Yelp Can Continue Extorting People, Judge Rules

BHopkins · Oct 9, 2014

Yelp has a common practice of showing good reviews to paying advertisers and bad reviews for companies who choose not to advertise with Yelp.com.

Many (including myself) have considered this extortion, which is defined as "the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats." The "threat" is negative reviews unless you pay us. It seems to line up exactly under the definition of extortion.

If you didn't read it recently, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals said what Yelp does is not considered extortion. The judge claimed that instead of extortion it's actually a "hard ball" negotiation tactic.

I posted a full breakdown of the courts ruling and summarized the whole thing on my website if you'd like to take a read. My opinions are clearly evident.

What do you think? Is it extortion or just strong arming small businesses?

Malinois · Oct 9, 2014

Extortion. Same as with Ripoff Report-- which I still don't understand why State AGs haven't ripped into.

nanavlad · Oct 10, 2014

The American government has lost its balls.
It jumps to the beat of the internet's big companies.

They feel they can only make America safe with the help of the big companies
and will do nothing to upset them.

They have forgot the pen is mightier than the sword, and in their fear of a few
terrorist bombs, they have handed google facebook etc, the pen.

It's sad to see such a great country, so afraid, its giving up all its principals

burglar · Oct 10, 2014

I've talked to business owners who have received the phone calls from Yelp with the hard core push for advertising' and although I have not encountered any that were actually threatened with bad reviews, the bad ones do seem to be given more coverage on Yelp if they refuse.

So yeah, I come down in the "extortion" side of the argument as well.

BHopkins · Oct 10, 2014

I've encouraged a lot of my clients to never give them a "no". Always say, "I need to discuss with my partners." Or even, "I really like the plan, let me see if I can move some marketing money around and I'll get back to you."

Many people, myself included believe that Yelp employees have the ability to manually help or hurt businesses so you don't want to offend them.

JustUs · Oct 10, 2014

This is really nothing new. There is a business in California that took a page from my book and branded themselves as one star reviews by paying customers in the form of discounts for one star reviews that were off the cheek positive reviews.

I have been doing about the same with ROR for a few years. I will write a complaint that is actually a positive review. Written correctly, it will displace the negative report. If you write a few, you chances are better.

What this does is turn the business model on its head. I had devised this method in response to mugsho ts dot co m smearing me all over every consumer complaint site there is in an attempt to extort me into taking an anti site down. I embraced them and turned them to my own purpose. This can be done with any complaint or review site. On the rare occasion that it fails, then you use Google against the sites by writing truthful, untruthful, and bizarre (Person/business launched to Mars type of stuff) to confuse everyone, including the data aggregators. Propaganda is a wonderful tool.

However, I would love to see sites like Yelp and ROR determined by a higher court as a scheme of extortion. However, this will never happen in the Ninth Circuit.

BHopkins · Oct 10, 2014

JustUs said:
This is really nothing new. There is a business in California that took a page from my book and branded themselves as one star reviews by paying customers in the form of discounts for one star reviews that were off the cheek positive reviews.

I think this is good in theory but when someone sees a 1 star on Google they might not even get to Yelp to see they're actually positive. Whenever I have used the Yelp app in the past, I just look at the stars and number of reviews, never actually reading them.

bananaman5000 · Oct 10, 2014

i remember a few years ago yelp took google to court for suppressing their results. i used to think "how shitty of google" but now i think i understand.

JustUs · Oct 10, 2014

BHopkins said:
JustUs said:

This is really nothing new. There is a business in California that took a page from my book and branded themselves as one star reviews by paying customers in the form of discounts for one star reviews that were off the cheek positive reviews./QUOTE]

I think this is good in theory but when someone sees a 1 star on Google they might not even get to Yelp to see they're actually positive. Whenever I have used the Yelp app in the past, I just look at the stars and number of reviews, never actually reading them.

Click to expand...

They might not. What I learned from addressing mugsh ots and other negative content is that people have a fascination for negative content. I do no know if this is from some smug sense of self superiority or not. While you may look at the stars, many will look at why the review is negative. When this is the case, using one example that stood out with the business above, they had good food but received a one star rating because they did not deliver pizza to Dallas Tx. when the business is Ca. based.

What we are speaking of here is a numbers game and not a zero sum game. It combines some elements from "Mathematical Game Theory." You are not trying to win everyone over; it is a near mathematical impossibility. You are trying to win over enough to offset any loss created by the negative content sites. Being completely honest, if I reviewed some company that only had positive reviews, I would know it was manipulation and would ignore the reviews. Likewise if I saw only negative reviews. The stars mean nothing; why were those stars given? This is where you beat the game.

BHopkins · Oct 10, 2014

JustUs said:
BHopkins said:

Likewise if I saw only negative reviews. The stars mean nothing; why were those stars given? This is where you beat the game.

Click to expand...

I understand the premise of what you're saying. You and I live on the internet. Most people don't. Assuming you're under 40 years old, imagine how your parents would search. They go to Google in a new city and type, "mexican restaurant". A popular spot in town has a 1 star review in the SERPs. They're not likely to even consider that place because the reviews are so bade (even if there was only a single review, Google only shows the stars).

I don't want to get too sidetracked from the original point that Yelp is extorting people and the Ninth Circuit is totally cool with it.

Yelp Can Continue Extorting People, Judge Rules

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