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Tag: Online Reviews

  • Yelp Documentary: The Plot Thickens [Updated]

    Yelp Documentary: The Plot Thickens [Updated]

    As previously reported, last week, Prost Productions announced a new documentary project called Billion Dollar Bully, which dives into the infamous Yelp “extortion” allegations that have persisted for at least six years.

    The basic story that we’ve seen brought up in numerous press reports and internet comments over the years is that Yelp salespeople call businesses who are listed on Yelp and try to get them to advertise. The business declines to advertise, and Yelp responds by burying positive reviews and letting negative ones rise to the top. There are variations on the story, but that’s general gist.

    Billion Dollar Bully is already half shot, but Prost Productions is raising funds on Kickstarter to get it finished. This was announced last week, and Yelp now finds itself in the media spotlight once again, defending itself against familiar claims. It will probably be doing so again in the future as the film has already met nearly two-third of its funding goal with 26 days to go. So far it has raised nearly $40,000 from 340 backers. The campaign even earned “staff pick” status on Kickstarter.

    After news of the project came out, Yelp tried to discredit filmmaker Kaylie Milliken. The company said in a statement:

    The director has a conflict of interest, as she has a history of trying to mislead consumers on Yelp. There is no merit to the claims they appear to highlight, which have been repeatedly dismissed by courts of law, investigated by government regulators, including the FTC, and disproven by academic study.

    We asked Yelp to elaborate on these claims of Milliken’s “conflict of interest” and her “history of trying to mislead consumers on Yelp,” but the company would offer no further comment. They did, however, point us to links to its corporate blog posts about the court dismissals, FTC investigation, and academic study (which is from Harvard Business School Professor Michael Luca and Professor Giorgos Zervas of Boston University).

    We interviewed Milliken, and asker her what Yelp was referring to regarding her conflict of interest and whatnot, to which she responded, “I honestly have no idea what they are referring to, but I welcome any information they have.”

    We also asked her about the FTC investigation and study Yelp pointed to. She said the documentary would go more into the investigation.

    Regarding the study, she told us, “If you look at the Harvard Business Study, the very first line asks the question, ‘Do online consumer reviews affect restaurant demand?’ This is the focus of the study – whether or not reviews actually hurt the restaurants. Yelp points at it as though the study was done to show review manipulation does not happen. Next, if you look at the arguments the author of the study makes, his first point is this: each star rating attributes 5-9% increase in revenue. (Therefore, if negative reviews do drag down the star rating, the business is negatively affected.) Next point: it is only independent restaurants (not chain) that are harmed in this.”

    After our exchange with Milliken, both she and Yelp’s VP of Corporate Communications, Shannon Eis, appeared on CNBC to trade remarks.

    “We’re not here out of fear,” said Eis. “We’re here out of facts and making sure they transcend this conversation. Dismissing the FTC, dismissing five federal judges who all found no wrongdoing, dismissing an exhaustive Harvard Business School study and it’s actually not the one that she’s citing. There’s a different one that looks specifically at our recommendation software and draws no connections to advertising. So she’s citing an older, not Yelp-specific study. Though dismissing all of that seems a little weird when all of it has very exhaustively debunked the claims. But why we’re here is because it’s important that the facts speak, and that the value to consumers that we want to create and continue to drive really transcends all of this.”

    Milliken says she’s not dismissing what the FTC said, and reiterated that the documentary will go into it extensively, and that she’ll “let the experts speak for themselves.”

    And for the record, Yelp itself has dismissed something the FTC has found in the past. Here’s a statement from the company about Google’s antitrust settlement with the commission two years ago, as reported by CNET:

    Yelp, who has been among the company’s most vocal critics, called it “a missed opportunity to protect innovation in the Internet economy, and the consumers and businesses that rely upon it.”

    In the CNBC exchange we finally got some elaboration on Yelp’s part about what it deems a conflict of interest.

    Eis says, “We’re here today because she’s raising money on Kickstarter to fund her film, so we’re all part of a fundraising effort today, but I think what’s important to state is that we did discover through the recommended software that is largely being contested here, that Ms. Milliken herself created three sockpuppet accounts to create false five-star ratings of her huband’s law firm – her husband who is also listed as the CFO for this production that we’re fundraising for as a result of this media, so I think it’s important to say that the accusation that she’s making, she’s actually been a part of on the back end, and the software process that we’re talking about that helps protect consumers and present true and authentic reviews was something that triggered finding her false reviews on the site and suppressed them.”

    Milliken responded to that by saying, “I did create several different profiles, and I wanted to investigate and see what happened to the various reviews that I left. Not just on my husband’s site…on many websites to see what happened to those reviews, and I think it’s shocking and very telling that this billion dollar corporation has come after this grassroots, very small production company, where there are only two of us – myself and my associate producer Melissa Wood – creating a documentary that we are still in production over, and we released a two-minute video online, and Yelp has fired back with all of that. This billion dollar company versus this grassroots organization. I think it does clearly show that they are concerned about what will be coming out in the documentary.”

    To which Eis responded: “I think that’s an unfair statement. This has been going on for weeks. We released one two-sentence statement, and we let it go. But it gets to the point where the same misleading activity is now trying to fundraise to further this conversation, we have to step in and really make sure facts and gravity are at the center of this, which is what’s the right thing to do for users.”

    I’m not so sure that “furthering the conversation” is such a bad thing regardless of who’s right here. The thing is that despite anything Yelp has pointed to in its own defense, accusations have persisted. Whenever these studies and investigations supposedly “debunk” claims, they don’t seem to do so without questions remaining. If the documentary can truly “further” the conversation (as opposed to rehash it), isn’t it worth watching? The same would go for Yelp’s side of the story. When Yelp has some new study or investigation to point to, we pay attention. When the FTC closes an investigation, we report on it. Shouldn’t small businesses be able to have their voices heard as well? As long as the conversation is indeed being furthered, I don’t see how it can be a bad thing.

    That is the supposed point of the documentary, and maybe it shouldn’t be dismissed until its materials are presented. It might be different if the whole thing wasn’t such a common story. Look around at articles about Yelp all over the web, and you’ll likely see numerous comments talking about the types of things the documentary is looking at. We’ve gotten about 30 comments on our coverage over the past few days, and they’re almost all against Yelp. That doesn’t mean they’re all credible, but the fact remains, the conversation isn’t going away. People care.

    I think a lot of people are just interested to see if Milliken’s film will produce any hard hitting evidence we haven’t seen. Milliken told us in our interview that it will include some “material that very few have seen”.

    Asked if Yelp is going to sue Milliken, Eis said she can’t speak to legal proceedings but that it’s “absolutely not on the table right now.”

    We’ve reached out to both Yelp and Milliken for additional information in light of what was discussed on CNBC. There are two different Harvard Business School studies regarding Yelp, but both deal with restaurants:

    Reviews, Reputation, and Revenue: The Case of Yelp.com (2011)

    Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud

    The one Milliken quoted from in our interview is the former. We’ve inquired about that, and we’ve sought to learn more from both parties about how Milliken used the fake Yelp accounts. We also inquired about her husband’s role in the production of the film. We’ll update accordingly.

    Update: Regarding Eis’ comments about the Harvard study, Milliken tells us, “I have no idea what she is talking about. She also said that they aren’t Yelp specific, which they are. This really will be investigated in the documentary.”

    Here is her response regarding the Yelp accounts she created:

    “Before my husband and I were married, he represented me in a legal matter. He did an incredible job, and I left him a legitimate review. That was filtered out. At the time, I did not understand how the filtered system worked, so when I went on his site and saw my review wasn’t there, I thought my account didn’t work. I made another account to leave him another review, which again was filtered out.”

    “I definitely see the need for a filtering system. You don’t want people going on and creating ‘sock puppet’ accounts.”

    “Once I became interested in doing this documentary, I wanted to see how the filtered system worked. I started leaving comments at various businesses. To my knowledge, all of my reviews (which were at legitimate businesses that I had attended) were placed in the filtered reviews. I think one was left.”

    Asked if her husband’s business has been penalized on Yelp (the company often issues “Consumer Alerts” for businesses it says engage in “shady” practices), Milliken said, “No. He does have reviews from legitimate clients filtered out, but I wouldn’t necessarily call that ‘penalized’.”

    On Yelp’s comments about her “conflict of interest,” she tells us, “I think it just goes to show that Yelp truly is concerned about what will be exposed in Billion Dollar Bully. We are a small production company – it’s Mellissa [Wood – associate producer] and myself, working together on this project. We had an idea of a compelling story that we passionately believe should be told, and all of a sudden Yelp was coming after us. I think that speaks volumes above anything I could say at this point.”

    Milliken has said that the film comes from just her and Wood . On Eis’ comments about her husband being the CFO for the production, she says, “My husband is a contract CFO for the production company. Mellissa Wood and I are working on this project together (There are other contract employees; ie, videographer, editor.).”

    As previously reported, Milliken has cited a conversation with her physician as being the inspiration for the documentary. Asked if the physician will be speaking in the film, Milliken says, “No, she is one of many who are concerned with retaliation.”

    Update 2: International Business Times shares screenshots of Yelp’s backend that the company provided, which shows what is apparently MIlliken’s “questionable” activity, though she has already addressed this in the comments above.

    From the Prost Productions Facebook account, she also commented on that article, saying, “I want to address this article that was just released. Yelp is trying to create an environment where Billion Dollar Bully is about myself. It is not. It sticks to evidence, facts, and personal experiences of business owners throughout the United States. Like I’ve said before, I think Yelp’s continued reaction to Billion Dollar Bully speaks volumes and is much more illuminating than anything I could ever say.”

