Yelp Grows while Lawsuit Dies…
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There was a lot of fury from doctors over Yelp last year. Being down the street from Yelp here in San Francisco, we heard about every story imaginable (and some that we could never imagine!) about what was happening to our own doctors on review sites. As many of you recall, doctors & small business owners finally had enough and filed suit against Yelp for unfair business practices. These claims were born from allegations of “extortionist practices” where negative/positive reviews were being displayed based on what a doctor was paying Yelp in advertising fees.
Yelp recently won their motion to dismiss this suit based on what the judge found to be insufficient evidence of the extortion claims. The judge, Marylin Hall Patel, stated that the plaintiffs did not “appear to argue that Yelp ever explicitly threatened to harm their business, through manipulating user reviews, if they refused to purchase advertising.” Because the plaintiffs alleged only an implied threat, the lawsuit was dismissed. But, there is still some hope for the plantiffs as they still have another week to refile the lawsuit.
The most interesting thing about this ordeal is that even with the backlash & negative publicity stemming from Yelp’s legal troubles – the site has nearly doubled their monthly visitors since the lawsuit was filed! Over 50M people now use Yelp every month to find everything from dinner to a doctor… proving that even with the lack of transparency and potential for abuse, patients are still finding online reviews more important in their decision process than what they read about you on your own website.
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