Last year, business review site Yelp was the target of a scathing exposé that accused the company of promoting or even fabricating negative reviews in order to get businesses to pay to have them hidden or removed. Now, the company is facing a class action lawsuit over those practices, which attorney Jared Beck said amounted to "high-tech extortion."

In an in-depth article that appeared in East Bay Express last year, business owners said that Yelp sales agents would contact them whenever negative reviews appeared for their business. Representatives allegedly would offer to remove or hide the reviews in exchange for agreeing to buy an advertising contract with the site.

"When you do get a call from Yelp, and you go to the site, it looks like [the negative comments] have been moved," a restaurant owner told East Bay Express. "You don't know if they happen to be at the top legitimately or if the rep moved them to the top. You don't even know if this is someone who legitimately doesn't like your restaurant." The owner said that a sales rep offered to remove negative reviews for $299 per month.

Yelp reviews can often make or break a small business that relies on word of mouth, and business owners have a clear need for a way to address reviews that may be false or make disparaging comments. In our research, we even turned up one "online reputation management" company offering a service to "fix" negative Yelp reviews in a Google search ad.

This ad in Google's search results suggests that the firm can "repair" bad Yelp reviews.

A veterinary hospital in Long Beach, California experienced similar tactics to those described in the Easy Bay Express article. When the hospital contacted Yelp to address false and defamatory claims in a review it received on the site, Yelp allegedly refused to remove the comment unless the hospital agreed to pay $300 a month.

Attorney Gregory Weston, who had done legal work for the hospital in the past, is also working on the class action suit. "This had happened to the client over a period of time," he told Ars. "They were finding very harsh, negative reviews appearing at the top of [their Yelp page], and the [sales] calls were very aggressive. They went online and found that this had been happening to other people, and they forwarded me what they found." After Weston looked into the matter, he agreed to file the case with partner Beck.

"It's one thing if you enter in to an advertising contract of your own free will, but it's another thing if you do that if someone has unfair leverage over you," Beck told Ars. "We think it's unconscionable to go to a small business and say, 'We can take down these negative reviews, and we will if you pay us.'"

The pair have already received a number of calls from around the country, just one day after filing the suit in US District Count, Central District of California. "Today I've talked to two different dentists, in different parts of the country, for example," Weston told Ars. He is evaluating the claims he receives for potential class representatives or others that can offer corroborating testimony.

We asked Yelp to comment on the allegations, and naturally the company disagrees with the characterization of its sales practices. "The allegations are demonstrably false, since many businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews," Vince Sollitto, vice president of communications for Yelp, told Ars. The company notes on its website that only 15 percent of all reviews on the site are one or two stars (out of five).

"These businesses realize that both kinds of feedback provide authenticity and value," Sollitto continued. "Running a good business is hard; filing a lawsuit is easy. We will fight the suit aggressively."

The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Yelp to discontinue practices that are believed to violate California's unfair business practices statutes, as well as requesting unspecified damages.