Working hand in hand with a plethora of small businesses on a daily basis I have heard both sides of the Yelp experience. There are business owners who swear by it, and business owners who swear AT it. Fact is there’s always been some questions regarding the way Yelp treats non-advertisers and how they handle the reviews posted for those businesses. Following a slew of recent complaints the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into Yelp’s practices early last year. A few days ago the FTC officially closed the investigation into Yelp’s business practices without taking action.
Yelp had this to say on its blog:
The FTC recently concluded a deep inquiry into our business practices and informed us that it will not be taking any action against Yelp. The FTC looked into our recommendation software, what we say to businesses about it, what our salespeople say about our advertising programs, and how we ensure that our employees are not able to manipulate the ratings and reviews that we display on our platform. After nearly a year of scrutiny, the FTC decided to close its investigation without taking further action. This marked the second time that the FTC had looked at our advertising practices and ended its inquiry without further action.
The folks at the FTC are not the only ones who have examined these issues. In fact, an independent study conducted by the Harvard Business School found that Yelp’s recommendation software “does not treat advertisers’ reviews in a manner different to non-advertisers’ reviews.”
Additionally, some businesses decided to test these claims in court and brought a number of legal cases against Yelp alleging that we played favorites with advertisers or harmed non-advertisers. None of these cases have been successful. Most recently, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the plaintiffs involved lacked facts to back up their claims.