The court rules in favor of the review website Yelp after a group of small businesses sued the company for the alleged tampering of reviews.
A group of small-business accused the online-review site of altering user reviews and questioned the authenticity of the website. Some accussed Yelp to post negative reviews on the site just to earn ad dollars. These leads consumers confused whether to trust the 42 million feedbacks on the site, ranging from nail salons to restaurants to spas to orthodontists to gyms to hotels.
The Court of Appeals ruled this week that it's not extortion whether Yelp tampered with the reviews or not. They said that it's the company's discretion whether to lower or raise the ratings on the website. It depends on whether the website are doing it for advertisers or not. The court further said that small businesses do not have the right to impose on the website to give positive reviews.
Judge Marsha Berzon said, "The business owners may deem the posting or order of user reviews as a threat of economic harm, but it is not unlawful for Yelp to post and sequence the reviews."
Yelp is reportedly satisfied with the court rulings but insisted that have never manipulated any review. In their official blog, they wrote that they had fringe commentators for the longest and some of them took the accusations to court in 2010.
"We are obviously happy that the Court reached the right result, and saw through these thin attempts by a few businesses and their lawyers to disparage Yelp and draw attention away from their own occasional negative review," wrote Yelp on their blog.
The California-based review site launched in 2004 started as an email service catering to the exchange of local business recommendations. It soon launched mobile apps and social networking features.
