By: Jacquelyn Hoffman, The Daily Californian
As a quick follow up to our March 11th, 2010 post Yelp? Extortion!?! , Yelp has decided to make two critical changes to address recent complaints of how it handles reviews posted by its users who rank and review businesses. Specifically, (1) readers will now be able to click on a link to view reviews that Yelp filtered out, and (2) advertisers on its system will no longer be able to submit their favorite review at the top of the page.
These actions seek to minimize the perception among many business owners that Yelp does not provide a “level playing field” for its advertisers given the opaque nature of Yelp’s ranking and filtering process of reviews. Yelp is making it easier today for users to see which reviews have been removed from the site as well as working to better identify and remove the instances of suspicious reviews, such as those posted by a competitor or by individuals connected to a business.
However,  Yelp’s spam filter — although not perfect — will continue to sometimes remove legitimate reviews and rank reviews according to a confidential algorithm that takes into account not just posting date but user metrics like how active a reviewer is. But these primary changes, in concert with some other modifications, appear to be steps in the right direction. It is clear that Yelp is striving to eliminate what has been long perceived as support of an imperfect process that offers certain advertisers “special treatment”.  Hopefully, their actions should help the company recapture  some of its lost credibility and repair its perception among people like me.
Posted by Joshua on April 7, 2010 at 1:00 pm.
