Yipping About Yelp

Yelp sales pitches: Two and a half stars? According to alternative weekly East Bay Express, the social networking site which lets people post opinions on restaurants, shops, and other businesses has made a few business owners queasy with sales pitches that offer to improve the placement of positive reviews. Allegedly, those owners complained that good reviews disappeared when they declined, and negative ones moved up.

The Los Angeles Times brought up questions earlier over "hardball sales tactics" and the "secret algorithm" that mixes up the order of reviews (they're not automatically chronological). Fast Company, which recently evaluated Yelp's role in the reputation economy, mentioned hearing "similar allegations." The Express piece though tosses in another new tidbit: paid Yelpers, usually labeled as as Scouts or Ambassadors, still in existence. (Businessweek brought this up back in 2006.)

Yelp is not one to keep quiet. CEO Jeremy "Big Papa" Stoppelman responded to coverage on a lawsuit. His latest response criticized the anonymous sources.

As for Yelp itself, the love is still there, even from Fast Company, which ranked it ninth in its most innovative Web 2.0 companies: "With 4 million user-submitted reviews of everything from corner cafes to dog groomers, Yelp can make or break local businesses nationwide." Sounds like three and a half stars.