Yelp Bombing is when users choose a business or entity on Yelp and leave false or exaggerated reviews. On April 16th, 2013, the political news blog Daily Kos published an article reporting that Yelp was extorting small businesses by filtering positive reviews Highlights Yelp Bombing Prior to being archived, the post gained upwards of 3,200 up votes and 720 comments. In March of 2010, a group of small businesses filed class action lawsuits against Yelp for "extortion and fraudulent business practices." On September 4th, 2012, Redditor cstaerns86 submitted a post to the /r/food subreddit, which claimed that Yelp had dropped his sister's restaurant rating by filtering most of the positive reviews after she declined to pay for the site's advertising fees. The owner was subsequently arrested and given a restraining order. On November 3rd, 2009, a San Francisco bookstore owner confronted a Yelp user at his home who had given the store a poor review. In February of 2009, the Oakland, California publication East Bay Press published an article reporting that local businesses claimed Yelp offered to hide negative reviews if they payed for advertising. The fairness of Yelp's review system has been called into question several times over the years, with many suggesting that friends and competitors of local businesses can attempt to skew ratings. Community features include a reputation system, direct messaging and a web forum. With moderator approval, users and business owners can update listings with up-to-date information. The local search feature allows users to find listings for keywords in a specified area, which can be filtered by price, distance, category and neighborhood. Suspicious reviews are filtered by an automated algorithm to prevent manipulation of the system. Yelp allows users who have created an account to rate and review business listings on the site. On September 16th, 2011, the Harvard Business School published a paper studying Yelp's effect on restaurants, which found that positive Yelp reviews lead to an increase in revenue for small, independent establishments, while chain restaurants seem to have suffered as Yelp grew in significance. In January of 2010, the venture capital firm Elevation Partners invested $100 million to increase Yelp's sales staff. By February of 2008, Yelp was active in 24 major cities. By 2006, over 100,000 reviewers had joined the site. That year, Yelp launched the "Yelp Elite" category to reward super users on the site, who received invites to special Yelp events. In February of 2005, the site was relaunched with a focus on unsolicited review writing. Yelp was founded in October of 2004 by Max Levchin, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons.
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