My Thoughts on Billion Dollar Bully, the New Documentary About Yelp
I finally watched the long-awaited Yelp documentary Billion Dollar Bully. It was a lot to process, and it's taken me a while to put all my thoughts to paper. I had heard the documentary had been funded through a Kickstarter campaign a few years back, and I was excited by what the filmmakers were trying to do. It was an ambitious project involving local business owners accusing Yelp of extortion and was supposed to provide unique insight into Yelp's business practices. I didn't directly contribute to the campaign at the time, but I had been waiting for word that the film would actually see the light of day—it took quite a long while. The main cause of the delay was that far more business owners than the directors had anticipated had come out of the woodwork and wanted to be involved in the film,. Hearing about this only further stoked my anticipation to see the final product.
Alleged manipulated ratings and heartbreaking small business stories
Now that I've seen the film, which focuses primarily on the troubling experiences told firsthand by several business owners, I came away with mixed feelings. From the outset, the stories and allegations seemed compelling, detailing disturbing examples of Yelp allegedly coercing small businesses to purchase advertising, or otherwise face lower star ratings. There are a few audio recordings of Yelp salespeople that are played throughout the film, and I found those to be particularly damning. Other business owners mention incessant phone calls from Yelp sales reps. Several participants in the film mentioned that when they refused to advertise with Yelp, they saw an immediate uptick in negative reviews or authentic positive reviews filtered – essentially buried from view. Some of the stories sounded heartbreaking, detailing lost business as a result of negative star ratings that don't reflect the actual experience of customers. Most of those interviewed are speaking about very personal details of their business, and the impact Yelp has had, and it certainly struck an emotional chord.
Yelp stays far away from factual disputes
A fair amount of this documentary was devoted to fake reviews and businesses not being able to effectively dispute reviews they deemed fraudulent. There was repeated mention of the difficulty in talking to a human at Yelp about an issue with a business owner's profile—apparently, the only way was to inquire about buying advertising. There's a great piece from Slate that sheds light on this documentary and the harsh reality of business owners who are not able to get one-to-one support from Yelp to resolve tough issues like disputing fake reviews, and how Yelp categorically avoids getting in the middle of factual disputes. Another interesting point was the idea that businesses can't opt-out of being on Yelp. Once a profile is created, either by the business owner or someone who wants to leave a review, the profile endures.
For viewers with a functioning heart and ability to feel empathy, it's understandable that this film could leave an impact, especially for a casual Yelp user who isn't aware of the controversies and accusations that have surrounded Yelp for years. Like many others, that was my first immediate impression, but if you venture beneath the surface a bit, there's a murky ocean to explore.
A bitter taste of disappointment
While the film strives (and largely succeeds) to feature these business owner stories as emotional gut punches, other aspects of the film don't work at all, and in fact undermine the goal of the film, which in essence is to lay out clear evidence of Yelp's alleged extortion of small businesses. I found the pacing and flow of the documentary to be jarring and lacking structure. There was also a surprising absence of depth into Yelp’s business practices and clear information on how the featured business owners used the site. The film also features interviews from "experts" critiquing Yelp but doesn't clearly give viewers a solid indication of their background or specific expertise they have. There's an obvious lack of organization and narrative, and the entire end-product seemed incredibly murky as if the filmmakers wanted to leave it up to the audience to decide how bad Yelp is (or not). Given how many years went into making this film, I got the sense that the filmmakers themselves didn't really gain a clear in-depth understanding of what was going on. That nagging feeling that the film is skating along the surface leaves a viewer wanting.
I noticed a consistent dearth of polish throughout this documentary. For a film that is trying to lay out a damning thesis, the many issues compound together and undermine what the directors are trying to do. After thinking about the film for a few days, I got the sense that the filmmakers tried to overextend themselves to "take down" Yelp, and cut way too many corners. The end result was a true mixed bag.
