{"id":517185,"date":"2010-04-06T00:45:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T04:45:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=110819"},"modified":"2010-04-06T00:45:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T04:45:55","slug":"yelp-changes-features-to-address-extortion-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/517185","title":{"rendered":"Yelp Changes Features to Address Extortion Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Though Yelp steadfastly denies allegations &#8212; and <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2010\/02\/24\/finally-an-actual-yelp-class-action-lawsuit-for-extortion\/\">now lawsuits<\/a> &#8212; that its salespeople pressure local businesses to buy advertising in exchange for removing negative reviews and getting preferential treatment, the company tonight addressed them head-on. Specifically, it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/officialblog.yelp.com\/2010\/04\/announcing-steps-to-avoid-confusion-increase-transparency.html\">making two major product changes<\/a> to become more transparent about its filtering process and give less favorable treatment to advertisers.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, Yelp is removing the cloak of invisibility from its review filter. Yelp previously made reviews disappear off business profiles, often when they seem to be gaming the system (for instance, a spate of similar positive reviews of a shop could mean the proprietor is asking people to write them &#8212; see the video below explaining the filter). Those reviews remained on the site &#8212; visible on the authors&#8217; profile &#8212; but weren&#8217;t something you could find in the course of browsing businesses. Company owners complained that Yelp was editorially skewing reviews about their businesses. Now, Yelp will allow users to toggle to a page of filtered reviews for any business and read them for themselves.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><object width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Dqi-jjbEKcs&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/Dqi-jjbEKcs&#038;hl=en_US&#038;fs=1&#038;\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote in a blog post explaining the changes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[M]ost importantly, you can see that Yelp&#8217;s review filter works just the same for advertisers and non-advertisers alike. There is not &#8212; nor ever has been &#8212; a bias. So will Yelp be easier to game now? No, our engineers remain hard at work to make sure that Yelp is the most useful and helpful online resource for everyone.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_110821\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 293px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2010\/04\/05\/yelp-changes-features-to-address-extortion-claims\/yelpfilter\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-110821\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/gigaom.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/04\/yelpfilter.png?w=283&#038;h=300\" alt=\"\" title=\"Yelpfilter\" width=\"283\" height=\"300\"  class=\"size-medium wp-image-110821\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yelp&#8217;s new transparent review filter<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>Second, Yelp is discontinuing the paid feature of allowing advertisers to choose and promote a positive review of their establishment on their Yelp profile. This &#8220;Favorite Review&#8221; feature would highlight a previously submitted user review prominently above the fold, pushing recent reviews down the page. It was misconstrued as a way for businesses to control the content on their page, Stoppelman said. He did not specify how the change would impact advertisers who&#8217;d already paid for the feature.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Yelp said it was also creating a Small Business Advisory Council, and it has already incorporated feedback from meetings with business owners, such as including advertiser videos on their profile pages (a feature that also launched today).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req&#8217;d):<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/2009\/12\/how-social-networks-will-help-yelp-not-kill-it\/\">How Social Networks Could Help Yelp, Not Kill It<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?host=gigaom.com&#038;blog=1149864&#038;post=110819&#038;subd=gigaom&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=owsSf9DEdDI:K0IZBzhjg4U:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=owsSf9DEdDI:K0IZBzhjg4U:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?i=owsSf9DEdDI:K0IZBzhjg4U:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=owsSf9DEdDI:K0IZBzhjg4U:F7zBnMyn0Lo\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?i=owsSf9DEdDI:K0IZBzhjg4U:F7zBnMyn0Lo\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=owsSf9DEdDI:K0IZBzhjg4U:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?a=owsSf9DEdDI:K0IZBzhjg4U:D7DqB2pKExk\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/OmMalik?i=owsSf9DEdDI:K0IZBzhjg4U:D7DqB2pKExk\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/OmMalik\/~4\/owsSf9DEdDI\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though Yelp steadfastly denies allegations &#8212; and now lawsuits &#8212; that its salespeople pressure local businesses to buy advertising in exchange for removing negative reviews and getting preferential treatment, the company tonight addressed them head-on. Specifically, it&#8217;s making two major product changes to become more transparent about its filtering process and give less favorable treatment [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":673,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/673"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}