You’ll always remember your first ~ How I got banned from Yelp
6 05 2009Posted by Robert @ 7:58 am
Yelp is Evil - Credit: East Bay Express
I joined Yelp weeks ago just to see what it was all about. I hadn’t really done anything with it until I was contacted by Crystal H. last week, who looks like a normal user but is actually staff for Yelp and has the title of new community manager for Yelp Vancouver.
She asked where all the great coffee places in Vancouver was and was dieing to know. So I told her about the coffee blog and how it wasn’t a money-making venture, but it was a site I was working on.
She checked out the blog, loved it and then told me she got a lot more traffic from Yelp then she ever did from Twitter.
I thought great, I will share my content with Yelp and get some reciprocal links to improve my authority on Yelp as a strong and competent reviewer and everyone will be happy.
I had heard some news about Yelp’s odd review removal policy back in February, but after reading the FAQ’s I though it might had seen the light.
In the two days I was actually posting by Yelp I added four new locations and out of the 16 places I had reviewed I also already had three Useful and one Cool rating on my reviews. Instant feedback that I was doing something right. I had added about 300 words to each review, photos, and star rating and then at the bottom a link to this blog.
I was told by Crystal H. that Yelp doesn’t really like posted links ( yet still allows users to submit them). I was also told I should really yelp about more then just coffee, (which is complete reversal to what she originally asked for) I was also told I should really put some Yelp Bling on my site to show where I have been on and what I have reviewed on Yelp.
Within 48 hours of being asked to submit my two years of cafe review knowledge I was banned from the site in an email from Sydney at Yelp HQ.
Hello,
I’m writing to let you know about our decision to close your account. Your user account was flagged by the Yelp community, and our support team has determined that your account has violated Yelp’s Terms of Service (http://www.yelp.ca/static?p=tos), specifically for using your account for commercial or promotional purposes.
While we don’t provide additional details about account closures, please know that we review every situation with great attention and take this matter very seriously.
Regards,
Sydney
Yelp User Support
I wasn’t given a warning, probation told to take down what they considered offending content, I was just not wanted around anymore and deleted from the system.
While I haven’t lost any sleep over this blogger Vancouver Eats agree that is just absolute BS. I will wear it with a badge of honour. It is the first social network I have ever been banned from, and yes, my parents are very proud…
But I am left with food for thought:
• Crystal H never gives a bad review about anything, thinks everything is great.
• Yelp wants you to put all its badges on my site and yet absolutely nothing in return.
• I saw very little transparency in the authority of reviews on Yelp, there could be hundreds of shills.
Will I ever return to Yelp if asked back? Nope… it was about as fair and balanced as Fox News during the Bush Administration.
But in my next post I will talk about how to do this properly and how to do it right, and why we’re adding Urban Spoon to our sites social network.
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[...] today. Apparently Yelp was a bit heavy handed with a local coffee blogger. According to an account on his blog he wasn’t treated particularly well by the user generated review site. I wasn’t given a [...]
[...] today. Apparently Yelp was a bit heavy handed with a local coffee blogger. According to an account on his blog he wasn’t treated particularly well by the user generated review site. I wasn’t given a [...]
[...] today. Apparently Yelp was a bit heavy handed with a local coffee blogger. According to an account on his blog he wasn’t treated particularly well by the user generated review site. I wasn’t given a [...]
Wait, these newfangled ginormo interwebs communities are really just typical corporations out to make a buck via exploitation? Who knew?
[...] But I here is story about How I got banned from the social rating system Yelp. I though you might find this article of some interest judging Yelp’s track record has been something close to resembling a train wreck. . . http://coffeevancouver.ca/2009/05/06/how-i-got-banned-from-yelp/ [...]
I always thought Yelp was the sound a dog makes when smacked with a two by four. Never had an account with them and and probably never will.
We would be happy to host all your reviews at PlanetEye. In fact, with a little Wordpress-plugin-magic you could enhance your posts with a map of the location of each coffee shop you review. BTW, we have our own resident coffee reviewer. Check him out: Dark Horse Espresso Bar review.
Thanks to all for the comments. It was important blog, but I just want to get back to writing about what this blog is all about the coffee!
Hello Coffee Aficionados this is Crystal H from Yelp.
First of all I want to say I’m very sorry for any confusion that may have occurred as a result of my interactions with Robert.
My profile page clearly indicates that I am an employee at Yelp – I am very sorry if this wasn’t clear to Robert. Part of my job is to reach out to new community members on Yelp and make them feel welcome. I was particularly intrigued with Robert’s wealth of knowledge about coffee and figured with a palate like that he probably had even more information to share with Yelpers and encouraged him to write more reviews.
