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Some more news stories have run in the last day or two about the lawsuits filed against Yelp. Folks interested in getting the full story can read our CEO's in-depth response here. The bottom line remains the same: Yelp does not manipulate review content to help advertisers or hurt businesses that don't. Never have, never will.

As we've discussed before, one reason businesses may get the wrong idea is because of the automated review filter we have in place to protect the integrity of the site's content. We admit: it can be confusing. And as part of our continuing education efforts and outreach to the business community, we wanted to make sure you saw this video we created to specifically address confusion around our review filter.

Additionally, our second webinar in our weekly series: Yelp for Your Business, is airing today at 1pm PT. It's an interactive opportunity to learn more about Yelp, as well as get your Yelp questions answered. Make sure you register here and if you can't make today's, we will be archiving these discussions -- and you can also join us same time next week!

Yelp's Review Filter Explained

We frequently get asked about our review filter. As part of our ongoing efforts to educate the business community, we worked with Epipheo Studios to create this video. It's designed to help folks understand why Yelp's review filter exists and how it works.

Here are 5 important things to understand about the review filter:

1. Reviews that reflect perfectly legitimate experiences are sometimes filtered out by the review filter's algorithmic processes. We agree this can be frustrating, but it's the high cost we accept to avoid being a lassez-faire review site that people stop using. Everyone loses when that happens.

2. Reviews are never "deleted" by the review filter; they are always shown on users' profile pages. The review filter simply syndicates established users' reviews from their user pages onto business pages. This automated process sometimes creates the perception that reviews are being deleted and re-added over time; what's actually happening is users are becoming more-or-less established over time.

3. The best word of mouth is organic and unsolicited. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, Yelp discourages business owners from asking people to write reviews about their businesses. It's tough for an algorithm to tell the difference between a business owner aggressively putting a laptop in front of a client and saying, "Give me 5 stars!" and that same business owner flipping the laptop around and manufacturing a fake 5-star review about themselves.

4. We're purposely not elaborate about all the variables that go into defining an "established" user, because it's a Catch-22: the more descriptive we are about what makes an established user, the less effective our filter is at fighting shills and malicious content.

5. Both positive and negative reviews can be affected. This is to protect Car Mechanic A from Car Mechanic B's writing of malicious 1-star reviews about his competitor. It also protects someone with a toothache from being lured into the wrong dentist's office based on 25 fake 5-star reviews he wrote himself.

Over 10 Million Reviews Served!

That's right, in less than just 3 months, yelpers have rated and reviewed more than 1 million local businesses. That means there are now over a whoppin' 10 million reviews on Yelp!

On top of that, Yelp.com clocked in more than 30 million unique visitors in the last 30 days and frankly, we think that's cause for celebration! (Though we doubt you needed another excuse to kick back a cold one on St Paddy's Day.)

John and Gabe: Boys with (homemade iPhone) toys

I dig electronics, remote controlled cars and iPhones. A couple of summers ago, I got really excited about the idea of building electronics that I could control with my iPhone. By connecting a router to an RC Car from my childhood, I wrote an iPhone app, and built a RC Car that could be controlled from the iPhone's accelerometers. Then one night after a few beers - Gabe and I came up with the idea to add a camera that would stream video back to the iPhone. 

But I'm not the only one who likes building electronic gadgetry. During a recent Hack Day at Yelp, Julian, Bakun and I teamed up to decorate the office with a hand made Yelp burst. In the video you'll see that it lights up every time a review is posted to the site - and it flashes with the corresponding star rating of that review (three flashes - three stars). OK so it doesn't turn corners like the IC car (iPhone controlled), but it looks damn fine in our work space.

See the car in action at Dorkbot 23's event at SXSWi, March 13th 6pm Brush Square Park, Austin, TX

SXSW: Where's the party at?

Here in Austin we're getting ready for THE annual conference/festival/party known as SXSW. Being the music lovin', soiree seekin', iPhone tappin' brood that Austin yelpers are, we thought we'd honor the week-long festivities with a few little gems of our own.

More than 200 parties...
Next week's list of events in Austin keeps growing and they're all listed on our Yelp Events page. We've got everything from the neighborhood bacon takedown to free drinks at the mashbash, and even the Gibson guitar giveaways at the IFC Crossroads House. And wouldn't you know it? More events are added by the minute. Decisions. Decisions.

Our nerds put the party in your pants!
Some of our engineers are headed to SXSW and they wanted an easy way to view all parties/events in Austin on their iPhones, so they went out and built one. Download our app for the iPhone and you'll find a link to Yelp's SXSW party guide from the home page. Not in Austin? Point your iPhone browser (Safari) to yelp.com/events/sxsw. OK enough gawking - now put that back in your pocket.

