Yelp Consumer Alerts: Helping You Make Educated Spending Decisions
Yelp goes to extraordinary lengths in an effort to protect consumers from fake reviews. Our recommendation software is at the center of our operations, highlighting only those reviews that we think are going to be most helpful and reliable for consumers. In addition, we employ a team of investigators who track down the most egregious… Read more
Attempts to Mislead Consumers? Not On Our Watch!
We have just issued a new round of Consumer Alerts that let people know when we’ve caught a business trying to artificially inflate Yelp reviews. The reason so many people use Yelp is because of the lengths we go to showcase the most helpful and reliable consumer reviews among the millions that we receive. Our… Read more
Yelp Consumer Alerts: We Weren’t Fooled, but Thought You Should Know
As a consumer, would you want to know if someone was trying to mislead you? We know we would. This is exactly why we introduced our Consumer Alerts program back in 2012: to warn people when we see brazen attempts to manipulate ratings and reviews – either by purchasing or incentivizing people for positive reviews… Read more
An Open Letter to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer
Dear Governor Brewer: I write to express my concern about SB 1062 and to respectfully request that you veto this legislation. At the heart of Yelp’s mission is giving consumers the ability to find great local businesses. Protecting the consumer has been – and will continue to be – our main priority. I believe that… Read more
You Have the Right to Express Your Opinion Online
Because of the First Amendment, it is rare that we hear about consumers being sued for exercising their right to free speech — even with nearly 50 million reviews contributed to-date. That's probably why there's been a fair amount of media attention surrounding a couple of recent cases in Virginia. But despite this press hype,… Read more
Protecting Consumer Free Speech in Virginia: A Fight We’ll Continue
Earlier this week, the Virginia Court of Appeals announced a ruling that sets Virginia apart from other states when it comes to free speech rights for consumers. In this case, the owner of a Virginia carpet cleaning business argued that because he could not find in his customer database the screen names of some… Read more
Los Angeles County Restaurant Hygiene Grades Now on Yelp
Earlier this year, at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C., Yelp announced an open data project with the City of San Francisco: bringing restaurant hygiene scores onto Yelp business listings. Soon thereafter, Louisville, Kentucky — a model city for embracing open data standards — signed up, followed by Wake County (Raleigh), North… Read more
Fake reviews on Yelp?! Don’t worry, we’ve got your back
A Harvard Business School study came out earlier this week that confirms something we have long known: businesses that don’t have a good reputation online will try to create one by submitting phony reviews to web sites. The good news is that Yelp has been successfully fighting these attempts to deceive consumers since the very… Read more
Yelp Consumer Alerts: Letting You Know Before You Spend Your Dough
The world of online reviews is an incredibly influential place. Studies show that the majority of consumers (85%) rely on the internet and review sites to find local businesses and decide where to spend their hard-earned money. According to Google Analytics, an average of 108 million monthly unique visitors turned to Yelp last quarter to… Read more
How Yelp Protects Consumers From Fake Reviews
This blog entry was originally published on the Huffington Post. Earlier this week, the blog Eater posted an entry about an alarming Craigslist ad by an unscrupulous business owner attempting to pay for fake Yelp reviews. The good news is that Yelp has pioneered successful strategies in fighting consumer fraud. Most small businesses understand that… Read more