There has been a lot of buzz lately about a recent article on Thursday in the East Bay Express, an alternative weekly in Emeryville, Calif,  In the article, owners of businesses who appear on Yelp claim that Yelp salespeople told them they could move bad reviews lower down on the page in exchange for advertising.   The article quotes some managers (some are anonymous) who said no to the offer, only to see their positive reviews mysteriously disappear while their negative ones move up the page.

Yelp swiftly denied participating in such practices, posting a response from their CEO on their site.  They took issue with the East Bay Express citing anonymous sources (no less than five) as well as the accusatory tone of the article.  Friday, the CEO wrote again about other articles backing him up.

Whether or not Yelp has or currently engages in the types of practices cited by the East Bay Express is not clear.  What is clear is that reviews in general – of products, of restaurants, of services, of anything really, are increasingly looked at with a degree of caution, perhaps even doubt.  Where are reviews coming from?  Were people paid to write them?  Can a manufacturer game the system?  While nothing is foolproof, Yelp is partially scrambling because they know, as do we, that when credibility crumbles, so does your business.

As I’ve posted about before (when writing about a recent scandal involving Belkin), Buzzillions employs a number of methods to ensure credibility.  Many of us here at Buzzillions, use both Buzzillions and Yelp, so we are watching this news story unfold, in the hopes it has more to tell us about how to protect our hard earned reputation.