On the business side all I’ve heard from Yelp Business was that they will let more bad reviews slide thus lowering your rating if you do not pay for their protection racket. Also, paying them gives good reviews that would otherwise be rejected now allowed as acceptable.
Maybe those businesses were not paying for the “premium” service tier that includes Yelp sending a photographer to your business to then create a video for you with an annual plan.
I have managed restaurants and talked to several Yelp reps. It’s difficult to trust online reviews.
That's definitely wrong, as my Yelp profile has zero friends and no profile picture, and all of my reviews are still up, when viewing the businesses logged out, across multiple devices using different IP addresses.
I have managed restaurants and talked to several Yelp reps.
I have spoken to restaurants on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce investigating this issue, and found no evidence that these claims are true.
I've had my legitimate Yelp reviews shadow-removed (I could see the review on the computer it was made on, but not others). So they absolutely did at one point remove/hide reviews.
-person with actual experience
It might be true, but a claim that undermines the entire business.. warrants at least a link or an anecdote.
But I second this. Yelp won't remove legitimate reviews, even for paying businesses. You can pay for priority in search listings and to show up in the Similar and Nearby sections, but that won't help you get negative reviews removed.
As I speak, there are 2.5 star restaurants being promoted in every search I do for nearby restaurants. If Yelp removed the negative reviews as people claimed, they wouldn't be at 2.5 stars right now.
(It's true that some individual sales reps claim Yelp will do this if you pay them, but those are individual sales reps trying to hit a sales or bonus goal.)