Reputation Armor

Two law firm have filed a suit against Yelp for allegedly extorting Cats & Dogs Animal Hospital, based in Long Beach, Calif., in order to take down a negative review.

Beck & Lee Business Trial Lawyers in Miami and The Weston Firm in San Diego filed the suit, according to a Web site that the two firms created.

Both firms painted Yelp as a Web site that preyed on small businesses to increase its sales commissions.

From the suit:

“Kevin [a Yelp sales employee] said that Cats and Dogs could advertise with Yelp for a minimum payment of $300 per month, with a minimum 12-month commitment. Kevin stated that if Cats and Dogs purchased a one-year advertising subscription from Yelp:

a. Yelp would hide negative reviews on the Cats and Dogs Yelp.com

listing page, or place them lower on the listing page so internet users

“won’t see” them;

b. Yelp would ensure negative reviews will not appear in Google and

other search engine results;

c. Yelp would allow Cats and Dogs to decide the order that its reviews

appear in on its Yelp.com listing page; and

d. Cats and Dogs could choose its “tagline,” i.e., the first few lines of a

single review shown on every search result page in which Cats and

Dogs appears (for instance, “Veterinarian in Long Beach”).”

Yelp has denied the suit, telling The New York Times:

“Yelp provides a valuable service to millions of consumers and businesses based on our trusted content. The allegations are demonstrably false, since many businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews. These businesses realize that both kinds of feedback provide authenticity and value. Running a good business is hard; filing a lawsuit is easy. While we haven’t seen the suit in question, we will dispute it aggressively.”

As the lawsuit’s Web site notes, The East Bay Express has done its own investigation of Yelp, and came up with some damning evidence of its own.

Reputation management is a term often thrown around the Web as a way to respond to criticism (warranted or not) before it gets out of hand and a brand is damaged. But Domino’s Pizza is proving that reputation management can go a long way as an offensive manuever; before any damage has actually taken place.

Domino’s new ad campaign skewers their own product; with the intent of selling a new, tastier brand of pizza. You might have already seen the spots or heard them on the radio. It can be quite alarming (or at least eyebrow-raising) to hear a company blast its own product. For example, one spot features the voice of a past Domino’s customer saying, “Domino’s pizza crust to me is like cardboard.” The commercial then goes on to announce Domino’s new formula, including new crust and sauces. As little as just a few years ago, such a tactic was unheard of. Not anymore. Not in an age if empowered consumers.

Domino’s does not need a lesson in bad publicity in the Internet age. Just last year, employees did plenty of brand damage by posting YouTube videos documenting the mistreatment of food before serving it to customers. This time, however, Domino’s is striking first. It’s a bit of reverse engineering that might start a new wave of reputation management tactics as brand promotion, not damage control.

Read the entire article…

Yelp.com is becoming a reputation management issue for many businesses. One question we get a lot at Reputation Armor is “Can you remove my company from yelp.com”. In short the answer is, no you can not delete the yelp.com page about your business completely. It is rare for yelp.com to remove a business completely from their website.

So what is the solution?

The only true solution to dealing with negative Yelp reviews is to try and increase your positive reviews with Yelp (Which they sometimes prevent from happening), or bury the Yelp links about your company deep within search results so people do not see the negative reviews easily when they search for your company.

For more information on removing negative Yelp reviews contact Reputation Armor.