I also found an interesting site called Review Fraud that digs into the documentary and turns up some evidence of a few of the business owners in the documentary actually engaged in an effort to post fake positive reviews. The site also examines some sentiments and topical trends in the reviews present on their Yelp profiles and turned up similar language suggesting that some reviews posted by these businesses may not be authentic. Yelp takes active measures to penalize businesses who try to manipulate their platform, and if some of these business owners were engaged in these practices, perhaps they have ulterior motives for wanting to participate in the film and being angry at Yelp. I'm sure there are business owners involved who have had true issues, but it's unfortunate that the filmmakers perhaps didn't do enough due diligence, and the end result is a film that stands on incredibly shaky ground. Simply looking at some of the business profiles on Yelp with a critical eye would have enabled them to find some suspect issues.
Hilariously, the filmmakers behind Billion Dollar Bully failed to secure the domain for their own film, www.billiondollarbully.com, so Yelp acquired it. The URL redirects to Yelp’s response to the claims mentioned in the film.
My own experience with Yelp
Even before grappling with the allegations of Yelp the film details, I had my own frustrations with the site, as a user, and also through my work in Online Reputation Management. I've never liked Yelp's review filter, where certain reviews deemed "untrustworthy" or "unreliable" are pushed to the bottom, grayed out, and hidden from view. Their algorithm is secret, and Yelp claims to have improved this process in order to weed out reviews that don't meet their standards. However, I have often seen reviews for local businesses I check out that are filtered, but seem totally legitimate and helpful. It seems the review filter places more value on reviews from a highly active user, versus the new user who created an account to post their first review.
As a user, it only takes a few seconds to find an inflammatory Yelp review that doesn't focus on the actual experience, and instead expectations, or minor issues unrelated to the actual business service. It's almost like that feeling when you type out an angry, emotionally charged email that you know you probably shouldn't send, so you don't. But so many Yelp users don't think twice before posting. My point is—it takes a while sometimes to find content on the site that I deem valuable or helpful.
Through working with clients in an Online Reputation Management capacity, I've often fielded questions about Yelp, and put together proposals that include managing Yelp profiles for clients. However, for clients looking to improve their online reputation, I've often found that other sites present better immediate opportunities. A few years back, I attended a conference session presented by executives from Yelp, and my experience there has certainly framed how I advise clients and build proposals. For starters, Yelp doesn't believe that business owners should be directly or indirectly asking their customers to leave reviews. Instead, businesses should focus on building a great service, a compelling product, and an enviable Yelp profile, to ensure that reviews happen organically.
One Yelp executive told a story during his talk that really has stuck with me. A moving company franchise had a ton of locations, and many Yelp profiles and they were all doing REALLY well with reviews—4.5-star averages, or even higher. Not too shabby! A team at Yelp did some investigation to see how this business was doing so well across their locations, and soon found that the movers would constantly hold customers items in the moving truck hostage—as in, they would not unload the truck unless the customer left a glowing 5-star review, then and there. As you can expect, Yelp cracked down hard on what this business was doing. The franchise was apparently kicked off the platform altogether once this malfeasance was uncovered—far worse than the prominent, red profile advisory that some businesses get slapped with for violating Yelp's terms.
No arm twisting of Yelpers allowed
Yelp maintains that a business asking customers to leave reviews is analogous to twisting arms, and could lead to heavily biased review content that isn't helpful for the Yelp community. I personally don't agree with Yelp's perspective, as asking customers to leave authentic feedback in the right way can be an important way to build up a struggling or neglected review site profile. But that strategy has to be reserved for other sites—Yelp is a different beast, and they set their own rules for managing their platform. Instead, creating a trail of breadcrumbs that leads to a company's Yelp profile is the way to go, and that aligns with their terms of use. It's all about reminding customers "Hey, check us out on Yelp!" instead of blatantly asking for a review.
