Opinion

A 1-star, unfiltered user review of Yelp ON BUSINESS

At the Gold Dust Lounge in San Francisco on Friday morning, I observed many of the Yelp executives celebrating the successful initial public offering of their online restaurant and entertainment review service. I hope it works out for the investors, but I have my doubts.

As a longtime restaurateur active in the industry and previous board member of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, the California Restaurant Association and the National Restaurant Association, I think the way Yelp treats businesses and Yelp users doesn't bode well for it.

Yelp reviews of my restaurant, Fior d' Italia, are a perfect example of the flaws in the Yelp system. The Fior has been around for 125 years and has been successful because of great food and service. But if you look at the Fior Yelp site today, the restaurant has 218 posted reviews averaging 2 1/2 stars, with many terrible one-star reviews.

What you don't see (unless you look hard for them) are the 115 "filtered reviews," which average out to a ranking of more than four stars. That is a current problem for the Fior, and in the long term, a problem for Yelp.

Yelp claims the use a secret algorithm to review reviews but can't explain how it filters out good reviews and leaves bad ones of businesses like mine. This bias and secrecy will not serve them well. Fairness and openness would serve everyone better, but that isn't how Yelp works.

Over the past year, I have attempted to get some clarity and assistance from Yelp. I have had no success except that its sales staff has repeatedly advised that if we would only advertise with them, they could "help us."

We believe that is extortion.

Many others share our concerns. Yelp doesn't listen. There have been several suits filed in regard to these concerns and more coming. Again, that cannot bode well for Yelp.

I and others have asked Yelp to adopt what we believe to be reasonable solutions, including:

1. Don't filter reviews. If the site is supposed to be "Yelper" driven and democratic, so be it. Post them all!

2. Allow businesses to opt out. Not that we have opted in, but if we don't want to be on the site, then take us off.

3. Give businesses a chance to post comments or respond at the top of their Yelp page where the public can read it before going to the reviews.

4. Post the filtered reviews where they are easy to find and review. Many customers of ours have had their reviews of the Fior filtered out, and they are livid. They don't understand why this is done, nor do we.