yelp

The Washington Post and job search engine Simply Hired announced Friday that they have inked a deal that will allow Washingtonpost.com users to access Simply Hired's database of listings on the publication's site. According to the companies, Simply Hired's listings will be placed in widgets on news story pages. Most of the listings will be in Washington, D.C., but there will be some national listings, too.

In what may be a strategy Hulu might pursue with more shows going forward, the company announced Friday that it has posted answers from Joss Wheldon, the creator of &… Read more

Dr. Jeffrey Segal has an interesting business. Called Medical Justice, it proclaims on its home page that it is "relentlessly protecting physicians from frivolous lawsuits."

One thing Medical Justice does in its march against frivolity is help doctors get patients to sign "Mutual Privacy Agreements." These appear to be documents in which the patient promises never to post anything negative about the doctor on review sites or blogs. (2,000 doctors are already using these agreements.)

There are many, many words on the Medical Justice site. And I tried to pay attention to them all. So … Read more

Yelp for iPhone contains all the ingredients you'd expect from the well-known business-rating and reviews site, except for one small thing: the capability to write a rated review from the iPhone or iPod Touch. True, two features do provide a workaround: one lets you write short, 140-character tips and observations; the other lets you begin a rated review and save it to finish and post from a computer.

Apart from that, the iPhone app cleanly features user-reviewed listings for restaurants, bars, banks, and so on, utilizing the iPhone's GPS know-how to target your current neighborhood. Each listing squeezes … Read more

NEW YORK--"They have that saying, 'don't shoot the messenger,' but the reason they say that is because the messenger gets shot," Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told me over coffee on Tuesday morning. "So I have to take my shots."

He was talking, of course, about the PR fiasco that ensued when the Emeryville, Calif.-based East Bay Express newspaper published a lengthy expose on the business reviews site, alleging that it strong-armed businesses into paying to remove negative reviews. As a fairly regular Yelp user, I was repulsed by the possibility that its corporate … Read more

A San Francisco Bay Area newspaper says online review site Yelp is using shady business tactics to get advertisers. The charge stems from the disappearance of negative reviews for certain businesses. CNET News reporter Elinor Mills looks into how the problem may be in how Yelp's algorithm works.

Also on Friday's podcast: Netflix might spice up its business model, a new bill asks Wi-Fi providers and ISPs to retain user data for two years, and did a Google Earth user find the lost city of Atlantis?

Today's stories:

Yelp's credibility woes: Blame it on the algorithm?… Read more

Want to find a reputable dentist? How about a cozy bar for that perfect second date? A few years ago, you would have consulted friends. Today, chances are good that Yelp is the place you go.

But what if you found out that some of the reviews were written by hired hands--or that reviews were either removed or placed higher or lower on the page based on whether the merchant was willing to pay Yelp for special services?

Those are the allegations being made in an expose in the East Bay Express this week. The newspaper reported that six business owners said Yelp sales reps promised to remove or move negative reviews in exchange for advertising and that in six other instances positive reviews disappeared or negative ones appeared after owners declined ad deals.

The allegations could have consequences for Yelp, which was founded in July 2004 as a site where people can post reviews and ratings of businesses. It operates in about three dozen U.S. cities, as well as in Canada and the U.K.

In his rebuttal to the article posted on his blog, Yelp Chief Executive Jeremy Stoppelman denies all the allegations and questions the story's sources, including one named source he claims had reviews removed because they were deemed to be fake.

"There is irrefutable evidence that we do not do that," Stoppelman told CNET News on Thursday when asked whether the placement of some reviews is determined by advertising deals. "It's absolutely ridiculous that somebody would say we are going to write a review and call a business (to sell advertising). That's not how you build a sustainable business...Trust and integrity are key to staying in business."

The problem, according to Stoppelman, lies in the company's secret sauce for filtering out reviews.

At the mercy Basically, merchants are at the mercy of a computer algorithm just like Web sites are at the mercy of what is known as the "Google Dance"--the monthly update of the Google search engine's index. One tweak of the Google index can potentially make or break a business.

… Read more

A California dentist is suing a couple for libel over a negative review on Yelp, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

In the suit filed last month in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Foster City dentist Yvonne Wong is asking for damages over allegedly defamatory comments made by Tai Jing and Mia Ma of Los Altos about the care given to their son. The review by "T.J." said the dentist had used mercury in fillings and had given the boy laughing gas, making him "light headed."

Yelp is also named as a … Read more

The lawsuit filed by a San Francisco chiropractor against a patient who wrote a negative review of him on Yelp was settled on Friday, according to the attorney for the defendant.

"This case was settled with the mutual satisfaction of both parties," said Michael Blacksburg, who represented patient Christopher Norberg. The terms of the settlement agreement are confidential and the March trial date will be canceled, he said.

The case had spurred debate over how to best balance the rights of consumers to express themselves on community forum sites with the rights of businesses to protect their reputation. … Read more

User-generated business reviews site Yelp has officially launched a U.K. edition, meaning that no business in England, Scotland, or Wales is safe any longer from the wrath of notoriously opinionated Yelpers.

Yelp had already gained a following in the U.K., the company said, because travelers bound for the U.S. use it to look up hotels, restaurants, bars, and the like. More than 100,000 of its visitors in the past month came from the U.K.

San Francisco-based Yelp, which accepts reviews of any business in the U.S. but also clusters businesses into subdirectories by city, … Read more