Yelp, the review site that provides us with "real people, real reviews" has received some media attention recently. And not the good kind. The San Fransisco based East Bay Express newspaper recently uncovered some unsavoury dealings on the part of Yelp, with the story being picked up by The Health 2.0 Blog and the Look and Taste Blog. It seems that Yelp sales staff are manipulating customer reviews on the site, so as to increase advertising revenue. Restauranteurs are being told that negative reviews can be removed or moved further down the list. All for a monthly fee of $299.
Of course review sites should work hard to monitor reviews and weed out any that are maliciously posted by competitors, but this type of manipulation on the part of Yelp totally undermines the community feel of the customer review site.
Incidentally, the San Francisco Chronicle recently ran a story about a legal case concerning Yelp. A chiropractor is sueing a former patient due to unfavourable reviews he posted on the site. We wait to see the outcome of this case and the effect it could have on the part that customer reviews can play online.
Nearly all consumer ‘rating’ type sites can be gamed.
I was involved with a startup for consumer/business ratings and a good portion of that was having algorithms to defeat it.