Billion Dollar Bully is a documentary film about Yelp that “examines the claims by business owners of extortion, review manipulation and review fabrication.”
That is the description posted on the filmmakers’s Kickstarter page, through which they are trying to raise the funds needed to finish the film.
We have discussed the ways in which Yelp and similar review sites can imperil your business’s reputation, and we’ve had quite a bit to say about how to protect against that possibility (essentially, through online reputation management). But Yelp can also be an extraordinary tool for a young business. Yelp is among the highest-ranked websites by search engines. So by creating a Yelp profile, a business immediately has a prominent presence online.
Yelp is an important component of online reputation management. That doesn’t mean it is immune to experiencing a reputation crisis itself: Shares of Yelp’s stock fell 4.7% after the release of the documentary’s trailer.
Fake reviews on Yelp and similar sites are an integral part of Internet culture. (Yelp is an online guide to local businesses worldwide. Its listings are based on consumer reviews. Anyone can write them, using their real name or a false one. Over 30 million reviews have been posted since its founding in 2004.)
Yelp is an invaluable research tool for consumers. It is also an important marketing resource for businesses that rely on positive word of mouth to attract customers.
Anyone can post a fake positive review, just as anyone – including the competitor across the street – can post a bad one. But Yelp allows businesses to create their own profiles with photographs and respond to reviews publicly or privately. That helps level the playing field. It also enables businesses to acknowledge their faults and build relationships with customers who give them bad reviews, should they want to. (A customer who cares enough to take the time to write a bad review may be one who cares enough to give you a second chance. Their critiques can help you make your business a better one.)
Today technology reporter David Streitfeld writes about Yelp’s new strategy for reducing inaccurate listings. Yelp’s action is a signal that the Internet is entering a new development phase: one where the drawbacks of fake reviews are addressed by the platforms that host them.
The more one utilizes the Internet for researching businesses, organizations and people, the more it becomes clear what a game-changer it is in terms of consumer empowerment. Reading Yelp reviews, it is clear that 30% (or, in some cases, all) of the overly effusive ones might be fake and that 30% of the bad reviews (or, in some cases, all) might be due to a bad day on the part of the reviewer. (Or that the reviewer is a competitor.) The rest provide a middle ground from which readers can draw their own conclusions. It isn’t perfect, but it is a rich mosaic of opinions which provide us with the best resource for helping make well-informed decisions: each other. That’s why Yelp’s step forward is a positive one.
