A leading business reviews site has made some changes in order to fight charges that it plays favorites. Yelp's "favorite review" feature is now history, and Yelp will let users see the work its review filter is doing, as well.
To be clear: these adjustments weren't court-ordered, and Yelp isn't admitting any misconduct. On the Yelp Official Blog, Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp's CEO, explained that the changes are just "to reinforce that trust and make it even more clear that Yelp treats review content equally for all businesses, with no connection between advertising and reviews."
They do a good job of it, too. The benefit of removing the "favorite review" spots is fairly obvious, even if Yelp did make clear that they were associated with an advertising package.
As for the review filter aspect, this tweak will allow users to view precisely which reviews Yelp believes are less than authentic (whether they may have been written by a business's owner or a competitor).
Yelp should be a more trustworthy site for small business reviews thanks to the update, potentially turning the lawsuits against it into a PR win.
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Yelp Increases
Many business owners have complained that positive reviews would disappear from their store’s Yelp pages if they refused to advertise on Yelp, and negative reviews would mysteriously pop up instead.
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