Yelp is all about Real People writing Real Reviews so we encourage folks to put up a photo, use their real name, and stand behind their opinions. We also have a designated spot on everyone’s profile page where they can plug their personal blog and add some information about themselves.
In this case there was a link to the blog at the end of every-single-review and it ended up looking a bit spammy since Robert was using a fake name and did not have a photo. Some community members flagged the reviews so Customer Service reviewed the profile, and decided to delete the Coffee profile.
We agree that this action was a bit rash. And in the future all new users will be given a warning before we take the sever measure of deleting a profile. We are constantly learning from our mistakes so please accept our apologies on this one.
Robert: I know you said you wouldn’t come back to Yelp; and while I respect that decision, I want you to know that you are welcome back to the site at any time.
Feel free to email me at Vancouver@yelp.com if you have any questions or concerns.
Well thank you for responding Crystal. I’d just like to point out the name isn’t fake it is the name of the coffee blog. Again Yelp never said I had to use my real name. If I had to use my real name I most likely would have. . . .
I am a real person, I was posting real reviews.
Also is their any reason your IP address is coming from Palo Alto instead of Vancouver? I though you were based here?
But thank for responding. . . I really hope you guys change your ways. For the future of your employment and the future of the site. . .
[...] Excerpt from: You'll always remember your first ~ How I got banned from Yelp … [...]
Just want to chime in that I’ve known Robert for nine years and he is, indeed, a real person. And I would like to point out an interesting clause in Yelp’s own Terms of Service: “though you may opt instead to provide information that does not make you personally identifiable.” Hmmm. That means you don’t have to post your name. Or photo. Both would make you “personally identifiable.” Read Yelp’s TOR here: http://www.yelp.ca/static?p=tos
I’ve stayed away from Yelp ever since reading this article and hearing other accounts of their practises since then. They do seem to be the worst case large scale model of how to get users to create your content while treating them like they are mooching scum, when in reality it is you mooching off of them.
Dear Gregg,
Allow me to both agree with you and perhaps clarify your bottom line: They do seem to be model for getting users to create content while treating same users like mooching scum; when, in reality, it is they mooching off of the mooching scum. (Kind of like the parasite yelling “shark!)”
It’s a bit of a mouthful… I might be a little confused, which is whyI could never Twitter about this. But I could idly chat over the finer points while sipping a nice cappuccino. Perhaps a parasitical shark is a better relationship comparison. Enter the miraculous cookie-cutter shark! http://observationsofanerd.blogspot.com/2009/03/this-weeks-sci-fi-worthy-parasite_24.html
(Am I going to get my membership axed for posting a link here? Where are the rules of conduct? Governance? What are my rights? I want to know my rights… and they better not be low fat decafe rights. I hate those almost as much as I hate Nestle Red Packet Rights {just add water})!
Just to get this straight in my head: Crystal invited Robert to Yelp by citing it as a good resource for traffic building to his blog, and posting a link back to his blog in his reviews got him banned? If that’s how it played out, there’s more to fix than pre-deletion notification.
Hi Todd I was actually a member for about two weeks but had not posted anything before I was approached by Crystal to post. So yes I was a member, but yes posting a link back to my blog on my reviews did get me banned.
[...] is a follow up post to the massively popular yelp post I told you about yesterday. “I believe all of these community review sites and user-generated [...]
Forget them. Just growing pains. More importantly – Who blogs on coffee in LA? The latte pics make me thirsty!
Sadly I don’t know of any good coffee blogs in Los Angeles, but maybe check out Mark Prince’s Website.
http://www.coffeegeek.com
His site is much more international and you might find some LA coffee aficionado on their to help ya out.
Thanks for the comment on the Latte pix. . .
You might also check out http://www.nextstop.com/. We’ve got a start on some good content in Vancouver, and have a format that’s very suited to sharing recommendations for the best places (and linking back to your blog if you want).
You can see what Vancouver content we have already here. http://www.nextstop.com/location/QpzXvuSXpSk/vancouver/
Hi from LA. Yelp offers half-hearted apologies and nothing more. They talk about building community but would only like it if you built your community within yelp (ie discouraging outside links). Good luck in all your endeavors and I’m sure this incident will direct more traffic to your site then yelp ever will (only reason i’m on this site…)
I have been posting to Yelp for two+ years and I get almost zero traffic via my “profile” page on Yelp. Occasionally my blog reviews get linked via a message board and I get a little traffic there, but not much. So them saying you posting your reviews to yelp will get traffic to your site is a bit of a stretch. I too use urbanspoon more than I use yelp now.
Congrats on the success of your post Robert…after what you went through, it is well deserved.
