Yelp - The Biggest Fraud Being Committed to Consumers
Today, the online reputation of businesses is essential to the success or failure of one. Online reviews are critical to business’ images and depending on the review source, it may not be easily edited or removed – forever. Business owners should carefully evaluate all online review sites that potentially host reviews. You can find more types of these sites later in the article. The most popular consumer review site today is Yelp.com.
I host and help run several business websites that use Yelp for reviews. This article will discuss the process of claiming a Yelp business page and the criticism-surrounding Yelp as a review business.
In order to gain access to Yelp business tools, you must verify the business you’re representing by “claiming” or “unlocking” the Yelp business page.
Claiming a business usually means it hasn’t been managed by someone on Yelp before. Claiming will involve verification, such as an automated phone call to the business number on file in the Yelp listing or an email verification matching the domain name of the business website. Verification is instantaneous (Yelp won’t make this hard!).
Unlocking a business means the business has already been claimed. In order to manage the Yelp business page, it must be “unlocked”. There’s several ways Yelp can help do this for you, but generally you must provide tax documents or proof of address ownership. This process can be lengthy since you’re actually dealing with a Yelp human (I think).
The Yelp for Business Owners page allows you to manage reviews, create sponsored ads, manage photos, menus, respond to personal messages, edit business listing information, and more. You can see statistics such as visitors and their demographics being led your website link (if you have one added).
So this is great - as it seems – a simple storefront users can leave reviews of their experiences with your business and have them all easily be managed by a 3rd party in which you can login into and respond on behalf of. Right? Let’s break it down.
Why? Did you have the option of submitting your business to Yelp? Yes, you did. However, Yelp is ALWAYS finding out about new businesses and submitting them manually into their website without anyone’s consent.
So, I want to remove my business from Yelp whether I submitted it or I didn’t. Here’s what Yelp says:
It’s not an answer and it’s not a choice. Your business will stay with Yelp.
Ok, so I want to/hopefully get great reviews so I have that 5-star average in Google’s search, since my Yelp page is now showing right under my website in Google search (or as a top search result in some cases).
The bottom line is anyone can review your business, whether you’ve provided him or her services or not. Fact - I can review a business as “Joe Blow”, give a a one-star review, discuss why I was displeased, and post. Only reason why I posted this review because I know the owner of the business and I don’t like him, so screw him. My review get’s published immediately (because I’m already an active and reputable Yelper) and I saw the business overall star ratings drop a half star! Yes!
As the owner of the Yelp business page, I get notified via email of the review. I don’t recall the services I provided this person; however I’m going to do 2 things off the bat in effort to get them to change their review – make a public comment apologizing and private messaging the user to understand better when/where/what/why. After I did this and waited a week, they never reply back and the review still stands on my page.
Now, I’m going to submit the review as false information. And as soon as I flag the review as such I get stuck with this message from Yelp:
Wow. So the review must stand per Yelp. Not factual, not honest, bad business. Period. A WASTE of my time and effort.
So I’m a small business that does a few projects each month. Maybe once in a few months someone will write me a review. For now, this 1-star review will saturate my business’ rating per Yelp in online searches, such as a Google. Searching my business online, particularly in the worlds most used search engine Google will reveal my business is 1 star per Yelp. This is the 2nd search result displayed by Google. This is NOT accurate!
Reviews that are not currently recommended
At the bottom of every Yelp business page are reviews that are hidden and filtered from the overall star rating. These reviews Yelp considers manipulated in some way thus making them inaccurate. So why keep them filtered for Yelper’s to voluntarily read about and learn fake information regarding or why not remove them? I don’t know.
I had 2 5-star reviews filtered for 4 months. The reviewer’s icons showed that they purchased my business “yelp deal” and checked into my establishment! But these reviews must be fake right!?
How Yelp makes its money?
Yelp Ads
A scheming way Yelp makes it’s money is through it’s ad’s program. Usually, as soon as you signup your business on Yelp you’ll be contacted by a troll to “advertise” with Yelp. They will offer you up to $1000 in free advertising.
