It seems like one of San Francisco’s favorite review sites Yelp, has been sued for fraud by local business that claim Yelp would remove negative reviews for paying advertisers. I have been using Yelp for several years now and I would have to say in general Yelp is pretty darn accurate when it comes to honest, consumer review of restaurants and local businesses. I think businesses that don’t do well with Yelp are the ones that are suing Yelp.

Why? They don’t need negative reviews online, especially if they don’t go online themselves.

I think there’s a fine line between having negative reviews and fake reviews.  Yelp should be more careful with every negative review that comes up for businesses while businesses should be aware that it’s not hard for San Franciscans to give them bad rep at click of their smartphones.

I have also been witness to when Yelp first started, I saw a bunch of Craiglist ads from Yelp asking college students to review local businesses for $5 a piece.  I know that’s how they started but those reviews I believe are still valid because they got paid for honest reviews, not for fakin’ it.

Well, we will see how it all goes down but Yelp remains in my book as something that San Franciscans need to fight back against local businesses that shouldn’t be operating anyways.

The allegations, embodied in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court on Wednesday, go like this: On some occasions, if someone posts a negative review of, say, a restaurant, Yelp workers will call the restaurant and offer an advertising package whereby for, say, $300, the restaurant will get some advertising on the site as well as the bad review removed.

via foxnews

Tags: advertisers, college students, local businesses, san franciscans, san-francisco, yelp fraud, yelp review, yelp sued

This entry was posted on Friday, February 26th, 2010 at 6:15 pm and is filed under News.