Yelp Taking Extra Steps to Combat Bad Reviews
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Scott Eells/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) — The online business-rating service Yelp is taking new measures to ensure the quality of users’ reviews.
The company says it will now alert users if it suspects a business has tried to solicit fake or misleading reviews.
Jeff Macke of Yahoo! Finance says it’s Yelp’s attempt to “maintain the integrity of their site.”
“Restaurants make more of a push to get their customers to make those reviews,” Macke said.
“Sometimes they’re pushing their surveys on you,” he said, using restaurants as an example. “If they’re pushing their surveys on you, you’re going to get inflated scores.”
While Yelp already filters what they suspect are fake reviews, the alerts will add an extra layer of scrutiny. The San Francisco-based company says alerts will stay on a business’ page for 90 days. If it finds continuing efforts to post fake reviews, the alert will remain in place for a longer period.
“Yelp’s in the business of providing reviews and those are only as good as the people who are contributing them,” Macke said.
Yelp has more than 78 million monthly users.
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