    At the time of writing, the project has raised over $48K of its $60K goal with 24 days to go. It has nearly 400 backers so far.

  • Exclusive Chat With Director Of Yelp Documentary

    UPDATE: The plot thickens.

    Last week, Prost Productions announced a new documentary project called Billion Dollar Bully. The film, which is about half shot, looks at those Yelp “extortion” accusations that have been swirling around for at least the past six years.

    Do you plan on watching the film when it’s released? Let us know in the comments.

    In less than a week, the Kickstarter project has already raised nearly two-thirds of its goal of $60,000. You can read more about it here.

    We had the chance to get some questions answered by director Kaylie Milliken, who told us, “As previous consumers of Yelp, we were and continue to be interested in highlighting business practices involving claims of extortion, review manipulation and review fabrication. This documentary will examine these claims, the rulings of the court in which Yelp won, and why Yelp won those cases.”

    In response to the allegations, Yelp often (including last week) points to a study from Harvard Business School, which it says “debunks the allegations that Yelp provides preferential treatment to advertisers.”

    Asked about the study in a recent interview with International Business Times, Milliken said, “I know there is that Harvard Study, but I just don’t have a lot of faith in it at this point.”

    On what she thinks the study got wrong or didn’t adequately address, Milliken tells WebProNews, “If you look at the Harvard Business Study, the very first line asks the question, ‘Do online consumer reviews affect restaurant demand?’ This is the focus of the study – whether or not reviews actually hurt the restaurants. Yelp points at it as though the study was done to show review manipulation does not happen. Next, if you look at the arguments the author of the study makes, his first point is this: each star rating attributes 5-9% increase in revenue. (Therefore, if negative reviews do drag down the star rating, the business is negatively affected.) Next point: it is only independent restaurants (not chain) that are harmed in this.”

    “This study focuses solely on restaurants,” she adds. “However, it is not just restaurant owners crying foul on Yelp. Business owners from across the spectrum are criticizing Yelp. This study only looks at restaurants, and only a sample study in Boston at that. Additionally, it does state that restaurants are hurt more by what Yelp ‘elites’ say than what other reviewers say. Many businesses have said Yelp Elites come in and act like it’s their right to have free products.”

    A couple months ago, Yelp announced that the FTC had ended an investigation into its business practices without taking action against the company. Yelp touted this as another victory in the ongoing battle against claims against it. Asked about this, Milliken says it will be addressed in the film, but that she’d prefer to wait until the release to discuss it.

    In its own defense, Yelp also points to the U.S. Appeals Court dismissal of cases brought against it with extortion claims.

    “The dismissal was made due to the Communications Decency Act, which came about in 1996,” Milliken tells us. “It was also known to legislators as the ‘Great Cyberporn Panic’. This law came to be when people were trying to figure out how to regulate porn online. I’ll get into the nitty-gritty of this in the documentary.”

    Here’s the legal document from that (courtesy of Marketing Land):

    At the time, some in the media pointed out that the reason for the case’s dismissal didn’t really prove that Yelp hadn’t engaged in some of the things it was accused of.

    As Nathaniel Mott at PandoDaily put it, “Yelp’s extortion charges have been dropped, but that doesn’t mean the company’s innocent…the court’s decision was based less on Yelp’s innocence in the common sense of the word and more on the fact that these businesses never had a ‘right’ to positive reviews in the first place. Yelp isn’t necessarily innocent — it’s just not guilty in a way the appeals court cares about.”

    Courthouse News Service reported: “Yelp’s alleged conduct cannot be called extortion because its ‘manipulation of user reviews, assuming it occurred, was not wrongful use of economic fear, and, second, … business owners pled insufficient facts to make out a plausible claim that Yelp authored negative reviews of their businesses,’ the three-judge panel found.”

    Also from that report:

    “In sum, to state a claim of economic extortion under both federal and California law, a litigant must demonstrate either that he had a pre-existing right to be free from the threatened harm, or that the defendant had no right to seek payment for the service offered,” wrote Judge Marsha Berzon for the three-judge appellate panel. “Any less stringent standard would transform a wide variety of legally acceptable business dealings into extortion.”

    As you know, these stories from businesses about Yelp’s so-called “extortion” business practices have been going around for a long time. They’ve been discussed in the media time and time again, even having been brought up on The People’s Court one time in an unrelated case. We asked Milliken if Billion Dollar Bully will expose any hard evidence that hasn’t been discussed in the media before.

    “I’m really excited about the opportunity to present material that very few have seen and give a voice to those who haven’t been heard,” she says.

    Once news of the documentary emerged last week, Yelp began trying to discredit Milliken. The company told Business Insider:

    The director has a conflict of interest, as she has a history of trying to mislead consumers on Yelp. There is no merit to the claims they appear to highlight, which have been repeatedly dismissed by courts of law, investigated by government regulators, including the FTC, and disproven by academic study.

    We reached out to Yelp for additional comment and details about this “conflict of interest” and misleading of consumers. A spokesperson told us the company would not comment further at this time, which as I mentioned before, is interesting, because typically Yelp has no problem calling out specific businesses about “shady business tactics”.

    Asked about what the company is referring to, Milliken tells WebProNews, “I honestly have no idea what they are referring to, but I welcome any information they have.”

    In the IBT interview, she mentioned that she has a husband who owns a small business and that he has complained in the past about how pushy Yelp salespeople can be.

    Asked about this, Milliken tells us, “He didn’t experience the behaviors that I’m reporting on; he was just annoyed with the incredibly frequent and pushy calls. He said he always felt he had to be very polite with them because he had heard about Yelp’s tactics and didn’t want his page to go down that path.”

    Milliken has indicated the inspiration for the investigation and documentary came from a story she heard from her physician.

    We also asked her if she thinks (based on what the businesses she’s spoken with have told her) that Yelp salespeople are using language on phone calls that play to this “extortion” narrative, but that is maybe phrased in a way that keeps it from being held accountable. We also asked about common, specific things she’s heard from multiple sources.

    She replied simply that, “This topic will be addressed and light will be shed in the movie.”

    So far, she says she hasn’t felt any pressure from Yelp itself since announcing the project.

    “They haven’t reached out, but I hope that they do contact me and agree to an interview on camera,” she says after noting in the IBT interview that the company agreed to answer questions via email, but wouldn’t let her record a phone call or go in with a camera.

    Milliken says she has spoken with a “wide variety of businesses and consumers who had all sorts of opinions and experiences with Yelp” for the film.

    Should Yelp appear on camera and talk about the subject in the film? Do you think they will if the project meets its funding goal? Discuss.

    Update: Both Milliken and Yelp VP of Corporate Communications Shannon Eis appeared on CNBC to talk about the allegations and the film.

    Image via YouTube

  • Revleap Wants Businesses Wronged By Yelp To Help Fund Its Legal Defense

    As previously reported, Yelp recently filed a lawsuit against a company called Revleap, claiming to “take a stand against misleading ‘reputation management’ companies”.

    Revleap, which seeks to get businesses a “large constant flow of positive reviews that stay on top of your profile” and to “remove fake reviews,” says Yelp’s allegations, which include trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition, cybersquatting, breach of contract, interference with contractual relations, and false advertising, are “completely false and unsubstantiated.”

    “Revleap services are legal in all aspects of the law, and we specialize in only legitimate reviews from real customers,” a spokesperson for Revleap told WebProNews in a statement. “Yelp has filed completely false and unsubstantiated claims against our company. We aim to decrease defamation and increase awareness of free speech for businesses. We level the playing field for everyone who uses the internet or reviews on any site.”

    The company says it’s now looking for help from the “business community” that has been negatively affected by Yelp, and has set up a crowdfunding campaign via GoFundMe to help with its legal defense. Here’s what the campaign’s description says:

    We set out on a mission to make one small thing easier for businesses, managing their reviews on various platforms. Along the way we discovered person after person who’s business has suffered because of Yelp’s unfair practices. Our average client is someone who has been in business for 20+ years, that is obviously doing great business or they would not have been in business for so long. They’re listed 5 stars on Google, City Search and Facebok, and they also have an A rating with the BBB. This small business owner usually will have 15 reviews on Yelp. 13 Positive and 2 negative, all verifiable from real customers. Yelp will hide all 13 of their positive reviews in the not recommended section that and only show the 2 negative reviews on the front page. Taking this 5 star business down to 1 star, plumeting their revenue, hurting their family and even forcing some completely out of business.

    Outraged business owners call our company daily asking for help, Revleap only specializes in real, legitimate reviews from customers that are completely unbiased. We simply facilitate an easier way for people to leave you feedback. We didn’t break any law, and we have helped many business owers save their business. The corporate tech giant has filed a lawsuit last Friday in an attempt to strong arm us, just as they have many other small business owenrs to cease operating.

    We ask for the help of the American business owners, and anyone reading this to help us defend this case.

    Yelp aims to make an example of us. They wish to discorage any attempt from anyone looking to relenquish some control from their overbearing dictatorship of your online presence. If we lose this case, it will be a loss for business owners across the world because the grip they have on you will become even tighter.

    When we win, it will open the door for more companies like ours, and more innovation from all over to help you, the small business owner control your presence online.

    RevLeap provides a valuable service to businesses in almost every industry with a simple feedback-gathering tool that prompts customers to write reviews online.

