For many small businesses, Yelp — a well-known online recommendation search engine — represents a path to success. After all, according to Yelp, over 20M people accessed their site in the past 30 days (as of February 2009).
Presumably, for the most part consumers are visiting Yelp for the reviews – or maybe it is just a way for them to discover the latest and tune in on the buzz.
Whatever…
Here’s how Yelp works: reviews of local businesses, based on a 5 Star rating system, come from pretty much ANYONE who registers and has an opinion. Business categories include restaurants, shopping, doctors, beauty and spas, plumbers, accountants, attorneys and much more.
Well, maybe it’s just me, but I am really having a problem with the concept of uncontrolled consumer reviews overall. Asking 50 knuckleheads to help me decide about a restaurant, plumber or doctor just doesn’t seem like the way to go. And, who knows how many of those 50 aren’t related to the business owner anyhow?
So, are we now in the era where vox populi rules? I sure hope not… isn’t there a middle ground? As much as the restaurant critics and music reviewers were occasionally annoying (to me, anyhow) they at least had some expertise, standards, evaluation criteria and the like.
Not to mention some consideration that what they said could affect some soul’s livelihood.
Now everyone’s a critic – but really, would you care what many of them have to say? Apparently a lot do. Here’s some Yelp propaganda:
Yelp is so influential that businesses are justifiably concerned about how they come across on the site. Business owners can “claim” their business and create a profile with useful information, post special offers, make announcements and advertise.
Just a short visit to the site points out the dilemma for businesses – some of the reviews are pretty snarky and mean-spirited; the businesses are at the mercy of these largely uncontrolled reviewers. The other day I spoke with a company that has ample reason to believe their competitors are posting negative reviews — yet another unchecked problem.
THE RHUBARB: Yelp is now getting their own reviews from business owners – and they aren’t very flattering. They stand accused by a growing number of businesses that have negative reviews of attempting to extort them into buying advertising packages to “mitigate” their negative review problem. Yelp, of course, vehemently denies this.
What do I think? Well, it doesn’t make sense that Yelp would do that. After all, their entire business model is based on people coming to their site to get the “true scoop” from other consumers.
Trust is a Critical Success Factor for Yelp. Contaminating that trust is a bit like killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg. Yet we’ve all witnessed examples of business behavior recently that seems at odds with common sense… no?
There are other issues business owners’ have with Yelp such as their refusal to remove factually inaccurate negative reviews.
Do I use Yelp? Yep. I use it personally AND professionally.
I use it to discover new restaurants, businesses, events, etc. I do not use it for the reviews unless there are dozens or more that are all in one direction or the polar opposite.
If our clients have reputation problems or want to proactively improve their online reputation we consider Yelp’s free profile development and paid advertising as potential perception management tactics.
And, I use other recommendation search engines as well both personally and professionally. The Yelp Rhubarb is but one of many landmines. Stay tuned… online reputation management is a growing problem with no easy answers.
