I've seen it first hand. My friend is a veternarian who was working in a very expensive neighborhood in California. Every time he got a 5 star review, it wouldn't display on his Yelp page. A few 1 star reviews did appear though. Yelp would call him and tell him essentially the 5 stars would reappear if he advertised with them. He had no choice but to pay and they all appeared, driving his average back up. How would you propose to prove it? And what would proving accomplish since many folks already believe it?

You say you have seen it first hand? Isn’t that second hand knowledge your describing?

You ask what would proving it accomplish? It would allow everyone to actually know what’s going on instead of stringing together a bunch of conjecture and anecdotes. It would enable change.

It's trivially easy: link to the page. Put up or shut up. If what you're saying is true, it will be obvious.

These stories are always about "friends" or "relatives", but nobody ever provides the link to the evidence, despite that being the easiest thing in the world to provide.

Specifically, Internet Archive links that show the before/after situation, with reviews appearing that were made before "before" but only appear in "after".

Do you know for sure it was Yelp calling and not some third-party scammer? I have heard there are companies that pull this, and some might pretend to be Yelp but in fact they just create fake reviews and them delete/change them later. (I presume this only works if the target pays "Yelp" over the phone). I am not sure what to believe but like your parent xommentor I am skeptical.

Given the scale at which phone scammers operate these days, and the fact that many of the scammed business owners are likely not savvy to this, it's plausible.

One wonders how profitable it'd be for Yelp to call small, local businesses at scale for shakedown, considering what's on the line reputationally if one or two people know how to record calls.

It's illegal in a lot of states to record calls without notifying the other party.

>>> How would you propose to prove it? And what would proving accomplish since many folks already believe it?

Gather a paper trails. For starters, screenshots of the page + emails and communication with the company.

Additionally, you could literally ask anyone who worked at Yelp. I have. Sure not everyone there has seen every bit of code that powers their service, or every business process, but if they were systemically encouraging mobster-like business tactics, someone would have heard about it. I never did. I heard a lot of engineers and sales people laughing about the fact that people thought they did.

The reality is that its likely explainable through a combination of disgruntled business owners and overzealous/evil salespeople who make threats they can't follow through on, just to get sales.

(Though, some of the admin panels there have (or had, when I was there) a easy to use "Make user Yelp Elite" button, but I'm sure you'd get caught :)

Enough people have left Yelp that if there were black programs in place, we would know.

I totally believe that there are some shady salespeople at Yelp that talk about... the implications. But I doubt they actually do sell improved ratings.

>we would know

We do know. Just most people refuse to believe until it happens to them, so Yelp continues to get away with it.

Where are all the ex-employees and leakers exposing the shenanigans? I do believe they have salespeople that suggest paying to fix things, but I don't believe they can actually do that.

It seems like it would be an easy experiment for somebody to do. Find a local restaurant with some poor ratings. If they want to cooperate, pay a Yelp salesperson to "fix" the problem and see if it goes away. If they deliver, then you have a bombshell article that could go viral.

Here are some first hand accounts from the trailer for Billion Dollar Bully

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2dkJctUDIs