    Any donation from a business owner will receive 1 month free of our service, if you’re an individual we’ll send you a signed thank you card and know in your heart that you’re really helping support the American dream by countering this lawsuit.

    (sic)

    Yelp says Revleap is a scam and that business owners should fall for offers like what it claims to provide, or they’ll end up “paying dearly, both with their bank accounts and their online reputations.”

    As of the time of this writing, Revleap has raised just north of a hundred bucks.

    Image via GoFundMe

  • Revleap: Yelp’s Allegations Completely False, Unsubstantiated

    Last week, Yelp said it was “taking a stand against misleading ‘reputation management’ companies,” as it filed a lawsuit against a company called Revleap, which it said is a scam, and puts small businesses at risk because of the Yelp Consumer Alert program in addition to federal and state regulations.

    Yelp said has Revleap had operated under various names like Yelpdirector and Revpley, and “has spammed businesses with unsolicited messages claiming that they can get good reviews to stick and remove bad reviews.”

    The actual suit alleges trademark infringement, trademark dilution, unfair competition, cybersquatting, breach of contract, interference with contractual relations, and false advertising.

    We reached out to Revleap for comment, and the company said Yelp’s claims are “completely false and unsubstantiated.”

    Here’s the full statement we received:

    Since RevLeap’s inception as a platform for businesses to connect with their customers to gather feedback in a new way, we champion the freedom of speech and open internet. “The Open Internet” as described by the FCC calls for 1. Transparency, 2. No Blocking, and 3. No Unreasonable Discrimination.

    RevLeap services are legal in all aspects of the law, and we specialize in only legitimate reviews from real customers. Yelp has filed completely false and unsubstantiated claims against our company. We aim to decrease defamation and increase awareness of free speech for businesses. We level the playing field for everyone who uses the internet or reviews on any site.

    We believe the internet, business owners, and their customers benefit greatly from having an open internet. Any disruption of these principles like the Yelp “Filter” or described on Yelp’s website as “Recommendation Software” preys on businesses using the reviews as leverage as described in thousands of FTC complaints against Yelp from 2008-2014. Yelp’s Yelp Profile has over 10,000 1-Star Reviews from business owners, friends and family of business owners who have been hurt by Yelp and we hope through our services we can restore faith in the internet and reach a point of transparency with Yelp.

    Yelp has been talking about the “open Internet” itself. On Wednesday, the company released a blog post calling for people to express their support for Net Neutrality before the FCC votes on February 26, and saying that Yelp values users and works with other companies and organizations to “support adoption of the strongest Net Neutrality principles to protect the American Public.”

    Here’s an excerpt from that:

    Since Yelp’s inception as a platform to connect people with great local businesses around them, we have supported and relied on the principles of an open and free Internet in order to do business. These principles, which have become enshrined in the term “Net Neutrality,” provide that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should treat all legal data and content equally, and not discriminate, throttle, or charge different rates depending on the nature of the site, platform or data being transmitted.

    Regarding Revleap, Yelp says business owners often fall for such “scams” and pay “dearly, both with their bank accounts and their online reputations.”

    You can see the full complaint here.

    Image via Yelp

  • Yelp Is Beefing Up Its Sales Staff

    Yelp Is Beefing Up Its Sales Staff

    Yelp released its earnings report for the fourth quarter and full year 2014 on Thursday, and as previously reported, the company grew its local advertising accounts by 48% over the course of 2014.

    Yelp execs discussed the progress of its ad offerings quite a bit during a conference call. The company intends to increase its sales headcount by 40% this year. This will mostly be in the U.S. despite the company’s international growth efforts (it launched in five new countries in 2014).

    The news is sure to draw some eye rolls from those accusing Yelp salespeople of extorting them by holding positive reviews hostage (allegations that have never been proven and that Yelp has always successfully combated on a legal basis). Yelp announced last month that the FTC closed an investigation related to this without taking any action against the company.

    “Many of those folks [salespeople] tend to come to us either straight out of college or within a few years thereafter, but we take all comers and there’s all different kinds of folks,” said COO and Director Geoff Donaker on the conference call (via Seeking Alpha’s transcript). “But it is a sales training program and so most of that headcount is folks who are reaching out to local businesses of different stripes. Of course, within that number, there is some international and there is some sort of specialty sales and mid-market franchise and national accounts, but the majority of it is kind of traditional local sales headcount here in the U.S.”

    Donaker noted that while Yelp has traditionally focused on selling impressions-based packages, it made its packaged CPC product widely available in September. He said they’re happy with the “fast uptake” of that, and that CPC advertisers accounted for 32% of local revenue during the fourth quarter (up from 23% in Q3).

    “The next logical step in our closing-the-loop efforts is to connect advertising spend all the way through to customer leads and spending,” said Donaker. “We are now tracking these ad-driven leads and associated revenue estimates for all advertisers, and we’ll be making this data available in our business owner tools in the coming quarters.”

    He mentioned that local CPC customers experience an average ROI of over 500% on their Yelp ad spend.

    Yelp has also seen increased growth from those utilizing its self-serve ads. More and more people are starting their advertising process there, and then electing to call up Yelp salespeople, Donaker said.

    “Taken together, we believe that most business owners will continue to prefer consulting with our sales people, though many of these conversations may increasingly be what we think of as assisted self-serve,” he said.

    In response to a question from an analyst, Donaker said Yelp has “an awful lot” of unused or unsold ad inventory.

    “Also, we’re seeing that in some more competitive categories or geo categories, if you will,” he said. “We do see that prices quickly rise within packaged CPC because that is an auction-based dynamic where folks effectively are bringing in an amount of money that they’re going to spend on CPC advertising and then leaving it to the bidding to determine what the prices will ultimately be for that inventory. And so you can imagine tight categories like movers in San Francisco, those prices are able to move up pretty quickly. So I think there is headroom in both price as well as inventory generally.”

    One analyst noted that core search players are recommending bids at about 2x the levels of Yelp.

    “We noticed the same thing as we’ve done a little bit of benchmarking, and it obviously gives us comfort with both the ROI that we’re giving to advertisers today as well as the headroom in those categories for pricing,” Donaker responded. “And so the simple answer is just acquisition, and that’s why we continue to be focused on bringing in as many CPC advertisers as we can because over time, more competition should mean prices will rise as well as, hopefully, more happy customers.

    At one point, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman noted that more than half of Yelp’s advertisers are taking advantage of video offerings.

    Image via Yelp

  • Yelp Slaps 85 Businesses With Consumer Alerts

    Yelp just announced that it’s releasing a new round of Consumer Alerts, slapping big warnings on top of the pages of 85 businesses. These businesses, Yelp says, are either attempting to buy or offer rewards for positive reviews or have a large number of reviews submitted from the same IP address, which the company considers “a hint that someone may be trying to artificially inflate their rating”.

    We emphasized “may” because this has been a subject of heated debate between businesses and Yelp for some time. Some businesses have argued that there are legitimate reasons that reviews could come from the same IP.

    Bloomberg TV ran a segment last year including a discussion with both a disgruntled business owner, and a Yelp exec.

    A relevant sample from the exchange between these two went like this:

    Yelp’s Vincent Sollitto, VP of corporate communications: “Yelp has to recommend reviews that they find reliable. The reason that there are a number of positive reviews for Beverly’s business that are not being recommended is because in fact ten of them came from the very IP address that was used to claim her business owner’s account, and one of them actually was for a one-star review of a competing business to hers. And so the problem is business owners try to game the system, and websites that don’t try to filter out or verify reliable reviews can get gamed. That’s probably why Yahoo decided to go ahead and use Yelp as the de facto standard for local search.”

    Business owner: “First of all, in some cases, clients are at your house, and can be using your IP address to write something. That is possible. IP address isn’t the best judgment. People can be at a cafe and use IP address, you know. I don’t think the location of a person writing the review is relevant. I had one guy, for instance, that is in my five-star-deleted – i’ve had like 34 deleted five-star reviews now – I mean not recommended – and another fourteen that have been deleted. And meanwhile I only have seven five-star reviews up. So that’s a big ratio. We’re talking a fifty to seven ratio here. I had one guy that had to go to the library and open an account in order to be able to write a review for me because he didn’t have a computer service, and he wanted to be able to review me because I did good work with him, and he was very pleased, and Yelp removed his review because it seemed suspicious or whatever, but he’s a real person.”

    The conversation went in a slightly different direction, and the business owner’s points about IP address weren’t really addressed.

    Update: Regarding IP address as a signal, a Yelp spokesperson offered us the following statement:

    “There are many data points that we take into account when posting Consumer Alerts, but in order to prevent businesses from gaming the system we can only share some of the measures we take. Reviews coming from the same IP address can be an indicator that someone is trying to artificially inflate a business’ rating. Two scenarios we often see in this case are either 1) The business owner was writing positive reviews of his/her own business or 2) The business owner was asking customers to write Yelp reviews for his business on a computer/laptop located within the business (which can lead to bias, since they’re unlikely to ask any dissatisfied customers for a review).”

    Yelp’s Consumer Alert warnings appear on business’ listings for ninety days.

    “Although most of the millions of businesses listed on Yelp do play by the rules, and Yelp’s automated recommendation software is already in place to identify and weed out fake reviews, consumers have a right to know about the bad apples before deciding to spend money at their businesses,” writes Yelp’s Kayleigh Winslow on the company’s blog. “For example, prospective customers of Back 2 Normal Physiotherapy in Vancouver, BC would probably want to know that a number of their five-star reviews can be tied to a marketing agency before deciding to visit them for acupuncture or injury treatment. Likewise, you’d probably appreciate the heads up that tattoo removal shop Dr. Tattoff was caught offering Starbucks and Amazon.com gift cards in exchange for Yelp reviews before turning to them for help painfully removing that mistake you made during college spring break. Or if you’re preparing for a big apartment move and want to hire someone you can trust, it’d be helpful to know that we discovered Roadway Moving in Manhattan, NY was offering $100 American Express gift cards in exchange for 5-star reviews.”