Ps – urbanspoon all the way…we are number 7 in Vancouver and number 5 in Toronto and have had great response in terms of traffic.
[bad 60s flashback]FREE ROBERT!!![/bad 60s flashback]
Yelp is poorer for the loss. Telling the world where to find a good cup of coffee is among the noblest acts of which a person is capable. If you’re looking for an alberta reporter let me know. I loves the Java, and am mighty picky.
Robert, I hear you man. I was banned from Yelp last year (kevineats.yelp.com) for the same reason–linking. I do find it interesting that certain Yelpers are allowed to link back to their blogs, but then again, they’re Elites…
Here’s what I got from “Sydney” back on October 2008:
Hello, I’m writing to let you know about our decision to close your account. Your user account was flagged by the Yelp community, and our Customer Service team has determined that your account has violated Yelp’s Terms of Service (http://www.yelp.com/static?p=tos). Specifically, your reviews appear to be commercial and “spammy” because they contain irrelevant links.
We review every situation with detail and care and take account closure very seriously.
Regards,
Sydney
Yelp User Support
So, with the new “While we don’t provide additional details about account closures” clause, it looks like they’re being even less transparent now…
Yelp is really doing themselves a disservice. I left Yelp after posted a handful of really constructive reviews (mostly positive and helpful) that they chose to axe. I found out later than one restaurant didn’t like my review (an average rating) and paid to remove it! There was no bad language, slanderous comments, etc. They just didn’t want it posted – so much for freedom of speech, right.
Anyway, Yelp does not handle things with care and detail, they handle it with their wallets and political influence – too bad, they had a good thing going, originally.
Hey from LA! Thanks for the heads-up about urban spoon, just created an account there myself. I’m not all anti-yelp but it does seem like it’s becoming a slow-witted 100% social-networking site that lacks taste. Like a dinosaur. Needs to be converted into fuel, like real dinosaurs.
I’ll toast a Gibralter at intelli for you.
[...] the positive side of things I found in this article about a guy from Vancouver getting banned from yelp. In it he mentions a competing service to yelp [...]
Yelp also suppresses user reviews — but they don’t tell you about. They are VERY sneaky.
If you are logged into your account and look at business for which you have written a review, yours shows right on top under “Your Review.” So if it’s there, it MUST be shown to everyone? Wrong. There’s a chance that it’s not really shown to anyone bu YOU.
You cannot tell that your review has been suppressed unless you go to the site without logging in, search for that business and then manually search for your review.
They’ve done this to two of my reviews and I can’t figure out why. It’s not hearsay, I’m a customer. I’m not affiliated with the business, other than being a customer. Both reviews gave positive ratings and used decent English & grammar. I’ve only written 5 reviews, but all for different kinds of businesses: dentist, smog check station, pizza place, sit down restaurant & Benner Auto.
The pizza place and Benner Auto are both suppressed.
For example, search for Benner Auto in Oakland, California. I wrote a great positive review for them, but it shows as ZERO reviews. How many other reviews are they suppressing? And better yet, why?
Yelp has removed my reviews as well! They appear on my screen when I am logged in under my own name, but are not on the business’s page when I am not logged in.
It all started when I left a bad review for a dog-walker who I caught not coming to walk the dog. The day after leaving her a bad review, she wrote to me (a 9 paragrapgh message within Yelp) and I told her I was not going to be changing my review. She must have contacted Yelp because 3 days after that, my review no longer appeared on her page and she was back up to a 5 star rating. I contacted yelp and asked what happened and they said my review was removed because I was not “involved enough” with Yelp. I only had 18 reviews, but come on!! They have since removed all my reviews.
I hate Yelp.
YELP betrays their audience every day.
I’m not sure Yelp is even worth checking out after reading this.
[...] recent accusations of strong-arming local businesses into advertising or losing their good reviews, supressing reviews that might lead someone to another site or that are unfavorable to one of their advertisers, and [...]
Hey Richard,
I’ve got an interesting story for you. I got banned from Yelp LA last monthafter giving them a year of thoughtful and well-written reviews. I had started a wine club in 11/08, which ended up being quite popular. Within months I was being told what to do as if I was their employee. I refused to listen, which likely set the wheels in motion at full speed to delete my account within 2 hours of speaking with my CM, who had called me at home to let me know what was happening. The community was so upset by my dismissal, that I suppose she felt the need to make herself look better and sent a message to all our mutual Yelp friends (and some people I didn’t even know) on Facebook telling them I was accepting kickbacks and cutting deals with businesses promising them 5 star reviews. None of this was true, and everyone who knows me knew this. Needless to say it was a rough week dealing with people questioning my integrity and character, when all I was trying to do was get some fun people together to drink some wine.
