Yelp is a popular website/app that offers consumers an overview of businesses they are contemplating frequenting for a variety of services, particularly restaurants. The issue is not the fact that businesses receive poor reviews now and then for a variety of incidents at the time of service or simply genuinely poor service/policies, it’s that Yelp is a pay to play platform disguising itself as “for the consumer” that actively holds the small businesses that pay/don’t pay for advertising hostage. 

There are countless stories across Google and Facebook groups regarding Yelp’s lack of morals when it comes to how they handle the treatment of small businesses. From hiding legitimate five star reviews to only showing one star reviews. As an example of how petty they are, they currently charge $1 a day to show the company’s logo in the search results - amongst a variety of a la carte options that become expensive extremely quickly. A simple advertising analysis shows that their ads are several times more expensive and less effective than their competitors - Google and Facebook. There are countless instances where a small business was approached to buy ads from Yelp over the phone, and upon rejecting the offer, have noticed an uptick of negative reviews and the disappearance of all positive reviews. Yelp denies this is how they operate, but a simple Google search will quickly bring to light how many businesses have experienced this alleged coincidence.

Very recently Yelp has introduced another roadblock for small businesses in the form of a “racist business tag” for businesses that have seen any controversy in the media regarding what is constituted as racist behavior. At this point it has become clear that they have zero intention of helping small businesses - which have undergone extreme financial stress thanks to COVID-19, and are expected, despite their spotty at best record of moral decision making, to assess and label what constitutes a racist business.

Here’s why I’ve drafted this petition: as it stands, there is NO WAY for a business to opt out of the platform. All you can do is relinquish control of your small business which means one cannot respond to reviews (positive or negative). Yelp claims this is for record-keeping purposes, but logic shows that this is just another way for them to attempt to pressure and price-gouge small businesses like the internet mafia. Please join us in petitioning to allow any and all businesses to completely and totally opt out of the platform. We’ve had enough - from fake reviews being allowed to stick around for weeks, months, and even years to legitimate five star reviews being hidden permanently due to Yelp’s supposed “algorithm.” Their staff doesn’t care, their business model is literally built upon the corpses of deceased small businesses, and they need to be stopped. Their logic of small businesses having nothing to worry about if they’re doing everything right simply doesn’t add up in “real life” and when that same logic is turned around on them I highly doubt they accept it: that they would have nothing to worry about in terms of losing revenue if they are indeed an effective advertising platform.

Please help small businesses survive COVID amongst yet another roadblock that’s been an issue for over a decade: the Yelp problem. We aren’t asking for their destruction, we’re merely asking that they give us the right to opt-out of their stranglehold on the small business community. They’ve operated like this for far too long and this recent change has simply gone too far. It needs to stop, now.

As of this writing I have 13 5-star reviews showing on my page DESPITE HAVING 25 OTHER FIVE STAR REVIEWS FROM LEGITIMATE CUSTOMERS. While paying for ads a few years ago when I didn’t know better (was a brand new business), a fake 1-star review was stuck on my page for OVER TWO WEEKS while I was paying Yelp top dollar for ads and they refused to remove it despite my flagging it, emailing them, and calling them - the review had a fake name, was one incoherent sentence, and the reviewer had no other reviews (it was very obvious that it was either a troll or a competitor).