My solution2.0

If want to avoid having to pay protection money to standover merchants Yelp, don't run a business that targets the navel-gazing hip net set but one that targets another demographic. Go after the baby-boomers as they have the hard cash while the navel-gazing hip net set only have access to "not so easy since the gcc" credit.

If the navel-gazing hip net set are stupid enough to rely on such a flawed, open to abuse and corruption service as the Y, then, if you were a business person, you wouldn't want to rely on such stupid and vain people as the navel-gazing hip net set to put food on your table.

protection racket

It's just another protection racket. "Be a pity if those bad reviews showed up. We can bury them... for a price." It's got nothing to do with providing good service or good value for money. It's all about placating another gang member - the Yelp gang.

Negative reviews?

When you look at the reviews of a Amazon or Ebay seller, are you influenced by the experience of a single person, or by the reviews of the majority?

In order to be impacted severely by a negative review, it'd more or less have to be backed up by many other negative reviews or be the only one for the business.

Most people aren't like this imo. I don't particularly want to see restaurants I like go out of business and the reasons ought to be obvious. If I get good service and good food then I'm better off. Getting a free meal once or even twice and then losing somewhere I enjoy going to a month later is not exactly doing me any favours. I'm pretty sure most people would see the logic in this.

And besides, most of the time if the business is decent you like the people working there. Any semi-decent person wouldn't want to see them lose their jobs.

You get twats of course, but I would think these would be in the minority, and if the business is any good, the positive reviews would overwhelm the negative.

Unscrupulous Scoundrels and Phantom Skullduggery

A Sub-Prime Start-Up far too easily Perverted and Converted for Upstart Abuse...... which given the Ignorance of Man, will Guarantee its Abusive Use. To then, Nevertheless Offer it, must raise a few impertinent questions for the Promoters/Pimps to answer.

Sheffield strangely missing

No navel gazing here lad, you want Hull.

Obviously never worked retail

"Getting a free meal once or even twice and then losing somewhere I enjoy going to a month later is not exactly doing me any favours. I'm pretty sure most people would see the logic in this."

There is a subset of consumours out there that love the free meal, weather it be an actual free meal or a free gift voucher etc.

Unfortantly they have been bred by companies and managers ignoring the staff who say "this is BS/he has no case/it was his fault, he broke it/its not broken " and saying "yes, sir , no sir, 3 bags full sir"

While its a good thing the site is there and yes people should see the majority of reviews, amazon/ebay reviews only really work cause you are pestered to review on a sale so you get both the GOOD reviews and the bad

Remeber (and this is important and will be shown i think), people kick up a fuss when they are annoyed about something, are nice and quite when they are happy and contented (basically people will be more willing to write complaint letters than tahnk you letters, another thign people working in retail will know)

Who are all of these people....

That have been "clamouring" for Yelp UK?

Where are they? Why have they got nothing better to do with their time?

Out of date already?

Where did they scrape the data for their list of businesses? Yellow pages 1994? Just looked at the Aberystwyth area and there are businesses listed that closed years ago. There's a museum listed that shut its doors over a decade ago!

Web 2.0 is SO 'now'.

@Chris Cooke

Quote: ".......our initial efforts are focused on London, and that's where we had a scouting program set up,"

And you're surprised when this turns out to be true why exactly?

The provincials must be delighted that this foetid pile of bollocks has been foisted on The Smoke.

The UK visitors to the US site...

"more 100,000 UK users visited Yelp's original US incarnation over the past month"

Yes, and every single one of them only ended up on the Yelp page because something they searched for happened to be on that page... They quickly discovered they were on an American site and left as it was irrelevant to them.

Sometimes I really wish we didn't share the same basic language!

@Nigel Crockford

Hint; She's probably second/third/something generation Japanese.