    Yelp shares an email from Roadway that someone apparently forwarded them.

    Yelp considers simply asking for reviews to be spam, so bribing people for five-star reviews is definitely going to get you in trouble with the site.

    “Beyond giving consumers a false perception of the business where they are about to spend their money and violating Yelp’s Terms of Service, writing a testimonial without revealing you’ve been compensated can also violate FTC guidelines,” says Winslow. “Consumers have the right to be alerted when a business is attempting to deceive them. Rest assured that when it comes to protecting consumers, we’ll always have your back.”

    It’s worth noting that Yelp’s data doesn’t just appear on Yelp. There are over 100,000 developers using the company’s API to integrate its data into their products. Regardless of whether or not consumers are seeking out information on Yelp itself, there’s a good chance they’ll come across Yelp content in other apps and on other websites.

    A study released by BrightLocal last summer found that people are trusting online reviews more than ever.

    While Yelp loves calling out shady business practices, the company is frequently accused of having some of its own. As Yelp announced earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the company without taking any action.

    Images via Yelp, BrightLocal

  • 46% Of Yelp’s Top 100 Places To Eat In The U.S. Are In California

    Apparently you really need to live in California to have a great selection of places to eat. That’s what Yelp’s Top 100 Places to Eat in the U.S. would have you believe anyway. 46 out of 100 of them are located in the state.

    Of course this is simply based on user data from Yelp, so that would seem to indicate that Yelp is a whole lot more popular in California (where it’s based) than anywhere else in the country. Either that or California really just does completely blow away every other state when it comes to great food. Yelp says in a blog post:

    Yelp is a hotbed of user-generated information. From lengthy reviews to photos and searches, there’s a lot that our data can tell us about small businesses and consumer preferences. From this data we know that one of the main questions people across the world come to Yelp to answer is, “Where should I eat?”

    Well have no fear, Yelp’s Top 100 List for 2015 is here, revealing the hottest 100 places to eat in the United States based on Yelp data. How did we compile a list so thorough? To determine Yelp’s top places to eat for 2015, our data science team analyzed which places were the most popular and well reviewed over the course of 2014. Unlike our inaugural list from last year, which unearthed the best places to eat on Yelp based on almost 10 years of reviews, this time Yelp’s data science team gave more weight to recent reviews, so that Yelpers’ opinions in 2014 mattered most, while older reviews had less influence on the list. While we still see some of the great places from the 2014 Top 100 that were as good as ever last year, we’ve also made room for some up and comers that were off the charts in 2014. Businesses were compared on a nationwide basis.

    Last year’s list included 48 California restaurants.

    For comparison, this list from DailyMeal of the 101 best restaurants in the country has less than half of the number of California restaurants Yelp’s list has. This list of the top 100 from OpenTable only has 10 California establishments.

    Here’s Yelp’s top 100 for 2015:

    1. Copper Top BBQ – Big Pine, CA
    2. Art of Flavors – Las Vegas, NV
    3. Soho Japanese Restaurant – Las Vegas, NV
    4. TKB Bakery and Deli – Indio, CA
    5. Ono Seafood – Kona, HI
    6. Shark Pit Maui – Lahaina, HI
    7. Gaucho Parilla Argentina – Pittsburgh, PA
    8. Bobboi Natural Gelato – La Jolla, CA
    9. Golden Bear Trading Company – San Francisco, CA
    10. Little Miss BBQ – Phoenix, AZ
    11. Dat Cajun Guy – Haleiwa, HI
    12. Sweet Dogs – Miami, FL
    13. Aviva by Kameel – Atlanta, GA
    14. Sweet Spice – Savannah, GA
    15. Royal Taj – Columbia, MD
    16. Arun’s Indian Kichen – Coral Spring, FL
    17. Hall’s Chophouse – Charleston, SC
    18. Bronze Cafe – Las Vegas, NV
    19. Saffron and Rose Ice Cream – Los Angeles, CA
    20. Buddha Thai Bistro – Vacaville, CA
    21. Yoshino Japanese Deli – Carlsbad, CA
    22. Big Al’s Pizzeria – Maywood, CA
    23. Andytown Coffee Roasters – San Francisco, CA
    24. Kech Cafe – Fountain Valley, CA
    25. Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que – Kansas City, KS
    26. Los Andes Restaurant – Providence, RI
    27. Lahaina Luna Cafe – Lahaina, HI
    28. Bell Street Farm – Los Alamos, CA
    29. Tacos El Gordo De Tijuana BC – Chula Vista, CA
    30. Detroit Coney Grill – Tempe, AZ
    31. Sessions West Coast Deli – Newport Beach, CA
    32. Baguette Cafe – Las Vegas, NV
    33. Carrara Pastries – Moorpark, CA
    34. Bogart’s Smokehouse – Saint Louis, MO
    35. Reading Terminal Market – Philadelphia, PA
    36. Piperi Mediterranean Grill – Boston, MA
    37. Kitchen Table Cafe – Denver, CO
    38. Mood Cafe – Philadelphia, PA
    39. Santos Lucha Libre – Phoenix, AZ
    40. Porto’s Bakery – Burbank, CA
    41. El Dorado Cantina – Las Vegas, NV
    42. Jougert Bar – Burlingame, CA
    43. Araya’s Place Thai Vegan Restaurant – Los Angeles, CA
    44. Joe’s Falafel – Los Angeles, CA
    45. Persimmon Cafe – Charleston, SC
    46. Beiler’s Bakery – Philadelphia, PA
    47. Starbread – Sacramento, CA
    48. Kersmon Caribbean Restaurant – Greenacres, FL
    49. Vitality Tap – San Diego, CA
    50. Ono Seafood – Honolulu, HI
    51. Chama Gaucha Brazilian Steakhouse – Downers Grove, IL
    52. Da Poke Shack – Kailua Kona, HI
    53. Poke Express – Las Vegas, NV
    54. Murakame Udon – Honolulu, HI
    55. Bronzed Aussie – Los Angeles, CA
    56. Bite Into Maine – Cape Elizabeth, ME
    57. Franklin Barbecue – Austin, TX
    58. Eddie V’s Prime Seafood – San Diego, CA
    59. Hey!… You Gonna Eat or What? – Austin, TX
    60. Mama D’s Italian Kitchen – Newport Beach, CA
    61. Outlaws Cafe – Van Nuys, CA
    62. Subculture Extraordinary Sandwiches – Huntington Beach, CA
    63. Go Greek Yogurt – Beverly Hills, CA
    64. Ninja Sushi and Teriyaki – Roseville, CA
    65. Los Agaves – Santa Barbara, CA
    66. Sal, Kris, & Charlie’s Deli – Astoria, NY
    67. Genie Den – Garden Grove, CA
    68. Garbo’s Grill – Key West, FL
    69. T-Deli – San Diego, CA
    70. Rose’s Luxury – Washington, DC
    71. Embargo Grill – San Diego, CA
    72. Your Kitchen – Honolulu, HI
    73. LouEddie’s Pizza – Skyforest, CA
    74. Blues City Deli – Saint Louis, MO
    75. Dametra Cafe – Carmel, CA
    76. Nick’s Next Door – Los Gatos, CA
    77. Don Julio’s Rincon Latin Grill and Pupusas – Ronnert Park, CA
    78. Mr. Mama’s – Las Vegas, NV
    79. Los Tacos No. 1 – New York, NY
    80. Beyer Deli – San Diego, CA
    81. Mojo Donuts – Pembroke Pines, FL
    82. Peter’s Kettle Corn – Oakland, CA
    83. The Pocket Burger Shack – Sunset Beach, CA
    84. Mouthful Eatery – Thousand Oaks, CA
    85. Playground 2.0 – Santa Ana, CA
    86. Monell’s Dining & Catering – Nashville, TN
    87. Zenwich – Elmhurst, IL
    88. Commonwealth Restaurant – Burbank, CA
    89. Istanbul Grill California – Fountain Valley, CA
    90. Mister Falafel – San Diego, CA
    91. Vietnam Poblano – Houston, TX
    92. Tanioka’s Seafoods & Catering – Waipahu, HI
    93. Yak’s On The 5 – Dunsmuir, CA
    94. Titas Taco House – Humble, TX
    95. Pomo Pizzeria Napoletana – Phoenix, AZ
    96. Eli’s BBQ – Cincinnati, OH
    97. Johnny Pacific – Winnetka, CA
    98. The Cinnamon Snail – New York, NY
    99. Cafe la Maude – Philadelphia, PA
    100. Cream Pan – Tustin, CA

    We’ve reached out to Yelp for information on what percentage of Yelp’s U.S. reviews and/or users are from California. We’ll update if we get that information.

    Update: Yelp tells me it doesn’t break out reviews or visitors by state, but that the list “represents opinions of the Yelp community, which is strongest in some of our oldest communities and may contribute to why you see many California businesses represented.”

    Image via Thinkstock

  • Yelp: FTC Closes Investigation, Takes No Action

    Yelp announced on Tuesday that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has closed an investigation into the company’s business practices without taking any action against it.

