http://thecornersf.com/2009/04/im-done-with-yelp/

To summarize, Yelp removed five positive reviews — including one that was over a year old. The owner of Weird Fish claims that they came after Yelp tried to sell him advertising and he turned them down.

Although it might normally be unlikely that a company would be open to an independent investigation to clear up the issue, I’m not sure if Yelp really has a choice. Jeremy himself implied that everyone is on Yelp now since people don’t trust Citysearch recommendations. People are starting not to trust Yelp’s recommendations because of these allegations. So if Yelp doesn’t want to wind up in the same place as Citysearch, they’ll need to prove their innocence to the Yelp community, not just claim innocence based without any real data to back it up.

Unfortunately, in the court of public opinion, it’s not always innocent until proven guilty. And speaking of court, if Yelp was hands-down innocent wouldn’t they have sued for slander by now? The fact that they haven’t yet makes me suspicious that it’s not as cut-and-dry as Yelp is claiming.

He interviewed yelp for the commonwealth club-
http://www.yelp.com/events/san-francisco-commonwealth-club-in-conversation-with-jeremy-stoppelman-and-russel-simmons
He is quoted in another NYTimes article on yelp:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/business/smallbusiness/21yelp.html?fta=y
in San Fran Mag:
http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/one-town-wonder
He is even quoted in official yelp press releases:
http://press.abc-directory.com/press/3824

Greg’s services include:
* Monthly retainer arrangements
* Project-specific consulting
* On-site speaking engagements

I guess my point is that I would like to show that Greg is not impartial towards yelp and does in fact have a vested interest in maintaining a positive relationship with yelp. If Greg said “yelp did something immoral” then there goes his access to data from yelp, access to yelp’s CEO, and a possible client for the services he provides.

You rightly say that anecdotes are not an acceptable basis for drawing conclusions. I wonder, though, why you seem to find the anecdotes presented in the East Bay Express more convincing than those presented by Yelp (do you?). I suppose Yelp has a vested interest in keeping the public’s trust, but the East Bay Express has a vested interest in getting eyes on the advertisements in their pages.

I would like to hear Greg address the claims head-on; specifically, that without a before & after view of advertisers vs non-advertisers we cannot address the question of extortion.

Please read the east bay express article and the follow up article. The allegation being made is that business owners who were not already part of yelps’ advertising program were being extorted with yelp saying that positive reviews would go away if they did not join the ad program and that bad reviews would go away if they did. The article does not state that current advertisers could call up yelp at any time they wanted to censor the reviews they did not like. The NYTimes article did not interview a business owner that was approached by yelp to join their advertising network.

If you read the NYtimes article closely and to the end the last paragraph states:
Yelp’s lack of transparency does not affect its relationship with businesses alone. It also risks eroding users’ trust in the site. Eric Kingery, an engineer and frequent Yelp user in Chicago, discovered that a review he had written of a jeweler disappeared. “It just makes me suspicious of the impartiality,” he said. “It is a very useful service, but this kind of harms the integrity of the site.”

This last statement in the article is an allegation of review manipulation and contradicts the conclusion of your post which is that: “This article, however, should put to rest the allegations of review manipulation to reward or punish small business advertisers (or prospects) at Yelp”

I fail to see how the NYTimes article debunks the east bay express article at all. The NYTimes article does not mention a situation similar to the original eastbay express article but instead points out at the end that review manipulation is indeed occurring at yelp.

“A one-star review of Tart, a Los Angeles restaurant, illustrates the impasse. “The turkey meatloaf was gritty and cold and I waited 45 minutes for my second $28 margarita,” one reviewer wrote in January. The restaurant’s owner, Peter Picataggio, complained to Yelp that he does not serve turkey meatloaf and the most expensive margarita on the menu is $25.

He asked Yelp to remove the review, and although he advertises on the site, the company refused. “If they’re going to take my money, I think the onus is on them, not on the business, to go and prove whether it’s true or false,” he said.”

If yelp were manipulating reviews or holding out its promise as an incentive to advertise then this wouldn’t happen. That’s what I was referring to. You didn’t read the article closely enough.