So you start an ad campaign, which is very simple and unwelcoming. Within the ad you are not even able to set a picture of your business. You review your “ad” performance and you’re getting impressions and clicks. How the hell do you know that? Just by Yelp’s performance report? There’s no way to validate the Yelp ads scheme. Yelp is eating your money.
Google AdSense / Advertisement Space
I’m pretty sure Yelp is excited when it comes to their Google AdSense contract. They put the maximum 3 ads on every single page of Yelp. If your business doesn’t have a website but has Yelp page, Yelp is the first hit in Google search results (likely the result of Yelp’s contract with Google). Yelp is making money off your business by customers going to your Yelp page and generating ad impressions and clicks. You’ll never know how much they’re making either. Did you consent to them putting advertisements next to the product you feature?
From the article below, Yelp is the 35th most visited website in the US. That’s a lot of ad impressions/clicks. Good job US businesses!
Simple Overhead
I don’t know specifics on Yelp, but they don’t need/have an office. They have petty sales people (probably hourly wagers) that email/call you to follow up on how they can enhance your online presence with Yelp Advertising. They don’t have a mailing address. There is one number to reach them at and 9 times out of 10 you can’t get through or get an automated response. Yelp lives in some data centers probably totaling hardware value under 50k.
Google ranking/page ranking/backlinks
Yelp’s most important strategy is its SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I’m not sure how it aligns specifically, but Yelp must have some policy with Google that allows them to always be first or second in search terms for businesses.
Review websites open the door for unlimited backlinks too. A backlink is a link to another website from another website. So, all the Yelp reviews accumulating create more search terms for your business on Yelp’s page. Those search terms get indexed with Google. Eventually, your website might get equally or more traffic to your Yelp page – that’s bad business.
Yelp Support Contact Story
When I first began managing Yelp business pages, I carefully evaluated every review I was written. I had over 300 reviews left for one of my businesses and I read them all. 21 reviews were advertising another business, falsely accusing, using bad language/swearing, reviews that did not mention any part of the business, or review naming someone. All of these types of reviews “violate” Yelp’s guidelines.
I submitted 21 Yelp support requests. It took me about 3 hours to submit them and write my claim. Yelp responded within 1 day and refused to remove any of the reviews. I contacted my “Yelp account representative” on this and their response was:
“Thank you for your email.
Please note that, because we're on the advertising side, we don't have manual control over any reviews. In this case, there are two possible solutions I'd recommend.
First, you can always create a public comment to the review you see on your listing. In this situation, it's a good idea to make a public message that lets your potential customers understand that you're not associated with those reviewers.
Second, you can submit that review to our user-support team, who can see if it violates our terms of use and potentially remove it. I'll leave the steps to contact them below:”
Automated response garbage. I would love to share the support request’s number and name of representative.
In summary, it’s important to recognize Yelp’s ultimate goal in representing your business. Yelp is making money off your business and you can’t tell them to stop. You don’t need Yelp to manage your own business reviews. Yelp will continue to saturate the Internet with its offerings; using it’s reviews keywords that Google will index, virtually making the Yelp reviews indestructible from the Internet. This article is for awareness and to rise up against a money scam greedy machine, Yelp.com
Comments 32
Have to agree. After reading baffling review collections saying nothing but favorable things about restaurants that are CLEARLY awful (but well connected and established), I began looking at the 'not recommended' reviews at the bottom. Almost all are well crafted and clearly valid reviews, but buried because they were negative. Yes, Yelp is a scam.
When I was on Yelp Paid services, my business 1Up Pack and ship , in spencer MA was a 4.5 star. When I could not afford the $450 a month and canceled, my rating dropped to 1.5 stars. Yelp moved all of my good feedback to the “not recommend " section and the negatives in the counted section. Yelp claims that switching from paid account to a non-paid account has nothing to do with my rating,
Yelp allows a new person to create a new yelp account, post one bad feedback, and never use yelp again. The bad review will stick , however, if a new customer signs up for yelp and posts a 4 or 5-star review they are placed in the "not recommend section" when I asked Yelp about this, they said they do not have enough information about the yelper. This double standard is a joke, how they allow a person to create a brand new account, the brand new account leaves a bad review, and never use yelp again; Yelp can not or will not see that as fake. Yelp WANTS terrible feedbacks, that gets small businesses to sign up for their paid services.
