> "give businesses the ability to respond to reviews for free and "

Yelp has had the ability for businesses to respond publicly or privately to a review for almost a year now I believe.

> "don't artificially alter results, be like Google and let your algorithm work."

The same game happens in the web search world - it's called SEO. Yelp's spam algorithm is decoupled from any advertising, yet since business owners don't write their own reviews, they have less control over their reputation (as opposed to webmasters who change their page content), and are much more likely to come up with conspiracy theories as to why things happen the way they do and consequently often get very frustrated.

So are there any similar services which do offer business owners a chance to respond for free? If not, wouldn't this be a good opportunity for a startup? You could probably advertise yourself as the 'dont-be-evil' version of yelp.

Yelp doesn't charge biz owners to respond to reviews, in public or in private. I'm pretty sure about this because I built the feature.

The source of the negative sentiment may boil down to the cold calling. It seems to be one of those things that just hits a nerve, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could trace the anti-Yelp movement to this business practice. The other thing people complain about a lot is that their reviews aren't counted (presumably because of the anti-spam filter). If Yelp fixes those two major problems, it will be in much better shape.

My bad, my bad, what I should have said was something that allows businesses to opt-out of the service.

you want a business with poor consumer reviews to be able to delist itself? Isn't that like being able to delete your case record with the Better Business Bureau?

This is basically the project I started working on a few weeks ago. If anyone is interested in getting together on this, feel free to get in touch (my email address is in my profile). I'm a programmer located in the Mission district of San Francisco.

It would be a nice to have a Craigslist or Wikipedia-style Yelp (fast, lightweight, and non-evil).

I seriously doubt good reviews would just disappear. The reviewer would complain. I'm a Yelp Elite in my city and I'd scream murder if any of my reviews disappeared.

It just happened to my wife this weekend: she'd written a review of her trainer that showed up at the time, but at some point in the last few months it disappeared from the trainer's page, even though it still appears within her profile. She updated the review and it then appeared to her when viewing her trainer's profile, but it didn't show up if she logged out or when logged in from my account.

Simply deciding not to show reviews you've written and/or randomly taking them down after they've been up? Sketchy. Showing those reviews to you so you think they're there even though no one else can see them? Ultra-sketchy.

The same thing happened to me. I created a yelp account for the express purpose of reviewing a local business that has food that's beyond shitty. I wrote a scathing one star review, and it was put in purgatory. Only when I logged into yelp was it visible.

Now, I can understand why they'd be wary of an account that only posted a single negative review, but if you ban someone, you should let them know.

They may show your review to you but not others.

Bingo. Ever try logging out, clearing cookies and then looking at a view again?

Yes, I use many computers. I also share reviews often with friends who have no problem seeing them in context. This sounds like paranoia to me.

To be safe, you really need to view it from a machine/IP you've never logged in from before...

I keep a proxy script on my webserver which comes in handy from time to time for that sort of thing - proxy.nfriedly.com

See timcederman's post below. Reviews can, and do disappear apparently. Yelp admits the "spam algorithm" can be aggressive on new reviewers.

>>"[The] spam algorithm can filter based on how established user is. [Your post was] not deleted & can re-appear on biz page. Still live on your profile."

It sounds fishy to me. Who cares if the review is "still live on your profile" if it's not live on the business page. It doesn't sound like a spam filter to me, it sounds like selective removal of reviews.

There's a lot of spammers on Yelp. I have no problem with this on new users as businesses will often post reviews of themselves to drive up traffic.

But why not tell the user that it was flagged as spam and/or delete it from their profile page? Why let the user believe that their review is still there when it isn't? Maybe this is a way to fool the spammers into believing that their spamming is working, but it really is a poor experience for legitimate users, no?

The fact that myths page even exists at all, with 9 rather damning myths, is enough of a red flag.