Yelp’s Legal Troubles Mount

A San Francisco furniture store this week added its name (and court papers) to the list of small businesses accusing Yelp of extortion.

By Courtney Rubin | 

Mar 18, 2010

Via @s4xton I just heard about the lawsuits (now numbering threee) alleging Yelp blocks positive site reviews unless a business pays for advertising or will filter out negative reviews if you do buy. Yelp is denying it and says that the complainants don’t understand how Yelp’s filtering works in protecting users from fake or “shill” reviews. My own guess is that there are some aggressive (and possibly rogue) Yelp salespersons who are writing their own scripts.