Yelp To "Clarify" How Advertising Affects Listing 53
WrongSizeGlass writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Yelp is going to change some features in the wake of the class-action suit brought against it. Yelp has been accused of extortion; the Yelp co-founder denies all. The NY Times Bits blog has more details about the changes Yelp intends to make. According to Ars, the business that filed the lawsuit says that the newly announced changes do not address their original complaints at all."
slightly relevant, slightly not (Score:5, Informative)
One of the mentioned changes --- giving a link to see the reviews that Yelp's filtered out --- addresses some of the concerns, by at least making it possible to research what Yelp is filtering / not filtering (assuming they really show all reviews in the unfiltered view). The other change the article mentions seems totally besides the point though: the fact that businesses who paid could choose a review to always appear first was never the problem, because that was up-front and part of the advertising package. Removing that feature doesn't even seem necessary.
What the controversy is over is: did or didn't Yelp modify its filtering for particular entries based on whether they were advertisers, and did or didn't they get people (employees or associates) to add positive or negative reviews based on whether they were advertisers? And, separately from that, did their sales staff offer or threaten to do any of those things as part of the attempt to sell ads (and if they did, was that Yelp policy)?
Re:Fire the sales staff. (Score:3, Informative)
Google has a premium service with a dedicated account rep once you spend 10,000 a month for 3 months.
Re:FIRST POST (Score:5, Informative)
It is a website on the internet, where you can post reviews of things. Mostly restaurants, but apparently also hospitals. It's gotten popular enough that businesses care what their Yelp reviews are like, because it can meaningfully impact business. There are allegations that Yelp takes advantage of this to "suggest" that businesses become paying advertisers, if they'd like their reviews page to look good.
Re:Maybe those complaints are unfounded? (Score:4, Informative)