Yelp has been taking heat lately for what basically amounts to extorting restaurant owners for positive reviews (which one San Fransisco restaurant is fighting back against) and now we’ve come across a company that is seemingly paying people to write positive reviews. Noooope, nothing shady about that. The ad, which is still currently up on Craigslist, reads:
We are looking for Yelpers who are interested in making money part time working from home publishing Yelp Reviews we receive from our client’s customers as testimonials!
We will:
Forward you the business page
Forward the comments
Forward you the pictures.
AND PAY YOU THROUGH PAYPAL!All you have to do is copy the comments and place a 5 star review for the businesses we ask you to place the review for- and that’s it!
You get paid for each review we send you and place that becomes recommended and not filtered.
Of course, there’s actually nothing technically illegal about what they’re doing, but it doesn’t lend too much to the integrity of Yelp, if the word “integrity” is even applicable to a company that posts unfiltered user reviews. I admit, I usually use Yelp reviews to check out a restaurant beforehand, but I don’t think I’ll be doing that anymore. I will however, still go to Yelp to look at pictures of food in restaurants because they’ll never take that away from me.
(Via Jezebel)