    Last spring, the FTC published a letter stating that it had received over 2,000 complaints filed against Yelp since 2008. This was made available in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by The Wall Street Journal. The news caused Yelp’s stock to tank at the time.

    “Yelp strives to provide trustworthy content to consumers,” writes Yelp VP Communications & Public Affairs Vince Sollitto. “For this reason, businesses can’t pay to change their ratings or reviews and our salespeople don’t tell businesses otherwise. We also take aggressive steps to weed out potentially unreliable content, including through our recommendation software.”

    In rather unfortunate timing, we were just tipped to research from Strategy Response finding that Yelp’s review filter is not very good at eliminating biased reviews that appear to violate its own conflict of interest guidelines.

    Sollitto writes, “The FTC looked into our recommendation software, what we say to businesses about it, what our salespeople say about our advertising programs, and how we ensure that our employees are not able to manipulate the ratings and reviews that we display on our platform. After nearly a year of scrutiny, the FTC decided to close its investigation without taking further action. This marked the second time that the FTC had looked at our advertising practices and ended its inquiry without further action.”

    However, little has changed with the narrative told by business owners in Internet comments accusing Yelp of holding positive reviews hostage with advertising as the ransom. As Yelp points out time and time again (because for some reason it keeps having to do so), such allegations have never been proven, and there has never been a successful lawsuit against the company alleging such actions.

    It remains Yelp’s word versus that of angry business owners. It’s rare that we publish an article about Yelp without getting some amount of comments talking about this.

    Just before the holidays one reader commented, “I kept seeing the articles about Yelp and it’s biz practices on WebProNews, but wasn’t affected or sure what to think. Low and behold – Yelp reached out and asked our business to advertise with them. Once we did not, they pinned a poor review that is several months old towards the top of our page. Newer, better reviews are constantly written, yet the older, poorer one doesn’t drop down.”

    Again, it’s Yelp’s word versus theirs, and we have no way of verifying the legitimacy of such a comment, but these kinds of comments have just not shown any sign of letting up. Either way, it looks like the government is on Yelp’s side on this one.

    The FTC did fine the company $450,000 in September for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

    Image via Yelp

  • Yelp Filter Not Catching Biased Reviews

    Yelp Filter Not Catching Biased Reviews

    It may be a new year, but there are still problems with Yelp’s review filter. We’ve been tipped to some research finding reviews featuring promo codes, which would seem to violate Yelp’s guidelines, showing up for Uber and Lyft, as well as a competing taxi service. Yelp’s filter has long been the subject of controversy with small business owners, and these findings highlight yet another issue with it.

    Are you happy with Yelp’s review filter? Do you think it does a good job of eliminating spam? Let us know what you think.

    “We conducted some research that found many customers of Uber are spamming Yelp’s review in order to promote their promo code. These codes work as an affiliate program so whenever a new customer uses the code, then the person gets $5 in Uber credit,” Strategy Response tells WebProNews in an email. “In smaller markets, most of the 5-star reviews for Uber are clearly biases as they are promoting a code. These codes allow the person to receive credit when someone else uses their code.”

    These promo codes got some attention last year when celebrities like Lindsay Lohan, Snoop Dogg, and Neil Patrick Harris were promoting their codes on social media.

    As Strategy Response notes, such a conflict of interest on the part of reviewers is a clear violation of Yelp’s guidelines. This is what Yelp actually says under the “Conflicts of interest” section:

    Your contributions should be unbiased and objective. For example, you shouldn’t write reviews of your own business or employer, your friends’ or relatives’ business, your peers or competitors in your industry, or businesses in your networking group. Business owners should not ask customers to write reviews. Emphasis added.

    While this sort of thing might be fine on a platform like Twitter, Yelp is a different animal. It has direct influence on whether or not people use a business. That’s the whole point. It’s easy to see why reviews with these promos would be a violation of Yelp’s guidelines. They’re obviously biased. The problem is that the filter isn’t doing its job in eliminating them.

    Strategy response found examples in a variety of cities across the U.S. In Louisville, there’s only a single review for Uber, and that review gives the company a five-star review and includes a promo code.

    The same goes for Kalamazoo. In Charleston, 3 of the 4 reviews include a promo code. In Des Moinses, 2 out of the 3 reviews promotes a code.

    You can see an example for Lyft in Raleigh-Durham here.

    Yellow Cab in Austin, which has a one-and-a-half star review, displays this review promoting an Uber user’s code:

    So this is also something that could potentially have an impact on competition.

    “We believe that this is a serious issue as it brings into question Yelp’s filter,” Strategy Response tells WebProNews, noting that in many of our previous articles about Yelp, readers mentioned their frustration and anger with Yelp’s ‘recommended reviews’ section. “Also, Uber is gaining an unfair competitive advantage from an artificially higher Yelp review based on these biased reviews. A Harvard study found that restaurants are able to get a 5 to 9 percent increase in business based on an increase of one-star on Yelp. With some markets only have a single 5 star review for Uber based on a reviewer promoting their own code, this gives them an unfair advantage that Yelp has been unable to address.”

    In its report, Strategy Response says:

    What we do want to highlight is that Yelp’s filter system is not perfect. These reviews got through the filter, and once they were posted, it appears as if there were no further quality control investigation by Yelp. There has been many articles written about Yelp’s filter. If you have a small business, you have probably express anger, frustration, and fear when the filter prevents customers from leaving a glowing review. However, in addition to worrying over your own profile, it is also very important to check your competitors profile to see what has gotten through. In these examples, the competing taxi companies and ride-sharing apps in these markets should have flagged these reviews to get them removed. Regardless of the true intentions of the reviewers, the fact that it included a promo code should have prevented them from being displayed.

    Last month, Yelp launched a new app for business owners aimed at enabling them to better manage their Yelp reputations and respond to consumers more quickly. Based on our reader response, businesses aren’t very impressed.

    Do you think Yelp’s filter is adequate, or is it detrimental to businesses? Share your thoughts in the comments.

  • Yelp Shows Businesses Some Love With New App

    Yelp’s reputation among businesses is…let’s just say a mixed bag. By now, you’ve no doubt heard plenty of horror stories, regardless of whether or not they’re true (they’re often unproven), but the fact is that Yelp needs businesses to exist, and ultimately, the better its reputation among them is, the better off the company itself is bound to be. Yelp is making efforts to become a more valuable tool for businesses.

    Do you think Yelp is on the right track when it comes to catering to businesses? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    Yelp announced the launch of a new app for business owners, aptly titled the Yelp for Business Owners app. It’s available for both iOS and Android, and enables businesses to get real-time notifications of new Yelp messages and reviews.

    According to the company, the app is designed to make it easier for businesses to engage with customers, manage their Yelp reputations, and respond to consumers more quickly.

    “Since launching in June of 2014, consumers are now sending an average of 55,000 messages each month to businesses through our free Message the Business tool,” Yelp says. “With more than 64% percent of Yelp searches done on mobile and 73 million monthly unique visitors using Yelp via their mobile device as of Q3 2014, it’s clear there’s a demand to conduct these conversations on the go.”

    Yelp, in general, is becoming much more mobile. It was just last year that Yelp finally started letting users leave reviews with its mobile apps. This led to significantly more reviews. It’s nice that they’re finally giving some of this mobile love to the businesses it lists, especially considering all the highly publicized grief businesses have experienced with Yelp.

    Business owners can also use the new app to view their business page activity, such as the number of user views and customer leads they have generated over the past 30 days. They can respond to reviews by private message or public comment, and respond to customer inquiries from the Message the Business feature.

    Advertisers can also use the app to view reports on ad clicks from Yelp users.

    “We’re excited to take this step in making Yelp more accessible and easy to use for business owners, and we plan to add additional features to the app in the near future,” Yelp says.

    The company considers the app its “gift to business owners”.

    The app is available in all of Yelp’s 29 countries and 16 languages. You can find it in Google Play or the App Store.

    It’s still early, but on Android, the Yelp for Business Owners app seems to be getting mostly positive reviews so far. The App Store doesn’t have enough ratings to display.

    One of the negative Android reviews, while praising certain aspects of the app, suggested that it’s missing some key features:

    Very clean, very fast…but… #fail The app has no reason being an app to only respond to messages. Here’s what I need: (1) Change business location. (2) Add photos on the fly. (3) The ability to edit my business. Without that, why does this app even matter? Are companies just wasting money to build apps that aren’t even productive that only waste space? I’ll be back to see if you guys fix it. Stop giving good reviews for non-productive apps, maybe they’ll actually make it a business app.

    Yelp will no doubt be updating the app in time, so it won’t be surprising to see them add some of this stuff. It’s rare that mobile apps are full-featured right out of the box.

    What do you think of the app? Will it help you get more out of Yelp as a business? Do you think it will help you manage your reputation? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Image via Yelp

  • Yelp Reviews Say More Than You Realized

    Yelp reviews can have a tremendous impact – for better or for worse – on a business. They can dictate whether or not a customer decides to visit. This is one of the reasons the site/app is so controversial with businesses. There may actually be more to reviews than meets the eye, however.

    Do believe Yelp reviews have any significant impact on your business? Let us know in the comments.

    Yelp has been offering researchers access to its data in the form of the Yelp Dataset Challenge, which includes data from Phoenix, Las Vegas, Madison, Waterloo, and Edinburgh. It’s made up of data from 42,153 businesses, 320,002 business attributes, 31,617 check-in sets, 252,898 users, 955,999 edge social graph, 403,210 tips, and 1,125,458 reviews.

