YELP – JUST HOW “REAL” IS IT?

Customer review sites and word of mouth marketing pretty much go hand-in-hand, so when a colleague pointed out an article that discusses Yelp – the popular Web site based out of San Francisco – and the possibility of the review service not being as “honest” as one might think, we were pretty intrigued.

According to Kathleen Richards, the writer of “Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0″, many businesses have experienced a multitude of issues, including:

• Negative reviews being bumped up to the top
• Positive reviews being removed
• Negative reviews being created after a business passed on investing in Yelp advertising
• Business owners being offered the opportunity to pay to remove the negative reviews

Furthermore, the article referenced the fact that “Yelp pays some employees to write reviews of businesses that are solicited for advertising. And, in at least one documented instance, a business owner who refused to advertise subsequently received a negative review from a Yelp employee.”

Certainly, this is something we see as a problem as it completely undermines the integrity of consumer-generated reviews. If Yelp is allowing people to pay to remove their negative reviews or rearrange the order of the reviews, how can people trust what they are reading? And, more importantly, how ethical is it of Yelp to pay their employees to write a review and/or to tolerate employees that contribute negative reviews after not being able to sell advertising to a business?

While we only have read this in one article thus far, all it takes is one Google search of “disappearing Yelp reviews” to get a sense of the overall sentiment. Yelp responded to claims saying they have an automated algorithm, and that there is no human manipulation involved. But, how ironic is it that certain positive reviews disappear and some negative reviews appear after a business passes on or cancels their Yelp service?

We would like to know your thoughts – have any of you experienced these issues? And, how likely are you to value Yelp’s reviews the same way?

We would like an answer because WOM’s reputation depends on it, and quite frankly, all it takes is a few negative reviews to not trust them anymore. How ironic.