It all ended for the better, as it usually does, and I’ve resumed my wine club off Yelp, which needed to happen anyway. The reputation of Yelp seems to be going downhill fast, and I was glad to get off the sinking ship.
Since this all happened, I have heard lots of interesting stories about Yelp’s business practices, and all I will say is shame, shame, Yelp.
Shelley
I was JUST about to sign up for YELP because I had quite a few wonderful retail/restaurant/salon experiences today. But after reading this… second thoughts prevade
Yelp removes reviews when a member quits or they fire him. that totally skews the reviews and rating of a business, making it meaningless.
Yelp has changed some polices. Of course when they delete a user, they remove that users reviews.
But they KEEP YOUR PHOTOS! So if you postyour personal photos of food, or places, restaurants or just help the site by locating images and pictures in Google image, they keep those in their content.
That seems pretty unethical. Also, they keep all forum thread posts. So that seems weird that they remove your reviews, but keep your forum comments. Usually because many of the forum comments are helpful, informative and of course add to their pages on content that can be searched.
Yelp blows. Seriously the most unethical website out there in the review content segment.
I got an email today from yelp saying they’ll delete me if I don’t remove my link from my reviews … Haven’t decided what to do.
Funny, because yelp was one of the original inspirations for me to start my website. They encourage and reward yelp reviewers for being snarky and sarcastic. I was motivated to defend the reputation of perfectly fine restaurants — to combat those unhappy people who think it’s appropriate to give a business a one star review because you’d like to punish them for some imagined slight.
We’re having the same problem here in Denver. My friends are noticing that their positive reviews go on display and then a couple days later they go away. But the negative reviewers, with fewer reviews and fewer friends, go on display and stay there.
Yeah, yelp is pretty unreliable.
Yelp has to be the biggest trash site on the web. It is usually a very cliquish site withing the city you Yelp in. I placed hundred of reviews and pictures on Yelp and kept getting repeatly banned for what seemed like no reason. All Yelp support would tell me was due to multiple accounts. Which I only had one account going at a time and would start up a new Yelp account when they deleted the previous one. Edgar from Yelp in email told me I am banned from Yelp for life. They now have my ISP blocked out. Yelp is RETARDED and the RAG of the internet!
Yelp deleted my account too. They said for the same reasons. My website (www.whatcutandwhere.com) has pictures hairstylists upload so I thought it only right that in a review for the hair salon I say that you can see some of their haircuts the people at the salon have done by going here…..
Apparently they didn’t like that.
The salon owners love that I do that and this makes me mad.
Wow, I was about to create an account on yelp then somehow found my way to your site. Anyways, off to urbanspoon. Does this Crystal H woman have a life? Who rates Staples… then a public library… then a pet store.
I agree with the comment “…(Yelp) was about as fair and balanced as Fox News during the Bush Administration” – Now that I know how heavy-handedly they censor and weed their reviews, why would I ever even bother to read anything there?
Good luck with your future endeavors, Yelp.
Sorry if this is redundant – I am not sure if I posted this already or not – BUT: I was also dumped by Yelp (for posting honest, negative reviews, with documentation) – and I just ran accross this website –
“Got Yanked At YELP?
You aren’t the only one. And because of the methods that Yelp employed, the false advertising, libel, slander, and defamation used when Yelp “cleaned house”, and Yelp’s refusal to individually review each profile/account to determine if they have made a mistake, they leave us little choice but to take Yelp to Federal Court in a Class Action Lawsuit.”
source:
http://yelplawsuit.com/
Urban Spoon is the best! I’d go with them, and they’re fine with bloggers linking back to their sites. They do that with the awesome timinganddelivery.com
It really sucks what Yelp did to you. I’ve been a member since 2006 and didn’t actually start using it till maybe last year. HA. I’ve had to make a new account because I couldn’t remember my old account information and couldn’t retrieve it. But one of my friend’s reviewed a place my old account reviewed and you can actually see it there, the old account, which was really odd.
Here’s a funny story that *might* answer why you can’t see some of your reviews (other than they may be being paid to be removed.)
So a place I yelped about has gotten made customers since I reviewed it. Yet it ONLY has two reviews. I doubt the 30+ people that have gone there through my review did not review it all. Well I went back to the place and the owner told me about it (which is why I know my review helped.) The owner said that Yelp called him and told him that has over 30 reviews (which can only been seen by the actual poster) this is a.k.a. pending status, if you will. Yelp told him that if he Joined and Paid that the other reviews will be shown.
While I’m not anti-yelp, because I do use it, I’m checking out Urbanspoon now.
I really feel for you. It really sucks what they did to you. Crystal needs to stop copying and pasting what the company gave her.