    With the challenge, Yelp has been calling on academics to break ground in research with its data. Explaining the challenge, Yelp says:

    How well can you guess a review’s rating from its text alone? Can you take all of the reviews of a business and predict when it will be the most busy, or when the business is open? Can you predict if a business is good for kids? Has Wi-Fi? Has Parking? What makes a review useful, funny, or cool? Can you figure out which business a user is likely to review next? How much of a business’s success is really just location, location, location? What businesses deserve their own subcategory (i.e., Szechuan or Hunan versus just “Chinese restaurants”), and can you learn this from the review text? What makes a tip useful? What are the differences between the cities in the dataset? There is a myriad of deep, machine learning questions to tackle with this rich dataset.

    Researchers from Yahoo took Yelp up on the challenge, utilizing 200,000 of the available reviews to look at social signals that can be gleaned from Yelp, which can provide a better understanding of consumers’ interactions with businesses on the popular review site. As they note, Yelp isn’t just about the actual reviews.

    In a blog post, Yahoo Labs researchers Saeideh Bakhshi, David A. Shamma, and Partha Kanuparthy write:

    People on Yelp also log in and express their opinions, not as reviews, but as votes on reviews. In effect, it’s a higher granularity than a Flickr “favorite” or a Facebook “like,” as Yelpers cast their votes with the distinct sentiments of cool, funny, and/or useful. These votes are three kinds of “likes”; they are a minimal social signal that many online sites use for communication and recommendation. The three options that Yelp offers lets one investigate the implied meanings carried by these sentiments more accurately than many other social networks. But there’s something more here. In aggregate, a random person on Yelp might carry a running total of votes they have cast, including 469 useful votes, 192 cool votes, and 260 funny votes. The same could hold true for a venue. We began to wonder if we could understand something more from these votes; are they indicative of particular emotions? Do the votes represent some fingerprint of a Yelper or of an establishment?

    They found that the way people vote on reviews (including the sentiment of the text) has a relationship with the tone of the text and the text’s rating, depending on vote type. They say there is deeper meaning in signals like “cool,” “useful,” and “funny,” than those labels suggest.

    “While many would be correct in associating the useful and funny votes as representing reviews with the most amount of information or humor they contain, these signals are actually a proxy for negativity in reviews,” the researchers say. “A cool vote is more ambiguous in its meaning, but clearly associates with more positive reviews. Understanding these votes, or signals, and how they affect ratings can better inform customers as they come across reviews and take them into account for their own purposes; ultimately, they could alter one’s perception of a business, for better or worse.”

    The main takeaways are as follows:

    • Reviews that were voted useful and/or funny tended to have lower user ratings and generally carry a negative tone.
    • Reviews deemed to be cool by users tend to have a positive tone and higher user ratings.
    • Reviews written by members who are active for longer periods of time tend to receive more votes. Readers tend to prefer long and objective reviews.

    You can read the full research paper here. There is also some follow-up research available here.

    Have you ever considered the impact of how non-reviewing Yelp users are contributing to your business’ reputation by their interactions with existing reviews? Does it make a significant difference in your opinion? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Images via Yelp, Yahoo

  • Google My Business, AdWords Express Apps Get Updates

    Google announced some updates to the Google My Business and AdWords Express apps aimed at making it easier for businesses to find the right customers.

    With Google My Business for Android, business owners can see reviews from across the web. This is coming to the iOS app soon.

    “Business users have told us how much customers appreciate a response, so we are also making it possible to respond to Google reviews in the app, along with real-time alerts if you want to keep a pulse on your reputation online,” Google says.

    “Wondering how customers are using their smartphones to get in touch with your business? When people find you on Google, you can see when they call or from where they get driving directions, so you can be prepared for that next manic Monday rush,” the company adds.

    The AdWords Express app is being expanded to 20 new countries on Android. This will also occur with iOS soon.

    The changes for both apps are rolling out over the coming days.

    Image via Google

  • Yelp Acquires French Review Site Cityvox

    Investors have been concerned about Yelp’s international business, and Yelp seems to be doing everything it can to reverse that.

    The company announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Cityvox, a French online review site, which specializes in restaurants and nightlife. This follows the announcement last week that Yelp acquired Germany’s Restaurant-Kritik, which also specializes in restaurants.

    Yelp says these acquisitions illustrate its commitment to the development of the European market and underline its goal of becoming the go-to review source internationally.

    Mike Ghaffary, Yelp’s VP of Business and Corporate Development, said, “Cityvox has a local reputation for providing great consumer insights for businesses ranging from restaurants and brasseries to cinemas and clubs, basically any business falling into the restaurant and nightlife categories. We are looking forward to integrating this review and photo content into Yelp and putting it at the service of consumers throughout France, whether they be locals or one of the millions of annual visitors to the culture-rich country.

    “Depth and breadth of content, as well as a dedicated community of Yelpers, is what sets Yelp apart and is the reason why over 130 million unique visitors come to Yelp each month,” he added. “The addition of Cityvox’s review and photo content will enrich the Yelp content in France, and hopefully attract yet more dedicated and committed Yelpers to the Yelp France community.”

    Yelp reported its Q3 earnings last week with revenue up 67% year-over-year and cumulative reviews were up 41%. The company’s outlook wasn’t great, however, and shareholders weren’t a big fan of that.

    Image via Cityvox

  • Is Yelp Headed In The Right Direction?

    Is Yelp Headed In The Right Direction?

    Yelp, the online review site that businesses love to hate, released its earnings report for the third quarter this week. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman proclaimed it a “great” quarter, but investors weren’t buying what Yelp was selling as the company’s stock plummeted. The company’s business outlook wasn’t as good as shareholders hoped, and there’s concern about growth maintenance and competition.

    Are Yelp’s best days behind it? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Yelp’s revenue was up 67% year-over-year. Cumulative reviews were up 41% at 67 million. Average monthly unique visitors grew 19% year over year to about 139 million. This all seems pretty good, right? So what’s the problem?

    The company said it expects Q4 revenue to be in the range of $107 million to $108 million, representing growth of approximately 52% compared to the fourth quarter of 2013. Wall Street was looking for something more like $111 million.

    Much of the concern lies with Yelp’s ability to compete internationally. Stoppelman said on the earnings call (via Seeking Alpha):

    We see a large opportunity internationally and we continue to roll out the yelp playbook in new markets as we plant the seeds for future growth.

    We expand geographically by hiring community managers who nurture communities of local writers. Content [rooms] (ph) and consumer traffic which leads to more writers and more reviews. Once the content and traffic grow, we’re able to start monetizing but this process takes time.

    For example, we launched in Italy about three years ago and our sales people just began selling in Italy last month but there are recent launches in Choi and Hong Kong, Yelp is now available in 29 countries and in 16 languages.

    Even since the call, the company announced its acquisition of German restaurant review site Restaurant-Kritik.

    Despite Stoppelman’s words of optimism, it’s clear that even Yelp itself is concerned about competition internationally, based on how hard the company is pushing for regulation against Google. In addition to becoming an official complainant in the European antitrust battle, Yelp and some other companies recently launched a website and browser plugin aimed at convincing people and regulators that Google doesn’t play fair.

    But a lot of companies are worried about competition from the search giant. Yelp investors are also concerned about smaller, but substantial players.

    Tom Taulli at InvestorPlace writes, “It appears that foreign markets are getting tougher to monetize. After all, there are dominant companies, such as TripAdvisor and Priceline, that have recently entered the restaurant review space. These operators obviously have tremendous brands, marketing resources (with lots of TV commercials) and tremendous leverage from their existing travel platforms. There are already ominous signs that the competition is taking a toll. Consider that Yelp reported a flat quarter-over-quarter performance in international traffic.”

    Yelp also has some new competition from Groupon, which just launched business pages, which it aims to see surfaced in search engines. Their angle is that businesses can highlight deals that will bring them customers, something Gruopon is already quite good at. Groupon also works with these businesses to craft such deals.

    Jennifer Booton at MarketWatch says millennials are “migrating away from review sites” like Yelp, and that, “While macroeconomic factors have had some effect, social media have raised the stakes for the legacy review sites. Consumers are increasingly opting for free reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations from their trusted friends and relatives on social networks like Facebook and Foursquare over more traditional review sites.”

    She notes that analysts have also expressed concern that Yelp’s revenue growth is too dependent on “noncore sources, such as its partnership with YP.com.”

    None of this even broaches the fact that a lot of businesses themselves are very critical of Yelp or the shareholders who filed a class action suit against the company over the alleged misleading about the legitimacy of reviews.

    Yelp claims to have roughly 86,200 active local business accounts. That’s up 51% year-over-year. With Yelp Platform, which the company just added hotels and wineries to, consumers can transact directly with 28,000 businesses. These transactions were recently added to the Yelp business dashboard.

    Users contributed about 5.3 million reviews during the last quarter, which Yelp says is the biggest quarterly increase to date. 45% of them were added with mobile devices. It’s unclear how many were actually legitimate reviews, as we often see them left by people with ulterior motives.

    There are a lot of factors that seem to be working against Yelp, but so far, the company seems to have weathered the storm tremendously. The question is whether or not that will continue, and for how long.

    Do you think Yelp is headed in the right direction? Will competition become a bigger problem? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Image via Yelp

  • Business Courts Negative Reviews As Middle Finger To Yelp

    You’ve heard the claims before. If reader comments are any indication, many of you have even lived them. They’ve never been proven, but time and time again, small businesses accuse Yelp of “extorting” them by holding positive reviews hostage until they pay for advertising.

