I’m looking for any evidence you have that some of the reviews your business has received are “shill reviews”, is all, and what fees they’re asking you to pay for the removal of said reviews. Or, if you just have evidence somehow of them asking you to pay to remove reviews - anything will suffice. Just something to show that what you’re saying is factual, rather than hyperbole.
Wow. I just re-read. People not only pay for positive reviews (for their own restaurants), but they also pay for negative reviews (for their competitors)? I don’t know if this is really true, but if it is, then it is really nasty. Now, I know why you said it is very unethical.
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It’s true.
I, and some of my writers, were approached by another company to write positive and negative reviews (on Y*lp, Google, Lauri’s List, etc).
I was intrigued and met with one of the company’s representatives. He was rather forthcoming about it all: setting up dummy accounts, having a range of positive and negative reviews of different types of businesses, and once the accounts were established (a certain number of months) then we were supposed to start adding the fake reviews. It was fascinating and horrifying. And represented pretty much everything I’m against as a writer.
Of course we declined the offer to participate. I asked my writers to do so if they were privately approached, as well. They told me they would.
This wasn’t for restaurants - they were “representing” hotels, medical professionals, dry cleaners, dog sitters / groomers - a lot of Mom and Pop places and small businesses, from what I could tell.
Heck, my housecleaners offered me a reduced rate for a five star review.
And this is why I don’t trust those review sites.
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"“We want to get it right for the community,” says Susan Lundgren, a San Francisco-based spokeswoman. “We redesigned Chowhound to make it easier for both our long-term and new users to quickly find and discover the topics, resources, and conversations that are most important to them.” "
That is such BS. We should ask 10 Chowhound users to look up information using the old format design and the new format, and see which works out better.
In all honesty, I am not mad at Chowhound unlike many, and I don’t even blame them for not listening to all the comments from the community. However, I do seriously question if they (the team which redesigned the new format) actually have used their own products. If they have, then how can they possible come to this conclusion? First rule of thumb, uses the damn design and see if it is actually better and faster.
The loading speed was slower, and that is a hard fact. It has nothing to do with who is used to what and who is resistant to change. The pure fact is that it loads slower. So how is that alone an improvement?
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In general, I pay attention most to 3 out of 5 star reviews; too high to be competitive slams and too low, and pointing out flaws to be shills. It has worked for me extremely well on sites like amazon, with hundreds or thousands of reviews, often, and in general.
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The good thing is that I don’t know who the %^@< you are, and so I choose to give you the benefit of the doubt, rather than take offense. What possible reason could I have for making this $#|+ up, let alone being hyperbolic? Indeed, what have I ever said to you, or on this site, to make you think that I am exaggerating and/or lying? And, again, what makes you think Yelp is stupid enough to put things in writing?
See “Give Yourself 5 Stars? Online, It Might Cost You”, New York Times, originally published September 22, 2013.
Or look at the Internet Law Centre (UK) and their article “Is it illegal to fake online reviews?” and specifically this quote:
More recently a damaging research conducted by professors at Harvard Business School, resulted in an admission by YELP, one of the most popular review websites on the planet, that nearly 20% of the reviews posted on their site were likely to be fake.
From the Huffington Post and Reuters, see The Incredible Way New York Busted Fake Yelp Reviewers.
Check out “Fake It Till You Make It: Reputation, Competition, and Yelp Review Fraud”, a report co-written by Michael Luca of the Harvard Business School and Georgios Zervas of the Boston University Questrom School of Business.
The list goes on and on.
More to the point at hand . . .
“Yelp Lawsuits Allege Review Site Engaged In Extortion” (Huffington Post)
SAN FRANCISCO – Yelp, one of the most popular Web sites that let people post opinions about restaurants, shops and local services, is being sued by several small businesses that claim they’ve been pressured to advertise on the site in exchange for getting negative reviews squashed. . . .