          

Yelp Open Party: We go out BIG.
Capping off a week of web wonders, cool flicks and juicy gems for your ears, Yelp Austin Presents A Saturday Stomp on March 20.
Imagine: amazing bands, hundreds of music lovin' yelpers from all over the U.S. and THE Ice Cream Man. Words can't describe the evening we have lined up.

Party over here. Heeeeeey.

Kevin N. is a long time Austinite and our regional community lead in the South.

Yelp for Your Business - Tune in!

In our ongoing effort to educate business owners on ways they can use Yelp, we are excited to kick off Yelp for Your Business, a webinar series. The inaugural webinar will be held this Thursday, 3/11 at 3pm PT/6pm ET. The subject will be "How to use the free tools on Yelp to promote your business." Click here to learn more or to register for the webinar.

Additionally, the folks here at Yelp try to speak to as many business groups as possible -- both in person and via webinar. Here are a couple of other events we're participating in that might be of interest to specific groups of business owners:

• This Wednesday, 3/10 at 2pm ET, Luther Lowe, Manager of Small Business Outreach, is talking with the National Restaurant Association on how to manage your reputation on sites like Yelp. If you are a member of the National Restaurant Association, you can register to be part of the webinar here: http://www.restaurant.org/events/webinars/
• Next Wednesday, 3/17 at 10:35am ET, Paul Reich, Director of East Coast Sales, will be chatting at The Vision Monday Conference on ways businesses - specifically ones in the optometry profession - should think about leveraging user-generated sites like Yelp. Register to attend here: https://www.jobsoneducation.com/vm/gls2010/regmain.asp?ID=330
• For our friends abroad, Miriam Warren, Head of European Community Management, will be talking at The Location Business Summit on 4/28 about local search and recommendations, profit potential and vital strategies: http://www.thewherebusiness.com/locationsummit/agenda.shtml

If you're a small business owner curious about why you should leverage Yelp, or if you are already involved and are interested in learning more about how to engage online, we encourage you to dial in or attend! And if you're the head of a business organization that would benefit from an in-person appearance from Yelp, let us know. Additionally, we'll be creating a way for you to submit your own suggestions on topics to discuss and highlight in this series, so stay tuned!

Different Day, Different Lawyer, Same Meritless Claim: A Classic Race to the Courthouse

As many folks know, a lawsuit was filed against Yelp last week alleging we move reviews around to reward advertisers and punish non-advertisers. Of course, we don't. As I've explained on this blog here, the allegations are false and easily refuted. They are borne from a lack of understanding of how Yelp works to provide consumers with useful information about local businesses and protect users from fake, or shill, reviews.

These misconceptions are also fueled by lawyers, who may have heard about Yelp's recent financing round and may be seeking a share. So it's no surprise that today another lawyer has filed a virtually identical lawsuit making the same inaccurate claims. (Don't worry; they're still not true.)

These copy cat suits get filed in what is known as a "race to the courthouse," where lawyers jockey to be named the lead lawyer of the case and take the biggest share of legal fees; being among the first to file a suit increases the chance of being put in charge of the case.

So, as I said: it's not a surprise to see another such frivolous suit. In fact, it's kind of expected.

This doesn't change a thing however: this suit, like the other, is without merit, we will fight it aggressively and we believe we will win.

Why? Well, beside many of the reasons I stated here, the business in this suit, D'ames Day Spa of San Diego County, admits it solicited the reviews in question.

As we have explained in the past, solicited reviews, more so than naturally occurring ones, are more likely to be detected by Yelp's review filter, which we employ to protect consumers from shill reviews and businesses from malicious reviews from competitors. If a business could garner a top rating on Yelp simply by soliciting 5-star reviews from friends, family, and favored customers, how useful would such a site be?

The resulting trust in Yelp reviews is why more than 30 million consumers used Yelp in the past 30 days to find a great local business. That trust is what makes Yelp useful to consumers and businesses alike and we will always fight to protect it.

I do want to ensure you that we don't take any of these allegations or events lightly. Especially the fact that misunderstandings about Yelp have arisen in the first place. We understand some businesses can find us confusing or a source of anxiety. We are working hard to make our business even clearer. This will include continuing to incorporate feedback from you, our community, directly on ways we can improve, in addition to further developing the customer service and FAQ tools we already have in place. In the meantime, it remains my priority to ensure you are as informed as possible. You can expect additional blog posts, as well as other forms of communication from me.