    Do you believe Yelp is really guilty of this practice, or is it just a myth? Tell us what you think.

    Writing this story couldn’t feel much more like beating a dead horse, because it never really gets anywhere, but the claims just don’t stop. Yelp denies them, and businesses call B.S. It’s a never-ending cycle without a resolution in sight.

    So why are we talking about it this time? A restaurant in Richmond, Califonria – Botto Italian Bistro – has taken matters into its own hands. Rather than just complaining about this alleged “extortion,” they launched a campaign to get negative reviews, which has led to increased attention and business for the restaurant, while also shining a spotlight on such claims against Yelp.

    According to The Associated Press, the restaurant launched the campaign after getting “several aggressive sales calls from Yelp that they perceived to be veiled threats.” It’s the same basic plot that businesses have been talking about for a long time now.

    According to that report, business has benefited from the campaign, and the restaurant says it’s the best marketing idea it’s had, adding a big middle finger in the form of a “Thanks, Yelp!”

    Last month, Yelp emerged victorious from a lawsuit dealing with extortion claims, though the reason the company won did little to quell existing suspicions. Yelp certainly took the opportunity to gloat about its victory on its blog, saying:

    For years, fringe commentators have accused Yelp of altering business ratings for money. Yelp has never done this and individuals making such claims are either misinformed, or more typically, have an axe to grind––whether businesses upset that Yelp will not remove reviews they don’t like, or unscrupulous internet marketing “experts” trying to make a buck off of honest business owners with dubious reputation management schemes.

    In 2010, a few businesses took these conspiracy theories to court and filed several class actions against Yelp — all of which were dismissed in Federal court. Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of these cases with their ruling in Levitt v. Yelp. Examining the businesses’ best facts after several attempts, the court found no extortion or any other wrongdoing by Yelp. The Court also dismissed as implausible some plaintiffs’ claims that Yelp authored negative reviews about them as part of a plot to obtain ad dollars. Instead, the Court noted that the facts only showed that the reviews were likely from actual customers, noting that “Yelp is a forum for consumers to review businesses, and huge numbers of consumers do just that.”

    We are obviously happy that the Court reached the right result, and saw through these thin attempts by a few businesses and their lawyers to disparage Yelp and draw attention away from their own occasional negative review. We at Yelp are moving on, and focusing on our core mission––connecting people with great local businesses.

    Meanwhile, various reports pointed out that the reason for the case’s dismissal didn’t really prove that Yelp wasn’t engaging in the things it was being accused of.

    As Nathaniel Mott of PandoDaily put it at the time, “The court’s decision was based less on Yelp’s innocence in the common sense of the word and more on the fact that these businesses never had a ‘right’ to positive reviews in the first place. Yelp isn’t necessarily innocent — it’s just not guilty in a way the appeals court cares about.”

    As Courthouse News Service described the outcome of the case, “Yelp’s alleged conduct cannot be called extortion because its ‘manipulation of user reviews, assuming it occurred, was not wrongful use of economic fear, and, second, … business owners pled insufficient facts to make out a plausible claim that Yelp authored negative reviews of their businesses,’ the three-judge panel found.”

    While it was certainly a legal victory for Yelp, it didn’t go very far in improving the company’s reputation or easing accusations and suspicions.

    Yelp is also dealing with a class-action suit filed by shareholders who alleged the company sold over $81 million in stock while misleading them about the legitimacy of reviews.

    Botto Italian Bistro’s campaign probably isn’t doing a lot to help Yelp’s reviews look more legitimate. The campaign is alluded to quite a bit throughout the reviews currently residing on the restaurant’s Yelp page. The one that’s showing at the top as of the time of this writing even claims to have written an actual legit review only to have it deleted by Yelp. It says:

    Now that the restaurant has gained some attention from its campaign, it will be interesting to see if other businesses follow suit. It doesn’t make a business look very good online for those unaware of the situation, but if enough others started doing it too, it could be even worse for Yelp’s own reputation, and it seems like that would please quite a few disgruntled businesses.

    Something tells me another legal battle isn’t too far off.

    Was this a smart move from the restaurant, or is it just going to negatively impact it in the long run? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Image via Yelp

  • Yelp Wants To Help You Respond To Reviews

    Yelp Wants To Help You Respond To Reviews

    Yelp wants to help businesses respond to their reviews, which is something a lot of businesses seem to struggle to do in a productive manner.

    The company is hosting a webinar on Wednesday that will walk businesses through some best practices.

    The webinar is titled “How to Join the Conversation with Your Customers,” and will include a live demo. According to the agenda, it will answer the following questions:

    – What does Yelp do to protect business owners from questionable reviews?
    – How should you approach critical reviews?
    – Why does Yelp discourage review solicitation?
    – How should you use the response tools available at Yelp for Business Owners?
    – Should you utilize private or public responses?

    You can sign up for the event here. It starts at 2:00 PM Eastern.

    Image via Yelp (Flickr)

  • Yelp Pays FTC $450K After Child Privacy Violation

    Yelp reached a settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the violation of child privacy law. The company had enabled kids under 13 (some even 9 and under reportedly) to sign up for its service, collecting their email addresses with parental consent. This apparently went on from 2009 to 2013.

    Yelp paid a reported $450,000 fine.

    According to ComputerWorld, the FTC brought the complaint against Yelp on Tuesday, saying it had violated “a number of rules, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act”.

    The company blamed the issue on a bug. Yelp’s VP of Communications and Public Affairs, Vince Sollitto, shared this statement on the company’s blog:

    Yelp recently reached a settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission regarding a bug in our mobile registration process that allowed certain users to register with any birth date when it was supposed to disallow registrations from individuals under 13 (birthdates on Yelp are optional in the first place, so users are always free to register without one).

    The good news is that only about 0.02% of users who actually completed Yelp’s registration process during this time period provided an underage birth date, and we have good reason to believe that many of them were actually adults. Regardless, we don’t want any ambiguity when it comes to our users. When this problem was brought to our attention, we fixed it immediately and closed the affected users’ accounts.

    Yelp doesn’t promote itself as a place for children, and we certainly don’t expect or encourage them to write reviews about their plumbers, dentists, or latest gastronomic discoveries. We’re glad to have been able to cooperate with the FTC to get to a quick resolution and look forward to continuing our efforts to protect our users.

    The settlement follows others from Google and Apple related to those companies enabling children to make in-app purchases without parental consent. Amazon has also been dealing with a similar situation.

    Image via Thinkstock

  • ‘Yelp Bill’ Passed In California

    ‘Yelp Bill’ Passed In California

    California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that prevents consumers from facing legal action from businesses over negative reviews. The law keeps businesses from being able to prevent customers from writing negative reviews or penalize them for doing so.

    As a Washington Post article that Yelp points to explains, “The bill bans businesses from forcing consumers into contracts in which they waive their right to comment on the service they receive, and it also bars businesses from otherwise penalizing customers for such statements. It imposes fines of $2,500 for the first violation and $5,000 for each thereafter. If a violation was willful, intentional or reckless, an additional fine of $10,000 could be levied.”

    The bill is being referred to by some (including Yelp) as the “Yelp Bill”. The company says on its blog:

    From time to time we hear about businesses that are so afraid of what their customers might say about them that they sneak clauses into consumer contracts designed to forbid their customers from saying anything bad about them on sites like Yelp. Some of these contracts even threaten fines or legal action. These types of non-disparagement contracts not only seek to intimidate potential reviewers away from sharing their honest experiences online, but also threaten to deprive the public of useful consumer information.

    A five-star rating for a business who had used one of these clauses to simply scare all negative reviewers into removing their comments wouldn’t really represent the experience a consumer could expect to have at that business in our opinion.

    AB 2365 makes it explicitly clear that non-disparagement clauses in consumer contracts for goods or services in the state of California are void and unenforceable. What this means is that individuals writing online reviews in California are now further protected from those bad actors who hide jargon in consumer contracts in attempts to prohibit you from posting reviews — positive or negative — online.

    One hotel recently came under fire for charging guests $500 for negative Yelp reviews, but ultimately removed that from its policy after a wave of negative publicity.

    The passage of the Yelp Bill is the second favorable piece of legal news for the company in as many weeks. Last week, an extortion suit was dismissed.

    Yelp still faces a class action suit from shareholders who claim the company mislead them about the legitimacy of reviews.

    You can look at the bill here.

    Image via Twitter

  • Yelp ‘Extortion’ Suit Dismissed, But Suspicions Remain

    Yelp has emerged victorious from an extortion lawsuit, but the reasons why have done little to quell existing suspicions about its business practices.

    Various lawsuits have been filed against Yelp over the years, accusing the company of extorting small businesses by hiding positive reviews and showing negative ones in order to get businesses to pay for advertising. Beyond the lawsuits, there are many Internet comments alleging the same thing, and similar stories also told in the media.

    None of this has ever been proven, however, and like others before it, a class action suit in California has been dismissed. The US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal from a lower court in the case of Levitt v. Yelp, citing a lack of evidence.

    Is the dismissal of this case sufficient to put accusations and suspicions to rest? Tell us what you think.

    Marketing Land shares the legal document:

     

    Yelp, of course, took to its blog to inform the world about the dismissal. Senior Director of Litigation Aaron Schur writes:

    For years, fringe commentators have accused Yelp of altering business ratings for money. Yelp has never done this and individuals making such claims are either misinformed, or more typically, have an axe to grind––whether businesses upset that Yelp will not remove reviews they don’t like, or unscrupulous internet marketing “experts” trying to make a buck off of honest business owners with dubious reputation management schemes.