Yelp rating with the BBB is a C-
Yes there is something wrong with Yelp because the requiter text me and brief me about the job and her name is Farah and after that she pass me to the editor but there is something fishy because the requiter explanation is different than the editor explanation the requiter say I will get my payment for every review I made and the editor say I have to do 3 review before get my payment. Why it so different they work should be connected why it so different it not make sense. so to be safe my suggestion to you don't do if the job come from this company because it show there is something wrong with the company. Be careful
Yes, I agree 100% with you. Yelp are scammers.
- there is no customer service to close your account
- they are not able to process credit card. Then they did after 2 weeks when I already forget about any advertising
- they send leads, but when you try to open the lead you get error message to try it later, so you can open 3 out of 10 but those you contact never reply. So they must be fake.
- when I was not able to close my account I put stop payment on my credit card. But they are still demanding $630 from me threatening me with collection agency. Big scammers!!!! Somebody needs to stop them from scamming people.
Hi, thank you for the article. Very helpful and so true.
The company I am working with provides amazing service and we work hard as staff and yelp has been a pain as many of our customers leave positive reviews on yelp, they take screenshots and show us too but yelp dont show any of them. It only shows 2 negative review left years ago on this business and hide all other reviews.
We tried to complaint or contact them but no information. All they want business is to pay them good money like bribe so they can reflect good image of business.
Yelp is a big Scam and Fraud and I am surprised there is no way to get rid of such a big fraud review website.
Please if anyone knows where to complaint about this fraud company, can you please let me know by email on kimagic2621@yahoo.co.uk as I have so many screenshots of our customers with positive reviews and lot of proof to prove Yelp fraud.
Thank you for taking the time to the part of the solution. This yelp company is beyond belief. They had someone post something on me and they made me join yelp to submit a complaint (where nothing happened). Then literally hours later they called me to 'upgrade'. Also the person who submit this initial statement that provoked my call to yelp, has never met me and said I listed a house - made a bunch of promises took their money and never sold my house. It's impossible to get paid to sell someone's house unless it sells. Then you get paid from escrow. And I have never met this person - so clearly I couldn't have made promises or received money. There is so much wrong with the statement that person made that they should be banned. But if you look at their account, it's filled with bogus comments that merchants and service industry and calling out. I honestly think this person works for yelp or her provider does.
Yelp is the absolute biggest POS company. I had dozens of 5 star reviews. All of which said there are not recommended. And charged me almost $1000 for a month with 7 whole clicks. Lmao. When I caught them in over charging me. They killed all my reviews. What a shit company.
A YELP sales rep named Brian Oleesky out of New York contacted me and sold me advertising, dropped the ball and never finished showing me how to operate the system and how to contact leads! It sure didn't stop them from charging me hundreds of dollars after not even seeing one real lead. I E-Mailed YELP and called them while proving that Brian Oleesky never contacted me back to show me how to operate the lead system and they REFUSED TO REFUND ME AFTER PROVING THAT THEY RIPPED ME OFF! Stay away from doing business with YELP! They are CROOKS!
I have been in business for over almost 17 years and the only review that yelp will post is a negative review from years ago. Our clients have said for years they have tried posting reviews describing their positive experience but they are not posting them. Only this old review from 2010. I called and ask if I could speak to someone regarding this issue and was told that there is nothing that I can do about it. I asked to speak to someone in legal as I feel there is no other recourse than to seek counsel and "Justin" with Yelp said if I was planning to sue then he would have to end the call. Which he did. I am not done with them yet!
