Is yelp.com Safe?

I am a co-owner of a small business in Nashville, TN. We've been in business 2 years. We listed our business on Yelp before we found out all of their unethical practices. Early on we had one bad review that was posted. Since then 10 positive reviews have been removed. All of which were legitimate customers that wanted to say something good about us. Yelp has been very unfair. I've emailed them twice with no answer. I've read that because we haven't paid for advertising on their site they keep removing our positive reviews. Google what I'm saying and you'll find a ton of information about it. Truly uncool and should be addressed immediately.

Misleading, biased and filtered public comments to lean in a particular direction that does not regard the public's best interest, a website that contradicts it's appeared purpose - to give an honest evaluation both good and bad of a business or it's services. I no longer trust Yelp, but can not say I've received any viruses, etc., from scrolling thru their planted customer comments.

Many, many good reviews. None bad. Only one shows from 3 years ago. Their system is faulty and from what I have been reading and hearing, they are likely manipulating their own system for their own gain. At the cost of the very business owners who have volunteered to participate. I hope they fix their ways. If not, then I look forward to the day they are taken down hard.

BEWARE...YELP is the WORST site. They extort for advertising. Do not trust anything from YELP. Actually there should be a class action suit filed against them. Hopefully they will then be out of business. WORST company ever. They are responsible for hurting many small businesses due to those businesses not wanting to pay for advertising. They filter all good reviews.

Yelp contacted me to pay $300+ a month to advertise on them and when I declined, their sales rep Shay Keeler from Texas was very rude to me. Since then all my positive reviews have been filtered and one single negative review left by a user with a newly created account remains unfiltered. Why would they filter yelpers with hundreds of reviews and years of account ownership, but leave up the review from someone who created an account on that very day to leave just one negative review? How would a working filter not catch that?

Filter good reviews if you refuse to pay to advertise on their site. ***** *****

This is a scam, a lot of shady things are going on in this site: ***** ***** ***** This site is the worst thing that could happen to a bussiness.

Yelp has to be one of the most UNETHICAL, HORRIBLE businesses I've EVER come across. I feel like they are literally the mafia of the internet. They will allow people to post false bad reviews about your business, then filter the good reviews, especially if you refuse to buy ad space. It's ridiculous.

In principle, Yelp COULD be a useful tool. The problem is that the 'filtering' of reviews is neither automated nor random in nature. Yelp relies on irate consumers who eagerly vent their bad experiences in the form of bad reviews. When soliciting a business, Yelp's sales people openly admit their intent to remove bad reviews for a price. With a mafia protection racket, failure to pay results in Guido being sent to harm the business or business owner. With Yelp, the damage is the result of information that is readily made by the general public. Essentially, yelp is operating a protection racket where "online reputation" is the threatened commodity. If the mafia took Yelp's example, they would supply the general public with goons to carry signs with 'negative reviews' in front of businesses. For businesses who pay, the good squad is sent home. Poor Guido would never again be called upon to break someone's effing fingers. Such a tactic is unfair to everyone - especially Guido. Bad businesses are being extorted to have bad reviews removed. This means good businesses are put in direct competition with extorted bad businesses. This means the general public is gambling every time yelp reviews are used to make a decision. Thank you Yelp for providing a biased and terribly unreliable source of information!

As of today, June-27-2012? So why...does WOT display YELP as "excellent Trustworthiness" when all the recent comments below provide ample evidence that it's not. Web Of Trust? Crowd sourcing doesn't appear to be working here. Have you looked at YELP recently? What do you think changed here since your first comment posted back in December 2008.