    In 2010, a few businesses took these conspiracy theories to court and filed several class actions against Yelp — all of which were dismissed in Federal court. Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of these cases with their ruling in Levitt v. Yelp. Examining the businesses’ best facts after several attempts, the court found no extortion or any other wrongdoing by Yelp. The Court also dismissed as implausible some plaintiffs’ claims that Yelp authored negative reviews about them as part of a plot to obtain ad dollars. Instead, the Court noted that the facts only showed that the reviews were likely from actual customers, noting that “Yelp is a forum for consumers to review businesses, and huge numbers of consumers do just that.”

    We are obviously happy that the Court reached the right result, and saw through these thin attempts by a few businesses and their lawyers to disparage Yelp and draw attention away from their own occasional negative review. We at Yelp are moving on, and focusing on our core mission––connecting people with great local businesses.

    While Yelp obviously considers this a victory, some in the media have pointed out that the reason for the case’s dismissal doesn’t really prove that Yelp hasn’t engaged in some of the things it’s been accused of.

    As Nathaniel Mott at PandoDaily puts it, “Yelp’s extortion charges have been dropped, but that doesn’t mean the company’s innocent.”

    “Others have pointed out, however, that the court’s decision was based less on Yelp’s innocence in the common sense of the word and more on the fact that these businesses never had a ‘right’ to positive reviews in the first place,” he writes. “Yelp isn’t necessarily innocent — it’s just not guilty in a way the appeals court cares about.”

    Courthouse News Service reports:

    Yelp’s alleged conduct cannot be called extortion because its “manipulation of user reviews, assuming it occurred, was not wrongful use of economic fear, and, second, … business owners pled insufficient facts to make out a plausible claim that Yelp authored negative reviews of their businesses,” the three-judge panel found.Emphasis added.

    “In sum, to state a claim of economic extortion under both federal and California law, a litigant must demonstrate either that he had a pre-existing right to be free from the threatened harm, or that the defendant had no right to seek payment for the service offered,” wrote Judge Marsha Berzon for the three-judge appellate panel. “Any less stringent standard would transform a wide variety of legally acceptable business dealings into extortion.”

    Yelp also faces a class action suit from its own shareholders who have alleged that the sold over $81 million in stock while misleading them about the legitimacy of reviews.

    On that note, the company just issued a new round of Consumer Alerts, revealing that it busted some businesses bribing reviewers through messaging on Yelp itself. In another blog post, Yelp wrote:

    For example, imagine you were considering using Atticare, a home cleaning company in New Jersey, or JCA Mechanical Plumbing & Heating in New York City, each of whom were the subject of private messages through Yelp offering money or gift cards in exchange for reviews on Yelp. Or if you decided to buy a car from Hooman Nissan in Long Beach, CA, where an employee was caught sending messages to Yelp users offering Clippers tickets in exchange for a 5-star review and even requested including his name in each review. In Las Vegas, Yelp’s detective team found that more than 50 reviews for towing company AAA Anytime INC came from the same IP address, indicating that someone may have been trying to goose their rating. And what’s worse, this is the third time we have warned this particular company about their behavior with a Consumer Alert. Those 50+ new reviews have been submitted since their last alert in February of this year.

    If nothing else, this seems to suggest that Consumer Alerts do little to deter businesses from engaging in this kind of behavior. Yelp said itself that this was the third time one business was slapped with an Alert, and that it found over 50 new questionable reviews just since February. It might, however, deter businesses from using Yelp’s messaging to try to get fake reviews.

    Here’s one of those “private” messages Yelp shared on its blog:

     

     

    “These businesses may actually be providing great products and services, but that’s really what their Yelp rating should be based on, not fake reviews,” writes Yelp’s Rachel Walker. “That’s why Yelp goes to such lengths to protect consumers from this behavior in the first place and inform them of it as well. The good news is that Yelp’s team caught this behavior. We just think consumers have the right to know what’s happening behind the scenes when deciding what businesses to patronize.”

    Interestingly, Union Street Guest House managed to escape any consumer alerts in this round. As you may recall, last month the hotel came under fire after it was discovered that it had a policy to charge wedding parties for any negative reviews left by guests in attendance.

    A Yelp spokesperson told WebProNews at the time, “For 10 years, Yelp has existed as a platform to alert consumers of bad business behavior such as this.”

    To our knowledge the hotel’s Yelp page has never carried one of Yelp’s official consumer alerts, though Yelp did remove a number of negative reviews that were left by people who learned about the hotel’s policy and retaliated. There are still plenty of negative reviews on the hotel’s page, including those mentioning the controversial policy. One even makes a point to say in the review that they’re using a 2nd Yelp account to leave the comments.

    Do you believe Yelp holds positive reviews hostage to get businesses to advertise? Do you believe they misled shareholders about review legitimacy? Share your thoughts in the comments.

    Image via Yelp (Flickr)

  • Yelp Busts Businesses By Using Their ‘Private’ Messages As Evidence Of Fake Reviews

    Yelp announced that it has released another round of Consumer Alerts on business pages. This time they’re dishing out a total of sixty-one alerts for businesses including dentists, hairdressers, plumbers, and car dealers.

    This time, Yelp reveals that it busted some businesses bribing reviewers through messaging on Yelp itself:

    For example, imagine you were considering using Atticare, a home cleaning company in New Jersey, or JCA Mechanical Plumbing & Heating in New York City, each of whom were the subject of private messages through Yelp offering money or gift cards in exchange for reviews on Yelp. Or if you decided to buy a car from Hooman Nissan in Long Beach, CA, where an employee was caught sending messages to Yelp users offering Clippers tickets in exchange for a 5-star review and even requested including his name in each review. In Las Vegas, Yelp’s detective team found that more than 50 reviews for towing company AAA Anytime INC came from the same IP address, indicating that someone may have been trying to goose their rating. And what’s worse, this is the third time we have warned this particular company about their behavior with a Consumer Alert. Those 50+ new reviews have been submitted since their last alert in February of this year.

    Well, if nothing else, this seems to suggest that Consumer Alerts do little to deter businesses from engaging in this kind of behavior. Yelp said itself that this was the third time one business was slapped with an Alert, and that it found over 50 new questionable reviews just since February. It might, however, deter businesses from using Yelp’s messaging to try to get fake reviews.

    Here’s one of those “private” messages Yelp shared on its blog:

    “These businesses may actually be providing great products and services, but that’s really what their Yelp rating should be based on, not fake reviews,” writes Yelp’s Rachel Walker. That’s why Yelp goes to such lengths to protect consumers from this behavior in the first place and inform them of it as well. The good news is that Yelp’s team caught this behavior. We just think consumers have the right to know what’s happening behind the scenes when deciding what businesses to patronize.”

    Interestingly, Union Street Guest House managed to escape any consumer alerts in this round. As you may recall, last month the hotel came under fire after it was discovered that it had a policy to charge wedding parties for any negative reviews left by guests in attendance.

    A Yelp spokesperson told WebProNews at the time, “For 10 years, Yelp has existed as a platform to alert consumers of bad business behavior such as this.”

    To our knowledge the hotel’s Yelp page has never carried one of Yelp’s official consumer alerts, though Yelp did remove a number of negative reviews that were left by people who learned about the hotel’s policy and retaliated. There are still plenty of negative reviews on the hotel’s page, including those mentioning the controversial policy. One even makes a point to say in the review that they’re using a 2nd Yelp account to leave the comments. It does appear that Yelp removed the five-star review left by Adolph Hitler.

    The company has been celebrating its ten-year anniversary all summer. Last month, Yelp entered its 28th country – Chile. In its latest earnings release, it revealed that it had become profitable for the first time since going public. The company is facing a class action lawsuit from shareholders who claim it was misleading about reviews. Research shows that people in general are trusting online reviews more than ever.

    Image via Yelp

  • Yelp Enters Chile, Its 28th Country

    Yelp Enters Chile, Its 28th Country

    Yelp announced that it has now penetrated its 28th country – Chile.

    “The distance from Yelp’s office in Manhattan to our headquarters in San Francisco is 2,600 miles, which happens to be —from toe to tip — the same length as the newest country to join Yelp!” said Miriam Warren, VP of New Markets at Yelp. “It’s the home to some 17 million people, countless penguins, and the world’s largest swimming pool.”

    “This South American country may be svelte, but it’s actually twice the size of Germany by landmass,” she added. “Not only do they boast the world’s longest mountain range, The Andes, Chile also administers Easter Island and has claims in Antarctica: adding tropical and frozen tundra to their diverse palette of climates.”

    Yelp is starting its foray into Chile with Santiago, the country’s capital and largest city, which hosts over a third of the nation’s population. Yelp says it has “seven million soon-to-be-Yelpers.”

    Yelp’s Chile destination can be found at Yelp.cl or with the mobile apps.

    Yelp recently announced its first quarter of profitability since going public in 2012. Cumulative reviews grew 44% year-over-year to 61 million while average unique monthly visitors grew 27% to 138 million. Average monthly mobile unique visitors grew 51% to 68 million. Active local business accounts grew 55% to 79.9 thousand.

    The company has also been celebrating its ten-year anniversary. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman blogged about the journey, sharing a bunch of stats in an infographic.

    Before expanding into Chile, Yelp most recently entered Argentina. Before that it was Japan and Mexico.

    According to Stoppelman, Japan led iOS app downloads last quarter.

    Image via Yelp