No one’s feeling the bite of Yelp’s review filters more than Yelp themselves.
Slated to be the “TripAdvisor for everything else,” Yelp’s heavy-handed, review-crushing filter has lots of small business owners looking elsewhere for listings and reviews. Any positive reviews faked by friends and family are gone, but then, plenty of real reviews – good and bad – are gone, too.
In short, you can’t really automate review editing with a filter. TripAdvisor relies on travel fanatics to prove themselves via multiple reviews. But TripAdvisor will also human-edit where a negative review sounds too fanatical, or a positive review too friendly. But not every broad sector of the market can rely on such a public to correct them. (more…)