Yelp has faced many complaints since it began letting consumers post reviews about local businesses ranging from all-you-can eat buffets to zip line operators six years ago. Often businesses have complained about how reviews on the site – positive or negative – can mysteriously disappear and reappear. (Article continues at length)
Yelp Class Action Lawsuit (techcrunch.com)
Two law firms, Beck & Lee from Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego, have filed a class action lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court alleging unfair business practices by local business review and rating website operator Yelp.
The plaintiff in the suit, a veterinary hospital in Long Beach, CA, is said to have requested that Yelp remove a negative review from the website, which was allegedly refused by the San Francisco startup, after which its sales representatives repeatedly contacted the hospital demanding payments of roughly $300 per month in exchange for hiding or deleting the review. (emphasis added) (Article continues)
And let’s not forget Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0 , East Bay Express, February 18, 2009(!)¹
The phone calls came almost daily. It started to get creepy.
“Hi, this is Mike from Yelp,” the voice would say. “You’ve had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You’ve had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those.”
This wasn’t your average sales pitch. At least, not the kind that John, an East Bay restaurateur, was used to. He was familiar with Yelp.com, the popular San Francisco-based web site in which any person can write a review about nearly any business. John’s restaurant has more than one hundred reviews, and averages a healthy 3.5-star rating. But when John asked Mike what he could do about his bad reviews, he recalls the sales rep responding: “We can move them. Well, for $299 a month.” John couldn’t believe what the guy was offering. It seemed wrong. (Article continues at length)
THIS is EXACTLY the sort of telephone calls we’ve received from Yelp!
It is important to remember exactly what I have said. I have never said that Yelp actually writes phony reviews. Indeed, I’m sure they don’t. But CLEARLY there are people and companies who do. And we have been talking/arguing/fighting with Yelp for a number of years in an attempt to remove negative reviews from so-called “customer” who were, in fact, never customers, AND to get them to publish reviews from people who were.
¹ This article won first place for in-depth, investigative reporting at both the 2010 East Bay Press Club’s Excellence in Print Journalism Contest and the 2010 Society of Professional Journalists awards.
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A) you seriously need to calm down.
B) Has Yelp lost any of those lawsuits?
C) all those phone calls to customers for extortion and not one has been recorded? Nor have any “extortionists” come forward and admitted what they did at yelp?
I’ll agree that it does seem highly likely that there’s some shenanigans going on with Yelp, but does anyone have concrete proof that they’re offering (or offered) to remove those reviews for a fee? Without taking the time to read through the articles you’ve cited (yet), it seems not. The stongest evidence of the shill review practice would seem to be Elise’ account - but that isn’t extortion from Yelp, that’s shady business practices by companies using yelp.
Are there any accounts from business that have said they’ve paid yelps’ fees, and have noticed a difference in their rating? There must be something - someone - anything?
Lastly, you hadnt provided any personal accounts or any details as to what they’d asked you - just exclaimed that they have done so, while providing few details, unlike what Elise has done - so, to me that was a more valid account. I wasn’t saying that you were lying or making things up, just suggesting that you need to provide more details than “yes, they did it to me” (at least if you’d wanted to come off as more credible, in my books).
The lawsuit wasn’t directly against Yelp, but they were ordered to take down the worst of the negativity in this particular case.
To be honest, this turned into a massive pissing contest (thus no reward, although the homeowner was found to be at fault) – but lawsuits over reviews DO happen, and the noose is tightening on the folks who write unustified and unproven bullshit for the sheer sake of obtaining free stuff or wrecking ratings.
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All- Please keep in mind that any direct allegations against Yelp should not be posted here as ‘proof’. That may be sensitive enough to involve the court of laws.
Please also keep in mind is that this site has no tolerance for shill reviews and posts of promotional nature. Because one, we don’t care about making money. Two, once we open up the site to any posts of promotional nature, no matter how innocuous the posts are initially, it just opens up a floodgate.
Lastly, this thread is straying far enough from the Boston Globe article. If the additional comments are not related to the Globe article, I am going to lock the thread.
Thanks.
