishment do not give a damn about online reviews. The internet isn't real.
  • Let's see if we can predict what happens next:
    Step N: Yelp offers to remove your business from the wall of shame of fake reviews, in exchange for a shakedown fee (veiled as a paid "training class" on review ethics)
    Step N+1: Yelp starts randomly adding businesses to the wall of shame, even if those businesses never *actually* paid for fake reviews, in order to increase revenue from the shakedown fee
    Step N+2: The cycle of Yelp continues

    Step N+3: Years later, Yelp is eventually caught. People point ou

    • You've described the business model adopted by AdBlock plus in their Acceptable Ads council program; This program is why I now recommend uBlock Origin.

      • Oh yeah, I've been on ublock origin for quite some time. At least ABP has some discretion in keeping out truly obnoxious ads. I've been disallowing acceptable ads even before making the switch to ublock origin.

        • I didn't particularly object to the acceptable ads, honestly. What really bugged me was the mafioso-style protection racket they wanted advertisers to join to be part of that. They've changed it now to eliminate the conflict of interest, but it was awful when they first announced it.

  • ohhhhhh reeaaallly (Score:3)

    by Slashythenkilly ( 7027842 ) on Wednesday September 20, 2023 @07:23PM (#63864546)
    Yelp is the company that puts all the negative reviews of your business first (founded or not) UNLESS you the business owner had an account, paid them, and then you could disput so called unhappy customers. Yelp has nothing to say about who is or isnt being shady.

  • Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck Yelp. Scumbag money grubbing douchebag con site. For businesses.

  • Buying fake reviews from Yelp has always been allowed.
  • Untrustworthy entity accuses others of being untrustworthy. Maybe just stay away from the whole site.

  • Here's an example of the evidence they offer:
    https://s3-media0.fl.yelpcdn.c... [yelpcdn.com]

    I'm torn on this. Is "leave a review and get a discount" unethical? I can certainly see the possibility for abuse, but there's not a clear red line here.

    In another one, a business offered to pay a reviewer to remove a negative review. (I didn't catch the URL.) That kind of arrangement is begging to be abused.

    • There's nothing shady at all about that sign. Leave a review and get a discount.

      The problem is when it's specified that the review has to be a five star review. I sometimes buy stuff from Amazon that comes with a card saying "leave a five star review and get $x off your next order from us". That's review buying, and is very different.

    • Replying to myself...

      Applying the same standard for restaurant reviews as to Amazon reviews helped clarify it a bit for me.

      A free product in exchange for a product review where that's concealed from the market (amazon) and potential buyers is a clear problem. It's reasonable to apply the standard to Yelp too, I suppose. I think the rule should be "If the review was compensated in any way, check the disclosure box, describe the compensation, and the restaurant/seller should not have any influence on (and p

  • I once attempted to post a product review for a product that (a) sucked and (b) included a bribe insert in the package promising a $5 Amazon gift card in exchange for a 5-star review. When I mentioned the bribe in my less-than-5-star review, Amazon killed it because it was "not related to product quality."

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