More Updates to Yelp for Android (and a few for iPhone)

We promised 2010 was going to be an even bigger year for Yelp Mobile and today, we are excited to announce V1.4 of our Yelp for Android application. In addition to our previous updates, this release will give Android owners the ability to:

Bookmark Businesses: Two-way bookmark syncing; any business you bookmark on Yelp.com will show up in the Yelp Android app and vice versa.

 

Draft Reviews: Draft Yelp.com reviews from your phone and they'll be waiting for you to polish your prose when you're back at your home base. Read more on why we currently don't allow publishing of full reviews from mobile devices here. 

Since launching Yelp for Android in December 09, our team has worked hard to iterate consistently and we promise we'll have additional updates for this application, as well as others, soon. (Yes, we are talking about Check-ins... as well as some other really cool stuff!)

Additionally, you may have seen earlier this week we released a few updates to our Yelp for iPhone application. For lucky 3GS owners, you get even more "Magical Map" features including when you're on business page maps, tap "Orient the Map" to orient the map to the direction you're facing. Compass schumpuss when you got Yelp in your corner! Because you've been busy bees, for Check-ins, we'll highlight the places you're a Regular at on your profile. And in addition to those updates, we've also given you some bug fixes as well as the long anticipated iPhone Jet Pack feature.  

OK, not really. But you gotta admit, it would be pretty bad ass.  

We're Increasing Transparency and Eliminating 'Favorite Review'

User trust is the foundation on which Yelp is built and the reason 31 million consumers turned to the site last month to find a great local business. Today we're announcing two important product changes to reinforce that trust and make it even more clear that Yelp treats review content equally for all businesses, with no connection between advertising and reviews.

Specifically, we're adding the ability to see reviews filtered by our review filter and we're discontinuing the "Favorite Review" feature that's part of our advertising package.

Why? Because while Yelp has seen tremendous growth in just a few years, we're still new to a lot of people. Despite our best efforts to educate consumers and the small business community, myths about Yelp have persisted. We’ve said all along we believe these incorrect notions stem from the combination of the filter and this advertising feature -- and we're practicing what we preach. Lifting the veil on our review filter and doing away with "Favorite Review" will make it even clearer that displayed reviews on Yelp are completely independent of advertising -- or any sort of manipulation. We also hope it will demonstrate the importance of a safeguard such as our filter and the unique challenge we face daily to maintain the integrity of the review content on our site.

Now you can take a look at any business listing on Yelp and see for yourself the work the review filter has done behind the scenes. Perhaps helping to protect one business from malicious reviews that might stem from a competitor.

Or, conversely, protecting consumers from reviews that look like they could have come from an employee, not a customer.

But most importantly, you can see that Yelp's review filter works just the same for advertisers and non-advertisers alike. There is not -- nor ever has been -- a bias. So will Yelp be easier to game now? No, our engineers remain hard at work to make sure that Yelp is the most useful and helpful online resource for everyone.

Additionally, while the "Favorite Review" feature as part of our ad product was clearly labeled as such, it led some people to the wrong conclusions about whether businesses could control the review content on their page. (They can't.) So, to eliminate the opportunity for that misconception, we've eliminated the feature.

These aren't the only changes we've made today. We've also announced that advertisers on Yelp will soon have the ability to add a video to the slide show on their business page -- a suggestion made most recently during Yelp's ongoing series of educational meetings with business owners across the country. Additionally, in an effort to more formally integrate feedback from the business community, we've created a Small Business Advisory Council whose members will provide Yelp management with guidance and perspective regarding the concerns of small business owners.

Most consumers probably won't notice the product changes announced here, but we hope this new ability to "look under the hood" will help everyone understand the lengths we've taken to ensure Yelp is the most trusted resource on the internet for connecting people with great local businesses.

Additional thoughts on last week's lawsuit, or How a Conspiracy Theory is Born

(The following is a continuation of my blog post from last Friday.)

I have said that false allegations that Yelp manipulates reviews for money ignore empirical evidence to the contrary and instead rely on conspiracy theories. In this post -- aimed at folks who want to take a deep dive into how Yelp works and why there might be confusion -- I want to directly address two major myths at the heart of these allegations and explain how a conspiracy theory is born.

Myth #1: Yelp offers to remove or reorder reviews in exchange for money.

Truth: Yelp Sales Representatives sell sponsored search results, enhanced listings and targeted advertisements. Period.

Advertising and content on Yelp is like the separation of Church and State: with the exception of a single review at the top of their review list (clearly marked as such), advertisers gain no control over how reviews appear on their business page. So what do Yelp advertisers get? Two things:

1. Page enhancements --

(a) 1 clearly marked "Favorite review" that appears at the top of the review list. Here's a screenshot of what that single review at the top looks like.

(b) 1 animated photo slideshow. To see what this looks like, check out our own Yelp page in the top right corner.

