{"id":16264,"date":"2012-10-23T05:12:46","date_gmt":"2012-10-23T12:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/content26.com\/?p=16264"},"modified":"2017-02-21T15:14:57","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T23:14:57","slug":"businesses-buying-positive-yelp-reviews-get-branded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/987654321.space\/c26_dev\/blog\/businesses-buying-positive-yelp-reviews-get-branded\/","title":{"rendered":"Businesses Buying Positive Yelp Reviews Get Branded"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yelp<\/strong> slapped a scarlet letter on eight businesses recently–only, in this case, the A stood for Alert.<\/p>\n

Search Engine Land<\/strong> reports that Yelp’s ongoing quest for real, honest reviews has led them to add prominent consumer alerts on offending pages, complete with links to the incriminating correspondence.<\/a><\/p>\n

In response to ongoing<\/a> criticism<\/a> of their filtering practices, Yelp has discussed their methods<\/a> while being necessarily cagey about what will set off their filter. In their statement<\/a> about these consumer alerts, Yelp states that these notices will stay up for 90 days–so long as the review-shopping businesses don’t become repeat offenders.<\/p>\n

Yelp is in an odd place in the online economy. Other companies, such as Expedia<\/strong><\/a>, know their conversion rates are solidly tied to the trustworthiness of their reviews, making user-generated content a means to an end. Yelp’s product, however, is their audience, something that can only be fed and grown by curating a crop of reviews people can trust. So it makes sense that Yelp has gone on the offensive, scouring craigslist<\/strong> and other sources of freelancers to find companies fishing for paid reviews. With their recent partnership with Bing<\/strong><\/a> making Yelp the search engine’s go-to provider of useful, highly local content, they’re being put up against the likes of Zagat<\/strong> in the wake of its sale to Google<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Their veiled methods of choosing which reviews slip past their filter also touch on their history of unhappy would-be advertisers<\/a>, further complicating the issue. With the ways of cultivating and exploiting user-generated content constantly shifting, Yelp will continue to demonstrate the direction that reviews and their uses are taking as companies figure out how best to present a full, true account of whatever they’re selling–as well as the perils that come with exploring that frontier.<\/p>\n

Read more at searchengineland.com<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yelp slapped a scarlet letter on eight businesses recently–only, in this case, the A stood for Alert. Search Engine Land…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[789],"tags":[910,733,1412],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n