Imagine that your business is receiving phone calls from Yelp, unsolicited, trying to sell advertising space. How many times do you have to say “no thank you” until you finally reach the end of your patience? One business wants “no” to mean “no” in every aspect.
It has been revealed that Yelp had received over 2,000 complaints filed with the FTC. Of these complaints, some allege that Yelp goes so far as to push positive reviews into its filter until businesses pay up. This has smaller companies wondering if Yelp is even worth the hassle anymore. Yelp doesn’t ask permission to list a business, and seems to lobby businesses aggressively to pay for things like pushing competitors down in rank.
To one small business owner, the message was clear: contract reviewers or face irrelevance. Many small businesses find themselves in this precarious position, where reviews are a necessary evil to doing business.
Yelp has been accused over the years of everything from aggressive advertising to extortion by business owners across America. The website boasts 108 million monthly visitors and a total of 42 million reviews posted to date.
Ripoff report is starting a new program in May called Ripoff Report Verified to give businesses the chance to resolve disputes in 14 days before negative reviews are posted for a hefty $90 per month. This may have a positive effect on their Google and Bing rankings.
If you haven’t heard, it’s rumored that Yahoo is going to buy out Tumblr. The growing site is a huge attraction to young people, something that Yahoo wants a piece of. However many critics of this deal fear that this is going to be the end of Tumblr.
The rise of social media has paved the way for a growing number of social media tools.
In a video published April 24, Matt Cutts addresses the question: Does linking two sites together violate Google’s guidelines?
During the SMX West panel in March, Matt Cutts announced that a major Penguin update will hit the web sometime in 2013. Penguin was designed to dock rankings for sites that violate Google’s quality guidelines or practice black hat SEO techniques; it’s also designed to reward sites with high quality content. The upcoming tweak is expected to be the biggest update to the algorithm this year. When will it roll out and what can you do to prepare?
Bing has unveiled two new features in Bing Webmaster Tools: Malware Re-Evaluation and Geo-Targeting. The new Malware tool makes it possible for users to detect and monitor malware, while the Geo-Targeting feature helps users provide Bing with information about their target audience.