Yelp Received Over 18.1M Reviews in 2020, and Roughly 25% Were Not Recommended

Trust and safety are the words of the day at Yelp, as the business directory and crowdsourced review forum debuted a new Trust and Safety website, released its 2020 Trust & Safety Report and detailed a key update to its recommendation software aimed at thwarting review exchange groups. The new site provides a central hub where people can learn about the processes, programs and technology that enable Yelp to maintain the integrity of its content and protect its community of consumers and business owners. Information available on the site includes insights on Yelp’s automated recommendation software and its consumer alerts program, as well as details on how it moderates content. Trust and Safety website also provides health and safety data and the business attributes that are available via Yelp’s platform to help users find businesses that align with their values. The 2020 Trust & Safety Report offers a comprehensive look at steps Yelp took to safeguard its community last year, and key findings included: Yelp received over 18.1 million reviews in 2020. More than 4.5 million of them, or about 25%, were not recommended by its software due to suspicions that they were conflicts of interest, fake, less useful, solicited or otherwise less reliable, while another 710,000 (roughly 4%) were removed for violating the platform’s policies.Yelp published over 2,500 consumer alerts on business pages, up 93% from 2019, to alert people about egregious attempts to manipulate ratings and reviews. The most common alert published last year was its unusual activity alert, with a 206% year-over-year increase in media-fueled incidents.From May 25 through Dec. 31 of last year, Yelp published 550 public attention alerts on business pages of businesses that were either accused of or the target of racist behavior.Over 1,200 user accounts were closed for being part of review rings.More than 5,200 reviews were removed between March 1 and Dec. 31, 2020, for violating Yelp’s content guidelines on Covid-19, while from May 25 through year-end, over 13,000 reviews were removed for threats, lewdness, hate speech or other harmful content.Some 100,000 user accounts were closed due to suspicious, fraudulent or abusive behavior.As of Dec. 31, more than 745,000 business pages reflected health and safety precautions implemented at businesses, with one-half of those coming directly from owners.Since the start of the pandemic, over 1.5 million business pages reflected new operating hours, while more than 505,000 indicated virtual service offerings such as consultations, classes and tours. Head of trust and safety product Sudheer Someshwara explained the update to Yelp’s recommendation software, saying in a blog post that there has been a rise of review exchange groups in recent years, and those groups engage in activity including flooding sites with fraudulent online reviews and buying, selling or exchanging those reviews. He added that the new software update will better identify reviews that likely originated from those groups, estimating that some 177,000 currently recommended reviews out of the 224 million-plus that have been contributed to Yelp to date will be affected and not recommended anymore, and roughly 154,000 businesses may see reviews become unrecommended. Reviews that are not recommended are still visible via a link at the bottom of the business page, but they are not factored into overall star ratings or review counts. Yelp reported almost 200 online groups to other platforms last year to help shut down fake review rings. Someshwara wrote, “Yelp’s recommendation software is our first line of defense to mitigate misinformation on our platform. It’s engineered to provide consumers with the most helpful and reliable reviews and to level the playing field for all businesses. The software does something no human can by regularly analyzing billions of data points from all reviews, reviewers and businesses to evaluate the usefulness and reliability of each review.” He added, “Consumer trust is Yelp’s No. 1 priority. We’re dedicated to providing the most helpful and reliable information to consumers and cracking down on any attempts we find to mislead people on our platform. Combating the spread of misinformation is something we invested in early on, built our platform around and established systems and processes that continue to scale over time.” Yelp wrote in the conclusion to its 2020 Trust & Safety Report, “While looking for the best pizza place near you may be important for your Friday-night dinner, every day, people are making critical and sometimes sensitive searches on Yelp—whether they’re looking for locksmiths after accidentally getting locked out of their homes, local mechanics to help them get to work on time or in search of the best pediatricians or mental health specialists in their neighborhoods. When consumers need to make important decisions about which local business may best suit their needs, it’s critical that they can trust the reviews they read on Yelp to reflect real customer experiences. That’s why Yelp has spent over a decade developing technology and policies to cultivate helpful and reliable content on our platform.” The company added, “For some business owners, managing an online presence may seem intimidating and, at times, overwhelming. At Yelp, we work to make the process as easy, intuitive and seamless as possible. Over the years, we’ve introduced a number of free products and features to streamline the management of a Yelp business page. And behind the scenes, we’ve been protecting local businesses for more than a decade by making sure the businesses with the most resources or marketing dollars can’t manipulate their reviews to put their competitors at a disadvantage, and by mitigating misinformation attempts from malicious actors who try to game our system.”

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Yelp Received Over 18.1M Reviews in 2020, and Roughly 25% Were Not Recommended

The platform released its 2020 Trust & Safety Report, unveiled a new website and detailed changes to its software

David Cohen

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