Yelp Launches List of Businesses Caught Buying Fake Reviews

Yelp has uncovered almost 5,000 businesses involved in deceptive practices such as offering incentives for positive ratings or employing individuals to fabricate reviews since 2012. Presently, the company has introduced a new feature to assist users, and potentially authorities, in identifying businesses that have attempted to manipulate their reputation on the review platform.

Yelp is releasing a new index that tracks every US establishment it’s ever caught engaging in “suspicious” behavior to influence its ratings. The company has made some of this information available in the past. Yelp sends temporary alerts to business pages when it finds fake reviews, and publishes regular transparency reports detailing its monitoring efforts. However, the directory is the first time the company has provided a single location where users can find historical information about all companies that have ever been subject to such an alert, as well as a current list of companies with active alerts on their pages.

For Yelp, the index is both the latest step in its long-running war against fake reviews and a sign of a changing regulatory environment in which fake reviews are increasingly coming under scrutiny from regulators. The FTC recently proposed a formal ban on fake reviews and fines of up to $50,000 for companies caught buying, selling or manipulating online reviews.

Yelp has said it supports such a rule. Noorie Malik, the company’s head of user operations, points out that the company has previously worked with the FTC to notify them when it finds fake reviews and the sometimes complexactiveI “We’d like to get to a place where this new directory evolves into a regular resource for others, whether it’s the FTC, consumers, regulators or other sites,” Malik tells ReturnByte.

But he’s also quick to point out that the index is also meant to help Yelp users make “educated decisions” about where to spend their money. While you may not think much of visiting a coffee shop that has previously paid people to leave positive Yelp reviews, your feelings may be very different if you’re looking for a contractor to renovate your home or a daycare or moving company (all of which appear in the directory).

Of course, fake reviews aren’t just a Yelp problem. Malik notes that fake reviews are often coordinated among review groups organized on other websites. “We also hope that it will inspire other assessment platforms to take a stronger stance against the reduction of enticements and incentives,” he says.