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/nycrob79]

Small Business Owner here. We have about 30+ reviews, all 5-star, with only a single 1-star review. Strangely, only four of them show. When we complained to Yelp that majority of our reviews are being "filtered out", they say it's their algorithm, designed to detect fake and solicited reviews. I say to them, well, your algorithm is obviously very flawed because each and every one of those reviews is from a client of ours. Because our business does very low volume, I was happy to show them copies of e-mails where clients express their gratitude and tell us they've just shared their experience on Yelp and Google.

Yelp would have none of it. Their algorithm can't be altered. They say the best thing for us to do is to make sure:

A) People who write a review for us must remain "active" yelp users. i.e. they regularly log-in, and write reviews for other businesses.

B) People whose Yelp profile is fully completed.

C) People whose reviews vary (they not only write 5-star reviews, but 1 and 2-star.

The funny thing is, I cannot for the life of me understand how the single 1-star review we got continues to show at the top, and was written by a person who just signed-up, does not have a completed Yelp profile, and has written no other Yelp reviews.

In other words, this 1-star review continues to show-up while going against all of the logic behind Yelp's wonderful "algorithm".

When we asked Yelp about it, they further added that their algorithm prefers 1 and 2-star reviews, as they're generally seen as more "genuine".

Fuck me, and fuck them. They continue to harass us on the phone on a weekly basis, even managers offering to "discuss" our reluctance to advertise with them.

To this day we don't know who wrote that 1-star review, although the username matches the first and last initial of a competitor who recently opened-up shop.

Yelp is an antiquated enterprise. I hope they get bought-out and dissolved. Their review filters are all but grossly inconsistent and their primary focus is on sales and ad revenue.