I was informed of the below article by several CFEB members. I can confirm that Yelp has been incredibly aggressive in trying to get me to advertise, and has removed six five-star reviews of CFEB after I declined to advertise. In addition Yelp's sales reps are pushy, obnoxious and ill informed. S.M. at Yelp recently  informed me (after I told Yelp for the 5th time I was not interested) that he worked with "a few different Cross Fit locations". I replied:

"If you really worked with CrossFit "locations" you would know that it is "CrossFit", not "Cross Fit" (sic) and that they are "affiliates" not "locations".

I have been onYelp for some time and I have never gotten even one nibble from it. I have my own website which generates lots of business".

Subsequently S., or someone at Yelp, removed six five-star reviews. I will no longer rely on Yelp for assistance in evaluating businesses, and, in addition, I am exploring the possibility of legal action against them. Certainly if a class-action lawsuit is initiated I will participate.

Check the comments page too.

Lots of one-star reviews of Yelp on Yelp. The irony!

Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0

Local business owners say Yelp offers to hide negative customer reviews of their businesses on its web site ... for a price.

By Kathleen Richards

February 18, 2009

The phone calls came almost daily. It started to get creepy.

"Hi, this is Mike from Yelp," the voice would say. "You've had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You've had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those."

This wasn't your average sales pitch. At least, not the kind that John, an East Bay restaurateur, was used to. He was familiar with Yelp.com, the popular San Francisco-based web site in which any person can write a review about nearly any business. John's restaurant has more than one hundred reviews, and averages a healthy 3.5-star rating. But when John asked Mike what he could do about his bad reviews, he recalls the sales rep responding: "We can move them. Well, for $299 a month." John couldn't believe what the guy was offering. It seemed wrong.

In fact, something seemed shady about the state of his restaurant's negative reviews. "When you do get a call from Yelp, and you go to the site, it looks like they have been moved," John said. "You don't know if they happen to be at the top legitimately or if the rep moved them to the top. You don't even know if this is someone who legitimately doesn't like your restaurant. ... Almost all the time when they call you, the bad ones will be at the top."

Usually, John said, he would politely decline to advertise. "Well, thanks," he'd say. "I'll talk to my partner about it." Or, "It's not really in my budget right now." But inevitably, in another week or so, he'd get another phone call. Occasionally, the voice on the other end of the phone would change, but the calls continued. These days, John chooses to not answer his phone when it's from a number with a 415 area code.

John may sound paranoid, but he's got company. During interviews with dozens of business owners over a span of several months, six people told this newspaper that Yelp sales representatives promised to move or remove negative reviews if their business would advertise.

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Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0