WILLIAM:
WHAT A BAD EXPERIENCE I'M GOIN THRU WITH YELP, A MEMBER OF YELP CALL OUR OFFICE AND I SPOKE WITH HIM, HE WENT LIKE RACE CAR EXPLAINING THOUSAND OF SERVICES AND PRIVILEGES JUST BY SINGING WITH BIZ.YELP.COM, HE WAS VERY CLEAR THAT THERE WAS NOT INVOLVE ANY CHARGES WHATSOEVER, HE EXPLAINED THAT THE CARD WAS ONLY TO VALIDATE THE ACCOUNT AND I WAS GIVEN $900 CREDIT FOR ADDS, HE ALSO TOLD ME THAT HE WILL CALL ME TO EXPLAIN IN MORE DETAIL AND SUCH A CALL NEVER HAPPEN. I WENT TO SEE MY BUSINESS AND NOTHING HAD BEEN POSTED SO SINCE I HAD AN AGREEMENT TO PUT ADDS I PUT MY ADDRESS AND WITH OUT ANY EXPLANATION I WAS CHARGED $5 DOLLARS FOR CLICKS TOTALING $670 IN A MONTH, I CALLED CUSTOMER SERVICE AND THEY CARE LESS, THEY SAID THAT WITH MY EMAIL I HAD SIGNED THE CONTRACT, I NEVER KNEW THAT, THEY ARE DOING SALES WITH THE INNOCENCE OF THE PUBLIC. NO REIMBURSEMENTS, NO CREDITS. THEY ARE CRUDE YELP STEAL YOUR MONEY AND THEY ARE BACK UP WITH SOPHISTICATED CONTRACTS, THE ONLY SOLUTION IS TO CANCEL BUT THEY KEEP THE MONEY, HOW COME THE COURTS ALLOW THIS TYPE OF A SCAM
Very proper advice lisa!
I did a search on google not expecting so many people to be saying the same things pertaining to yelp. But I knew it wasn't going to just be me (I'm one of the lucky ones, too poor to give them money in the first place";-) If the court systems were not able to edit their google reviews so fiercely they might be the only entities to one-up yelp in hilarity. I find yelp totally repulsive and here's only a couple of the reasons why: Having only moved to this location 5 years ago, already I have over 27 or 28 5-star reviews on google. My service to the community has other 5 star reviews on the lesser-known review sites also. In fact, other than the 5-star reviews, there exists only one less-than-five star (it's a 3-star). This might not seem like much but again, I'm retired, and living out my last years in an area that is not remotely conducive to my field. Even yelp has 4qty 5-star reviews of me, but they are holding them hostage (for about the last year).
And although yelp sucked me into signing up for their over-capitalizing "service" racket. *Just to correct the erroneous phone number they simply seem reluctant to want to correct, and photos from 2013 that they refuse to take down which propagate erroneous information (phone number), still after jumping through the sign-up manipulation has availed nothing. So I posted a new photo with words that were screenshotted into a png file and uploaded to yelp. The photo basically asks anyone that finds me in yelp to please GO AWAY (to somewhere less ... manipulative). Lucky for me, I'm old and retired (and not easily extorted beyond my means).
The following is hard proof that bad business is what has toppled our under-published (***critical link censored from the public consideration, thanks trustpilot for keeping us in the dark), and if the business of government is business....then the two have morphed into fail.
We need to produce better systems (or something), quick. How can we not feel sorry for the younger generations that will become the future cash-cow and made unwitting victims? By doing nothing, we are the problem added to the problem (you bet your bottom dollar I'm starting a website that will be published soon concerning the yelp racket)....coming soon with PLENTY of recorded conversations and screenshots so nobody has to take my word for anything. So don't count me in on giving tacit acquiescence to bad business, if we have to answer to our time here, there might be only three hours left before we meet our maker!
*(i.e. act quick to leave this place in the best possible condition).
I gave a company a neutral review to be more specif it was a Delta Sonic carwash in amherst ny. I stated after purchasing their unlimited plan which is a great deal on the surface. But the lines are 30 to 45 minuets long It was removed by yelp but it shows up if you log in making you think its posted . Nice little trick by yelp. Somebody at Yelp got paid to remove it.All i did was state the real truth about this so called great deal by delta sonic.Yelp is a fraud
Just stay away from Yelp. Don't check your reviews, don't log on, don't talk to their ad reps. Stay away from them because every time you go to their site, you increase their presence on the internet, so you are basically "feeding the monster". Why do you think they tell you to "respond on line" to a negative review? It gets you to go to their site, increasing their cyber footprint. Tell your clients how bad Yelp is, and pass articles like this one on o your social media accounts so everyone knows.