2. Targeted ads. It's simply an SEM product. In this way, our local business advertising model is very similar to that of major search engines. A single ad for the advertiser business -- again, clearly marked as such -- appears above organic search results and/or in the center of similar business's Yelp listings. For an interactive demo of this SEM ad product, go here.

The two-piece product described above is the only thing our local ad sales team sells.

Myth #2: Yelp's sales department has the ability to suppress and/or add reviews (and this ability is somehow used to coerce would-be advertisers or punish businesses that decline to advertise)

Truth: Our entire sales department is prohibited from creating any review content on the site. No member of the sales department has the administrative capability to remove reviews.

We take the church/state separation thing seriously. Sales representatives (also known as Account Executives or "AEs") cannot write reviews on Yelp. This is clearly communicated internally, and employees within the sales department are trained and re-trained that any deviation from these high standards would result in their termination. (Don't take our word for it. Here's a link to a discussion with one of our former employees, Jon Bishop, mentioning his inability to modify content during his time as an AE.)

Despite hundreds of AEs making thousands of points of contact via email and over the phone with potential advertisers every single day, no evidence in the form of an email or phone recording has ever emerged to suggest any member of our sales team has misrepresented the product described above. (And, of course, if anyone ever did bring such an email or phone call to our attention, you'd better believe we'd do something about it.) In addition, we layer extensive safeguards in place to ensure our advertising product is communicated clearly to would-be advertisers.

We employ Account Managers and require them to complete a verbal check-list with new advertisers within 48 hours of agreeing to advertise with Yelp. Just in case they missed it in the contract itself, advertisers are reminded reviews and advertising are unrelated. Following the call, advertisers are directed to this survey. In the rare instance an advertiser answers "No" to any of the questions within #4, the advertiser is called, and this aspect of the program is re-explained. If the business owner still believes a connection exists between their ads and reviews, we provide a refund to the advertiser and the sales representative receives no commission. This ensures no incentive exists for an Account Executive to "go rogue".

So why do these myths continue to live?

We'll be the first to admit that, by conventional standards, Yelp can seem weird. We're different than other review sites and that can throw people off. The main basis for confusion: Yelp has an automated system in place that helps to maintain the legitimate quality of content. This automated system often removes reviews from business pages that people don't want removed.

What does that even mean?

It means through an automated software algorithm, we filter reviews that might be shills or malicious spam. Because this is a difficult task, sometimes that results in legitimate reviews being suppressed from business pages.

It's worth repeating: Legitimate content, i.e. real reviews, will sometimes not appear on a business page.

It's counter-intuitive, right? You'd think we would want as much content on Yelp as possible, so why wouldn't we show all of it?

We've written in depth as much as we can about our review filter and why we believe it to be inherent to Yelp's value proposition, including in this blog post. We accept the high cost of this approach to avoid the fate of predecessors' failed models: When people trust our content, everyone wins -- businesses (get traffic to their business pages) and users (discover great local businesses). We purposely stop short of describing the review filter's mechanics as it's a Catch 22: the more descriptive we are about what makes an established user or a valued review, the less effective our filter is at fighting shills and malicious content. Spammers become super-spammers; consumers stop trusting the site; businesses stop receiving traffic to their listings. Everyone loses.

Why might some business owners think Yelp is shady? Here's the anatomy of a typical Yelp conspiracy theory:

Step 1. Business owner gets a sales call from Yelp that explains an advertising product which seems nuanced; hears stuff like "Favorite review at top" and "Enhance your presence". Business owner eventually decides, "Thanks, but no thanks on the ads, Yelp."

Step 2. Business owner newly-exposed to Yelp decides it’s interesting and aggressively solicits all their family and friends to write reviews.

Step 3. We've already cautioned against this practice and this is why: a few days later, our automated filter suppresses the suspicious-looking reviews.

Step 4. Business assumes algorithmic process in Step 3 is actually a Yelp employee manually punishing the business for declining to advertise in Step 1.

Optional Step 5. Now-angry business finds the Orly Taitz of internet lawyers who may or may not have read about our recent funding round.

As I've said, many might say we're weird, but we have nothing to hide. We're doing things differently, but we have never and will never extort businesses; the accusation is beyond ludicrous. In fact, it's deeply ironic that the very mechanisms and processes we've created to preserve Yelp's integrity generate these accusations that we have no integrity.

Millions of people rely on Yelp each week to figure out where to spend their hard-earned money and thousands of business owners benefit from the word-of-mouth Yelpers provide. We know this case is without merit, and we will continue to fight these false claims aggressively, as well as fight the guys who are actually being shady with reviews.