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Yelp Fires Back, Defends Filtering Policy

by Amar Toor on March 19, 2010 at 05:30 PM

Under a barrage of accusations that it gives better reviews to companies that advertise on its site, Yelp has spoken out in staunch defense of its policies. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the review site has published a series of blog posts in which it denies any wrongdoing, and argues that many of the false allegations stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of how the site filters reviews to guard against tampering. Yelp has even gone so far as to put together a somewhat annoyingly pedantic animated video to explain how "remarkable" its filtering system is, and has engaged in numerous outreach projects in an attempt to make its case to small businesses.

So why do people "misunderstand" Yelp's filtering system? Because Yelp still refuses to explain how it actually works -- for fear of divulging proprietary information that opportunistic small businesses could then use to inflate their ratings. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman compares the dilemma to Google's Web site ranking system, telling the Wall Street Journal, "The more that they share with the world about how they specifically evaluate links on the Web, the more they make it easy for somebody that wants to rank number one to do so."

Yelp is in a bit of a conundrum; the only way for the site to put an end to this cycle would be to explain how the filter works, once and for all. In doing so, though, Yelp would risk opening up its system to a flood of manipulated reviews, all for the sake of placating a handful of contentious companies. With the Web site already facing three lawsuits, and a growing swell of criticism, you'd think Yelp would at least throw critics a bone, and explain itself in even the most general of terms. Unless Yelp comes up with something a bit more substantive, the end of these accusations will not come anytime soon. [From: WSJ]


Tags: advertising, business, controversy, ethics, filter, filtering, SmallBusiness, yelp

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