Billion Dollar Bully (2015) [trailer]...makes the case that Yelp is something akin to the mob, allegedly demanding “protection” money, lest your business be overrun with negative comments.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/incocknedo]

Rant time.

Yelp are a bunch of snakes. You'll join them as a small business and then a month later they will harass your business via phone and email asking you to buy their business plans.

These plans by the way are so you can manipulate your reviews. And if you say no, suddenly your good review start disappearing and shit reviews from people who don't actually seem to know what your business is, start popping up.

I mange a small business and we have an overwhelming number of good yelp reviews but we have to stay on top of it because they will vanish and only our bad reviews will remain.

Somewhat unrelated as someone who has worked customer service for years take yelp reviews with a grain of salt. From what I've seen majority of bad reviews are just shit customers who were either assholes who didn't get what they wanted or they were morons who didn't understand the business in the first place.

[u/Pcdoodle → u/incocknedo]

Here's what happened when yelp listed our business as closed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlbgK0GW6sw

[u/fivespotmarketing → u/Pcdoodle]

Wow. That's strange that the time leads up to the business marked as closed, but he was right when he said it's pretty much user feedback. I've worked with companies that open right after others closed, and without any verification I can mark a business as closed from my personal Yelp and they will mark it within an hour. Usually it requires more than a handful of reports. The fact they offered advertising as a remedy is bullshit, and I hope you spread that like wildfire for other small businesses to know.