Investigative Documentary Exposes Yelp – Boca Raton Pawn
In 2015, the majority of local businesses rely on online advertising for customers. Searching on sites like Google, Yelp, and others help you get where you want to go. Need to find a good dry cleaners? Just Yelp it. Want to find the best Italian restaurant in town? Take out your phone and look it up. But it’s not as simple as that. Most people decide where to go based on online reviews. If two stores are equal distances away, but one has better reviews a majority of people will pick the store with better reviews, it’s just common sense. But what happens when the site hosting the reviews is corrupt? That is exactly the accusation pointed at review site Yelp in a new investigative documentary. The film claims Yelp gets businesses to pay for local ads by hiding positive reviews and only showing negative ones. And that if the company advertises with them potential customers won’t see the negative reviews. It’s a strong accusation but many local businesses like a Boca Raton Pawn shop agree with the movie’s premise.
If you understand online review sites, you know that not all reviews are accurate. For example, there are plenty of times when a business will post negative reviews on a competitors page on purpose. It’s very easy for someone to make a fake account, say they are John Smith and write something bad about a company. Unfortunately that’s the world we live in today. But Yelp claims that their reviews accurately represent the business in question. That they have a secret formula for filtering out fake reviews, both positive and negative. I call BS. In fact, if you look up business on Yelp you will notice that most have more filtered reviews than actual reviews. You mean to tell me that most reviews on someone’s site are fake? Obviously some are fake but to have a majority filtered is outrageous.
Since it’s Yelp who decides which reviews get filtered and which don’t they can make your business look as good or as bad as they want to. But, if you decide to advertise with them all of that goes away. They become more lenient, letting more positive reviews through, and they filter the negatives. But that’s only if you pay. Seems like manipulation to me. But Yelp claims that is 100% not accurate. They say their proprietary formula for filtering reviews works just fine, and they don’t have to bait people into paying for advertising.
But Yelp has been accused of this for years, and finally someone decided to do something about it. In fact the company making the documentary just started a kickstarter campaign to raise $100,000 to finish the movie. They have gotten $60,000 so far. That means there are people out there willing to pay to get a movie finished and receive nothing in return. It shows how strongly people feel about Yelp and how shady their practices seem to be. When you are a large review site you have a responsibility to both the consumer and the business to keep reviews legitimate.