Yelp tries public shaming to discourage businesses from gaming reviews and ratings

Yelp, in its latest measure to discourage businesses from gaming its reviews and ratings, will display warning signs on businesses suspected to be be illicitly enhancing their visibility and profile.

Yelp has become critical to local business’ success. Patrons consider the number of stars a vendor receives as well as user reviews on Yelp a great — and legitimate — source of first-hand feedback. Over the years, the platform has become a standard for judging the quality of services, and accordingly, small businesses have inevitably found ways to game the system and rack up the positive reviews. Now, Yelp is taking measures to crack down on companies that are resorting to these illicit tactics.

“The allure of a page full of five-star reviews can turn even the most ethical business owner starry-eyed and persuade some to attempt to game the system by paying for reviews,” Eric Singley Yelp VP of Product says.

It’s incredibly easy to find sources for faked reviews — a quick Craigslist scan reveals as much. Other more elaborate schemes involve entire businesses that are contracted by small businesses to improve visibility and ratings on the site. Such contracted organizations will use gray or black hat techniques including publishing false reviews and slandering competing businesses — the result of this being that the entire Yelp review system’s reliability is degraded. 

But Yelp will start taking an unconventional approach by publicly shaming businesses through a pop-up that warns consumers of the vendors’ less-than-legitimate actions. Businesses that Yelp is certain are gaming the system will be flagged starting today, and the platform revealed that the feature is launching with nine businesses that “will have the consumer alert message posted on their profile page.” The alert will appear for a period of 90 days and be removed thereafter unless the business in question doesn’t quit its scammy ways.

Yelp reviews’ controversial history has even led to a class action lawsuit against the company for allegedly extorting businesses to place ads on its site to surface their positive reviews. These issues have also kindled interest by researchers to detect false reviews using statistics and algorithms. Last year Cornell researchers developed a computer algorithm that in field trials was 90 percent accurate in detecting false reviews. And in June, researchers from the State University of New York, Stony Brook devised a statistical technique that spotted businesses with false reviews by comparing the statistical distribution of reviews. That method was said to work with 72 percent accuracy.

Review scammers are clever and their efforts are becoming more and more sophisticated as outlets try to fight them. Yelp claims to be ahead of the game compared to competitors, and the site will soon begin identifying businesses with a “large number of reviews submitted from the same Internet Protocol (IP) address.”

Yelp assures users and businesses that play by the rules that, “we are not going to let a few bad apples spoil the bunch.”

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Google buys Frommer’s, plans to merge with Zagat?

Google has purchased the Frommer's travel guide brand for an undisclosed sum, and may be planning on merging it with another recent purchase, restaurant ratings guide Zagat.

Google looks set to make major inroads into both the online review and listing business and also the world of content publishing with the news today that it has purchased Frommer’s, one of America’s leading travel guide publishers. According to reports, the famous brand may soon find itself paired with an equally well-known name – and fellow Google subsidiary.

The deal was announced by Frommer’s current owners John Wiley and Sons earlier today, with the publisher issuing a statement that explained that Frommer’s as a brand no longer aligned with its business strategy, and that the sale was the beginning of an offloading of such off-topic brands that would also include Webster’s New World and Cliff’s Notes (Google has not been linked with either property as yet, but you have to imagine that Cliff’s Notes would be a tempting addition at the very least). Wiley announced that the brand would be sold in March of this year. While it’s unknown how much Google has paid for Frommer’s, it’s widely believed to be less than $66 million, the highest possible amount that would avoid automatically triggering investigations from antitrust authorities.

The Frommer’s brand has been around since 1957, when it began with the guidebook Europe on $5 A Day by Arthur Frommer. Fifty-five years later, Frommer is still writing for the company – He started blogging to celebrate the brand’s fiftieth anniversary in 2007 – and the line has grown to encompass more than 350 books across 14 different series, including those produced via partnerships with MTV and the For Dummies series. It’s said to be unknown at this time whether or not Google will keep the guidebooks in print, or choose to make the entire brand digital, but common sense – and the amount of money available from the print editions – would suggest that a purely online Frommer’s is still at some far point in the future.

That said, the purchase offers a lot of possibilities for Google. Although the company has announced that it has not made any decisions as yet about what to do with the brand, it’s widely believed that the Frommer’s brand will be combined with that of restaurant review and ratings brand Zagat Survey, which Google purchased almost a year ago. In an official statement about the purchase, Google said that “the Frommer’s team and the quality and scope of their content will be a great addition to the Zagat team,” adding that those within the company “can’t wait to start working with them on our goal to provide a review for every relevant place in the world.” Things might not be quite so straight forward, however. “Our commitment is to keep things as they are today,” Google’s Bernado Hernandez – who works with the Zagat brand – explained to the Wall Street Journal, “and once we combine operations, we’ll better know what the future looks like.”

Other possibilities that are open to the company include merging Frommer’s information about local businesses with Google+ listings and Google Maps, augmenting its existing travel booking service, or being used to sell travel-related ads via Google’s own ad service.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com