Potentially a big change for Yelp today: The user-generated review site announces it will warn users about restaurants and other businesses caught paying for reviews.
According to Yelp’s announcement: “Starting today, when we’ve determined that there have been significant attempts to pay for reviews, you may see a warning (like the one below) that some shady practices may be at play.”
The warning only will appear on the offending business’ page for 90 days, then disappear. And, to start, just nine businesses in the entire country have been slapped with the warnings, so Yelp has plenty of work ahead of it.
But don’t expect your mediocre neighborhood tavern’s outlying 5-star review to get it in trouble. This move is aimed at offenders on a much larger scale, such as a Texas business owner who reportedly paid a Bangladesh man $100 to write 200 fake positive reviews (see story).