While there are certainly ways for businesses to optimize their Yelp profile, it becomes a long-term play—a short-term surge in reviews isn't on the table. With this in mind, I've long examined the nuances of Yelp for client proposals I've drawn up, but always through the lens of adhering to Yelp's terms of use. It also is important to note that businesses that advertise with Yelp have access to more organic profile management features, such as a unified dashboard to manage multiple locations faster. This does not mean the ability to boost reviews or anything of the sort, but rather other useful tools to manage the day-to-day activity happening on a business’s Yelp profile.
Putting your best foot forward on Yelp
Since buying advertising on Yelp can help reach more potential new customers (with the right strategy), it's really up to every business to decide the extent to which they want to leverage Yelp. Even if a business doesn’t advertise with Yelp, Yelp for Business Owners provides several useful free profile management features, with some monthly paid upgrades as well. I firmly believe that it's foolish for a business to ignore Yelp simply because they don't like it. That kind of neglect is a recipe for a toxic, problematic digital storefront. But Yelp doesn't have to be kryptonite for a small business. There are plenty of strategies to effectively maintain a local business profile. A profile has to be effectively managed over the long term to eventually function as a brand asset. My initial advice would be the following:
Don't devote a huge advertising budget towards Yelp from the outset. Start small, and closely evaluate results. It's far better to focus on the fundamentals with organic Yelp management first.
For an Online Reputation Management strategy, don't focus solely on Yelp. Effectively optimizing and managing Yelp profiles should be in the mix, but there are other online review "digital storefronts" like Google My Business, that are critical.
NEVER ask customers outright to leave a review, or give them an offer or discount to do so. It will only invite plenty of pain later—Yelp will find out and take punitive action on the profile, at least.
Respond to every authentic review, with kindness, empathy, and professionalism. Responses to negative reviews are critical opportunities to show the business's side of the story, so don’t blow it with an emotional and impulsive response that you'll sorely regret later.
Make sure all business information is correct, up-to-date, and aligned with the brand website, along with all other social media platforms and business listings
Optimize the profile in every possible way with the tools provided by Yelp. Posting up-to-date and attractive photos is critical, and if your store hours change, don't forget to update that, too!
A Yelp profile doesn't have to cause excessive pain to local businesses—any painful outcome likely happens due to neglect, or inadvisably gaming the system. It simply has to be effectively managed the right way to become an effective asset for your business. It’s a digital storefront, like it or not, and letting it fall into disrepair is a recipe for trouble down the line. As silly as it sounds, if the thought of letting the front entrance, signage, and design of your brick and mortar store go by the wayside makes you recoil in horror, the same thing can happen if your Yelp profile is put on the backburner.
Mute the noise and get value from Yelp
From a user perspective, it's important not to solely rely on Yelp reviews to make purchase decisions, decide where to grab dinner—or really anything else. Instead, it should be one tool among many that you can utilize when the need arises. It's an undeniable fact that consumers turn to online reviews consistently these days—sometimes even relying on them more than family and friend recommendations! Online reviews will persist, but it often takes some critical thinking to get the best information you need.
Does a certain review seem authentic? Does it talk about the actual experience at the business, or does it focus on expectations? Do the negative reviews speak to true experiences, personal attacks, or something else? Are the positive reviews a bit too good to be true, or do they have individuality, specific details, and quality writing, which would indicate a true experience? It's also a great idea to actually manually inspect reviews that are filtered at the bottom of the profile, and make a judgment call for yourself if they are valuable or not—don't passively rely on Yelp to tell you what is and is not reliable.
At the end of the day, Yelp is a publicly-traded company that is first and foremost all about increasing shareholder value. Yelp exists to serve its shareholders first, and business owners and consumers after that. Its platform is far from perfect, so it's important to navigate the site armed with a keen awareness of its issues. Yelp has weathered many a controversy since they became publicly traded in 2012. I will be curious to see where the company goes, and how their policies might evolve to build better experiences for business owners and users.
If you watched Billion Dollar Bully, or have any other thoughts on your own experiences with Yelp, let me know what you think in the comments below! Thanks for reading.
