Yelp Outs Businesses Caught Trying to Buy Favorable Reviews

YelpYelp is making it clear that it won’t tolerate businesses trying to purchase good review for their pages on the local search and review site. Starting Thursday, the company began displaying prominent red-bordered pop-up boxes alerting users with this message: “We caught someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business. We weren’t fooled, but wanted you to know because buying reviews not only hurts consumers, but also honest businesses who play by the results. Check out the evidence here.” These alerts will be shown on offenders’ Yelp pages for 90 days. The scarlet-letter endeavor has tagged nine businesses to start. (VentureBeat, TechHive)