Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking. Login or Take a Tour!
Sounds like this guy might just be unhappy with his results.
I have heard the claim a few times that Yelp scores do improve for those that advertise. The real test would be to see if the filter changes after advertising with them. There is a potential conflict-of-interest there. Of course Yelp doesn't want paying restaurants to be unhappy with their Yelp experience, but at the same time, changing it based on payment would be extortion. It seems they had some lawsuits filed against them a couple of years ago, which led them to allow merchants to see filtered reviews: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/04/06/after-lawsuits-yelp-m...