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How strict is this rule? Because I like to promote HungryOnion. 
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You asked him to give you citations. Believe or not believie with his citations is one thing (which you freely has the right to do, and he may have given you crappy nonsense “proofs”. Go criticize him for that.). However, don’t ask him for citation, and then tell him to “seriously clam down”. That is just not fair.
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Was in reference to the swearing and aggression in his response. Read the top paragraph.
Oh I see. I agree if he cussed at you. However, do you mean the censored “%^@<” and “$#|+”? Maybe it is just me. Are these really that bad? (or maybe he cussed at you at a different sections and I missed it. In that case, I apologize for not noticing hem)
It would be like I wrote “What the heck do you want?” instead of “What the hell do you want?” If someone self-censored him/herself, then I won’t consider them swearing.
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Getting back to the main topic, what I don’t understand is what the CH owners want the site to become.
It was originally a discussion forum, where people talked about restaurants, and then home cooking. When it was acquired by CBSi, they bundled it with Chow - so there was the discussion side and the online magazine side (with them producing content for the latter).
This redesign has integrated the two, but I don’t understand how they’re expecting to keep the site fresh. It’s no longer intuitively a discussion forum and seems to discourage new posts (by the sheer number of steps required to post anything new). Were I to find the site via a search, I’d not know what to make of it.
And if they don’t have users posting new information (especially related to restaurants), then they can’t compete with Y*elp, TA, etc. So does it become like Ask.com or one of those how-to sites, where a search gives you a page that hasn’t been added to in years (Best recipe for asparagus? My dog licked the Thanksgiving turkey - can we eat it?!) but that’s okay because the answer doesn’t change over time? Do they hire people to write new feature pieces / columns / recipes?
Some basic changes would make the site relevant, competitive, and user-friendly: less steps to create a post, a default tag hierarchy (especially regionally), and a greater ability to customize according to user preference. But they also need to fix the coding and make the site usable with adaptive software.
I would love to know their actual intent for the site moving forward. Of course, they’re not going to share that.
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I don’t know neither. They are betting big for something.
No pain, no gain – but sometime you just get more pain.
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[/quote]I would love to know their actual intent for the site moving forward. Of course, they’re not going to share that.[/quote]
Lately I’ve been thinking that it doesn’t matter what their actual intent is. Some guy there, named Steve, has become the chief rose-colored-glasses poster, so all is good. 
BTW, does anyone know who he is? It’s almost like he’s on the payroll there.
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I am interested to know. Either they are geniuses and are doing things at a much higher level that we cannot comprehend, or they are idiots and are doing the stupid things that even an intern won’t dream of.
The funny thing is: it cannot be something in the middle.
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CH was probably an unprofitable pimple on an elephant’s butt in a large acquisition. CBS MGMT probably didn’t want to be bothered with it so they handed it to either an inexperienced freshman management team or a group of low performing employees who have relatives in high places (happens everyday). Either way an experienced professional MGMT team would not have treated long term members the way this group did.
The new team, clueless about the fabric of CH, comes up with a brilliant idea to turn it into a mass marketing site hoping to be the next foodie queen of the internet.
Truth be told, CBS probably didn’t give a crap until the new sites miserable failure starting hitting the papers with CBS’s name attached to it .
I like to criticize CBS too, but CBS must have paid a lot for this redesign, right? This wasn’t a small change. So someone at CBS must have at least try to take it seriously. If you think about it, their problem is not that they didn’t do enough. Their problem is that they did too much.
Many years ago I would have said yes to the high cost, today not so much. Everything today seems web driven & I am sure CBS has a special salaried division that does nothing but maintain & upgrade their internet driven services. I am amazed at how quickly & seemingly glitch free this Onion site went up and TTBOMK it was developed by volunteers.
They definitely did too much. Still think it was an attempt to create “The Foodie Queen” of the net and get recognition from the powers to be. When you think about it, in CH’s original format, its importance in terms of producing revenue was the equivalent of a hub cap to GM.
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