I hate Yelp. I’m not alone. This post will be very low content in terms of fitness and training. I freely admit this is a rant, but I was thinking about this the other day and thought to myself, “you know, Yelp has screwed us (CrossFit Elysium) and a few other businesses over that I know of. Why not tell things like they are?” Maybe some good will come of this, I dunno. Maybe a few of you will stop using Yelp, or a few more positive reviews will show up about us, who knows. I guess every good thing has to start with baby steps anyways, and I can always dream.

Here’s the issue- Yelp is a for-profit site that has the ability to determine a business’ reputation, and thus potentially its success or failure. Fine. However, Yelp also filters reviews via an unknown “algorithm” that somehow always seems to leave negative reviews up and remove positive reviews at random, UNLESS the business is a paying, advertising customer.

Representatives of Yelp will even admit as much on the phone, when they apply their initial extortion tactics. When CrossFit Elysium first opened we were called on a near daily basis by a Yelp representative who wanted us to pay to advertise. I politely told her several times that as a new business, we weren’t in a position to advertise financially, but that I’d consider her offer (a polite way of saying thanks but no thanks). She then proceeded to explain how “as a paying customer, we can make sure that you only have positive reviews. However, if you’re not advertising with us, there’s no way of controlling negative reviews, and even one of those might really hurt your business”. I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like a shakedown, pure and simple. So wait, if I pay you, you’ll make me look good, but if I don’t pay you, there’s a POSSIBILITY I might look bad, golly gee, what should I do? This went on for about a month before they finally got the hint and stopped calling.

Fast-forward a few months. We’ve been open for a bit, you guys are getting fit and having fun, reviewing us positively, etc. Stacie, in her role as Marketing Director, asks for those of you willing to review us on Yelp. Now, I personally would never ask you guys for a positive review. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re paying us to train you, you already think highly of us and I’m not worried about a negative review. Furthermore, if you do have something negative to say, it’s your right to do so and ASKING you not to do it is certainly not going to stop you. Of course, all of your reviews were positive which I expected and appreciated. Lo and behold, we get another call from Yelp a couple of days later inquiring about advertising, to which I again politely decline. Almost immediately, THE POSITIVE REVIEWS GOT FILTERED. Here is a small digression so I can explain what “filtered” means for those of you who don’t know-

- A filtered review has no “stars” associated with it. So say a business has 3 5-star (highest possible) reviews, and one 2-star review. The positives get filtered. The number of “stars” a business has? Two.
- A filtered review can only be read by clicking on a link, which then takes you to a page where you have to enter text to ensure you’re not a bot, and then to the review page. It’s a pain and must be done EVERY TIME you want to read a different business’ filtered reviews.
- Suspiciously, I have yet to see a NEGATIVE review appear in the filtered category. You’d think there would be just as many irrational, negative reviews which get filtered, but I have yet to encounter any of these (even reading about businesses that I KNOW most people hate). The only negative reviews I’ve ever seen have remained in the unfiltered category. I guess if you’re a paying member they make the negative reviews go away entirely.

Anyway, back to the story. You can go to yelp’s page for us and read all the filtered reviews. Note how many of them are from around August 2010. That corresponds to the period that many of you were reviewing us, and then the later filtering.

Yelp drama part II- as many of you know, during Dec 2011 and Jan 2012 we were closed for several weeks in a row. Go figure, those weekends corresponded to Xmas, New Year’s, and our Olympic Lifting Seminar. You may remember that we notified all the members and the public at large via the following ways-
- Website updates on front page
- Facebook updates
- Signs around the gym
- Signs on the front door

Anyway, on the weekend of the lifting seminar a random person came in, hoping to take part in the (cancelled) noon Sunday workout. I met him, and explained that we weren’t holding it on that day, apologized, and invited him to come back next week. He then asked where the notification for this was, and I explained that we put it on the door and our website. He then referenced the yellow sign we have attached to our front railing that says “free workouts every Sunday at noon”. I explained that that sign was not easily removable and for most of year was true so we elected to leave it up. He left, seemingly understanding.

Later, he leaves this one-star review on Yelp-

“I was excited to check this place out. Had heard good things about it. They advertise a free noon class on Sunday that I just went to. Found out the class was canceled for the day. I said its posted on the big sign out side. Was told I didn't read the paper on the door in regular font that the class was canceled. You can come back next week. Stupid me!”