Ugh, sadly everything you write is so true they are the WORST! Total SCAM. I was forced onto their site because of a bad review by a psycho ex-tenant and so then they lured me in with an offer for 3 free months (I think it was?) and how great their ads would be for my biz.
Then....nothing, after calling me like every week for years, now nothing. I stupidly forgot about it and then silently they start taking $300./ a month for their "services". No emails or calls checking in or whatever. I called to complain and of course end my "campaign" with them and the dolt on the phone showed me all the clicks I got. Yeah! for $300.- a month I'm sure you can get a 14 y.o. in the Philippines to click his mouse like 35,000 times! Luckily they only got me for one month but it still sucks. I know it was technically my fault but it just feels so slimy, and of course like others have said they just hung up on me. To anyone who reads this do not pay for their services, you will regret it. I would even say, don't empower their biz with reviews, they just go to leverage the rest of their scam.
They've been calling us OVER AND OVER and I keep saying no. Finally I said to please take me off your list and hung up. The guy CALLED BACK TO GRILL ME ABOUT WHY. Are you fucking serious? I don't have to answer shit - i blocked the number. Im just waiting for the inevitable backlash where they hide our positive reviews. Luckily we are in a small town and nobody really uses Yelp, especially for a business like ours (we are almost all word of mouth/families coming in)
Yelp is an absolute scam and they do NOT care. As a brand new business, I tried some of their "free" ads. It is a scam. I was charged for all of the ads and then some and when I called them to reason with them and find out what "services" the charges reflected I was hung up on, I was told there was no one who cared and that I would never get my money back (( a Yelp rep literally said that to me )) -- Not only is is a scam but they have the worst customer service of any company I've ever dealt with. Awful experience. Don't do it.
Check Out YelpIsAScam.Com
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I am a business owner and YELP created my company and it took me a year to claim it! Now that I have claimed my company they (YELP) will only allow NEGATIVES reviews on my site. I now have to pay for review software to have the positive reviews post. They keep saying the positive reviews are inappropriate. I must have 20 or more positive reviews that Yelp simply will not let them post.
I found a way to get around their game and I changed all my content to something else so the negative reviews make no sense.
I then go back into my account for Yelp and say the Negative reviews having nothing to do with my content.
Yes, Yelp advertising is 100% a scam. I ripped the customer service rep a new one since it's so overpriced, and she offered to waive my early termination fee and cancel my ads program. Escape while you can, and if one of them calls you and tries to convince you to sign up for their ads program, tell them to stuff it.
Total SCAM- Im glad- I never fell into the scum- they listed my business from when i was on GROUPON (Which is an awesome company).
I didn't need any extra marketing! LOL, their trolls contacted me multiple times to try to sell me on advertising- I told them I was part of an association that runs my marketing budget and Yelp is not an approved venue... LOL they kept calling me >>> LOL it was comical I got so much marketing exposure from GROUPON I didn't care ...
So Yelp then listed my website and phone number - I was furious ( I told them I didnt want to be on their site!)
So two can play at that game- I posted a Link on my site for folks who come there from Yelp. the link took them to a page that talks about the scam YELP is & how they are robbing small businesses-
I did the same thing with my phone number having an extension just for yelp that slams yelp again lol.
I then took my game to the next level! I had my tech guys program the phone tree with the yelp marketing folks phone numbers into caller ID Redirect ( the phone tree would redirect only if the phone number matched ! brilliant...... this way only yelp was blocked LOL it had their calls sent to India telemarketing company :> )
then my tech guy said if we need to we can do a URL block! this way any links from YELP would be redirected to some other website- So I redirected them to a web page that slammed YELP! LOL
they stopped calling me - I haven't heard from them in 1yr....