Snippet of the story:

During interviews with dozens of business owners over a span of several months, six people told this newspaper that Yelp sales representatives promised to move or remove negative reviews if their business would advertise. In another six instances, positive reviews disappeared — or negative ones appeared — after owners declined to advertise.

Because they were often asked to advertise soon after receiving negative reviews, many of these business owners believe Yelp employees use such reviews as sales leads. Several, including John, even suspect Yelp employees of writing them. Indeed, Yelp does pay some employees to write reviews of businesses that are solicited for advertising. And in at least one documented instance, a business owner who refused to advertise subsequently received a negative review from a Yelp employee.

Why even go there? If word of this gets out enough (which it should) then their reputation will be completely blown. You can’t trust the reviews any more. Whenever visiting the site, people will now have to ask: Did Yelp employees write some of these negative reviews to make money? Were there a bunch of negative reviews taken down already for money? Yelp Fails.

I can’t see Indy.com doing this. But there are a couple other sites in town that I suspect will need an eye kept on them.

I’ve written for Yelp as a contract “scout” and, after that was done, simply a contributor. You see stories like this pop up all the time, of course. As a food critic, I can confirm that a restaurateur or other small business owner will do anything to shift the blame if and when he gets a bad review anywhere. Fact is, there are plenty of stores around Indianapolis and beyond that have stickers that say “People on Yelp love us.” They aren’t advertising (I’ve asked).

I go on the forum quite often to read reviews before I check out a new place, and I’ve never noticed any fishy patterns to them. I’ve written quite a few positive and negative reviews myself, and none have ever been shifted around—I take that back. One I had written had been flagged by a business person, because I had relayed that a person at their establishment told me I couldn’t ask them any questions or take any photographs as a Yelp scout. Yelp removed it because they said it wasn’t germane to most people’s experiences. I can assure you, the boutique in question did not advertise. They had no idea what Yelp was, I believe, before finding my review of them.

But if you don’t believe me, how about doing a real story on the subject yourselves, Chris? I mean, if you’re going to talk about unethical and then repurpose two paragraphs of another paper’s copy … that’s getting into hypocritical territory.