I see the review, and respond with this-

“I am one of the owners of CrossFit Elysium and am responding to Joe K's review below on 1/8/12. First of all, I apologize for you being inconvenienced. The large sign you are referring to, which is visible from the road, cannot be easily removed by design. In general, we are open most Sundays of the year (40+) so it makes sense for us to advertise this fact. When we have our rare class cancellations due to seminars, the holidays, etc. we always post changes to our website and with additional signage on the door (the regular font you are referring to). It isn't easy for us to simply remove the large sign in these instances, and how much advance time should we take it down in? One week? Two? Again I am sorry that you were disappointed but we took reasonable measures to inform people that the class (which, after all, is free) would be cancelled.

I encourage you to give us a try if you're willing. The level of training and customer service we offer may change the "one star" rating you've given us. Thanks!”

This review immediately gets filtered. I fill out another response-

“OK so once again I am identifying myself as the owner of CrossFit Elysium. I wrote a response review to Joe K which may be visible in the filtered reviews. Of course, this review was removed by Yelp, along with TWO other 5 star reviews that had previously been up for months. This is ridiculous. Just b/c I do not wish to advertise or pay a fee to yelp at the current time does not mean I approve of extortion. I am sure this review/comment will be removed as well shortly. I will refrain from putting any stars (if I can) in the hopes this will stay up. Let the user beware.”

As you can see, I took all the steps I could to both a) be polite, and b) make it clear that I was the owner, attempting to make a response. I was not writing a glowingly positive review to try and make my business look good. I was simply trying to tell our side of the story. Yelp didn’t care, AND THEY REMOVED TWO OTHER POSITIVE REVIEWS WHICH HAD BEEN UP FOR MONTHS FOR GOOD MEASURE!

I’m definitely not alone in my opinion. A quick google search of the terms “yelp extortion”, and “yelp filter good reviews” reveals innumerable entries having to do with Yelp’s shady practices, attempts at extortion, and almost vindictive nature of its filter (when you’re not a paying customer). There are multiple class action lawsuits against yelp pending at this very moment due to these and other issues. I hope they win and crush those bastards into the ground.

Anyway, all these experiences have left me bitter and distrustful of yelp (and review sites in general). Prior to this, I would have happily used yelp to help me find a new restaurant to eat at, or a cool place to check out. Now, I have no idea if what I’m reading is truthful or not. What I’d like out of all of you readers, if you’re willing, is-
- Google review us! Google rocks. Make it positive or negative, I don’t care (actually I do and if you have something negative to say, I’d prefer you tell me first so I can try and fix it, but like I said I’m not going to edit what comes out of your mouth). Google makes the world go round. Each time you review us, our web relevance goes up.
- Be like me and boycott yelp. OK, that’s asking a lot. But seriously, if you’re willing… screw those guys.
- Pass this post on to any of your friends. Spread the word! They may disagree- that’s OK! Unlike Yelp, I can tolerate both unsolicited positive and negative feedback.

Coach L

For more info, google “the yelp incident crossfit”. It’s some really interesting reading and shows just how much disgruntled people on the internet can harm a business. The original write-up by CrossFit Albany owner Jason Ackerman has been removed, I think because he made up with the disgruntled yelper, but there’s still enough leftover content on the web that you should be able to piece the story together. Ask me about it in person if you’d like.

Addendum- comment from a friend after reading my post, cut and pasted verbatim:
"YELP IS THE DEVILS SPAWN. My family owns a small business in Nor Cal and Yelp has attempted to extort my family business for a very long time. Fortunately for us most travelers tend to use Travelinsider.com or other travel sites when booking hotels/motels and other travel needs. Yelp has called us attempting to sell ad space. When we declined, moments later positive reviews would be filtered and new negative reviews would pop up. We cross reference the name on the reviews with the guest who stayed at the hotel and none of the names match up. Whenever new positive reviews are posted, they automatically get filtered and coincidentally we receive another call from Yelp wanting us to advertise. This has been going on for a long time. Luckily for us, other sites such as travel insider do not use such tactics and most people who are booking vacations tend to use those sites. REGARDLESS, THIS IS JUST SHADY. I was very disappointed to hear that the class action lawsuit was thrown out because there wasn't enough proof available to prove all the charges. However I did hear that they would be refiling the case. YELP NEEDS TO GO DOWN!!! They have single handedly ruined small mom and pops businesses DOWN WITH YELP!!!!" 

Addendum # 2 as of 3/21/12- Multiples of our filtered reviews, including my responses to the person who complained we were closed are now UNFILTERED. It is almost as if someone from yelp read this post. Who knows; very weird.