Yelp has been very powerful in quite a few industries, with it bringing in 40+ million reviews for businesses, it has made a dramatic impact when it comes to reputation management and how one may see the company without knowing or experiencing them first hand. For example when you go buy an expensive product, you usually conduct some kind of research. A company can praise their product up and down but you don’t go by that do you? You go off of what other people have experienced through product review. which has positive outcomes as well as negative outcomes. Through terms of “Black hat” methods Yelp has been used as a tool to crush businesses through negative reviews and could basically be considered as an act of war amongst companies. On the other side of things Yelp has been used for the complete opposite and can grow a business’s reputation by conducting positive reviews. Both avenues have brought in paid reviews to try and manipulate how a company is seen.
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman is no fool though and this is obviously no secret to him. He has been organizing sting operations by sending people undercover as one of these “Paid Reviewers” to determine
which business
Written By: Zack Rivera – Marketing Coordinator