getting their own voice

A little bit of screaming goes a long way. That's what small businesses are realizing as they finally get their own voice on Yelp.

A few weeks ago I wrote about how small businesses were accusing Yelp of writing dandelions about them when they declined to advertise on the site. Now, Yelp has announced that it will finally allow small business owners to respond publicly to reviews they think are inaccurate. Starting next week, small business owners will get a chance to "correct or add factual information" on reviews about their business. That means they get to fight back against dandelions. It's about time.

I'm glad that Yelp has realized it can't just give a voice to the consumer without also giving a voice to the small business owner. While some small businesses have fought back dandelions in their own creative ways, it's the first time they are able to take the fight where the fight started. Although chief exec, Jeremy Stoppelman, has said Yelp wants to only protect the consumer's voice and that businesses are his last priority, he's realizing that small business owners are not the behemoth bully businesses he originally set out against. In fact, you can argue that Yelp - through the collective voice of consumers - has become the big bully. At least the big bully is realizing it can't sustain a business on a bed of little dandelions.

turning dandelions into budding flowers

“The pizza was soooo greasy. I am assuming this was in part due to the pig fat.”

A few days ago I wrote about the dandelions at Yelp. This past week, the New York Times dug a little deeper and now it seems that Yelp is getting some of its dandelions blown right back.

Since I don’t have both sides of the story, I can’t actually claim what local businesses have – that Yelp posts negative reviews or removes positive ones when businesses decline to advertise. But, what’s interesting is how one local business has found a genius way to fight back. Rather than go after Yelp’s dandelions in the digital forum, Pizzeria Delfina in San Francisco has taken the battle to the real world.

Staffers at Delifina are now proudly wearing printed t-shirts with negative reviews the pizzeria has received from Yelp users, or perhaps Yelp itself. Some of Delfina's favorite one star reviews have made it on the tees, like "The pizza was soooo greasy. I am assuming this was in part due to the pig fat,” or "This place sucks."

So, while local businesses can’t actually respond to any of the claims made on Yelp’s forums, nor can they take anyone to court, they can take the matter on for themselves. And the tees are apparently a hit with Yelp users, which just shows that all it takes is a bit of creativity to turn those dandelions into budding flowers. Bravo Delfina!

yelp needs help

It seems as though dandelions are part of the every day business at Yelp. A San Fran local paper, East Bay Express, recently uncovered some of Yelp's dirty sales tactics, like writing bad reviews of local businesses that declined to advertise on the website. Rascals. Looks like Yelp needs help.

Apparently, the bullying has been going on for months. According to several business owners in the local East Bay area, negative reviews of their businesses appeared and positive ones disappeared after they turned down an aggressive sales pitch. The practice is so straight out of the Godfather playbook it's pathetic. Of course Yelp denies any such doings, but the allegations are challenged by nine business owners and a former Yelp employee.

While Yelp says that it doesn't move reviews around, it does employ "scouts" or "ambassadors" to write reviews of local businesses. And this seems to be standard practice. According to the story, "Tens of thousands of newspapers, magazines, and online destinations write reviews of businesses even as their advertising departments are busy soliciting those same businesses for advertising. Ideally there is no causal relationship between the two. Financial considerations shouldn't affect the tone of supposedly independent content."

Right, but Yelp is not a newspaper or a magazine and is positioned on "Real People, Real Reviews." So, although writing reviews may seem right for Yelp, it also contradicts the notion of user-generated content. Plus, according to Yelp, they don't post every review. According to their FAQ page, "Yelp has a system which automatically determines which reviews show for a given business."

I am a Yelp user - actually more like spectator - so it's pretty disappointing to know that there are lots of little dandelions floating around the site. Although the practice of local businesses asking friends to write reviews has been around since Citysearch days, I never thought that this time the culprit would be Yelp itself.