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I caught yelp fudging all sorts of their advertising numbers red handed (with plenty of photos from multiple sources)...should someone do something about this? (self.legaladvice)

foleycapecod が 投稿

(boston) all images and bacstory are in the photo album http://imgur.com/a/tn2MR

am i seeing something different, or is this as blatant and illegal as it appears to be at first glance?

ps: that last stat graph says they sent me 14 clicks randomly...google says they sent me 0.

i could screen shot that if anyone would like.

pps: someone asked why this would be illegal...ummm, at first glace (i'm no lawyer, but what i see anyway) tax fraud? consumer fraud? money laundering. defrauding investors. ....am i wrong here?

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[–]jus_in_bello 14ポイント15ポイント  (20子コメント)

Damn right someone should do something about this. I'm giving Yelp a one-star review as we speak. /sarcasm.

What law, exactly, do you think they are breaking?

[–]foleycapecod[S] -4ポイント-3ポイント  (3子コメント)

like....tax evasion? consumer fraud? money laundering. defrauding investors.

pretty much all the major ones i guess

[–]TheCatGuardian 29ポイント30ポイント  (2子コメント)

pretty much all the major ones i guess

I am particularly fond of this comment.

Can you explain what exactly you think they are doing that would lead to those charges. EIL5, since we are not seeing the path here.

[–]teraflop 12ポイント13ポイント  (5子コメント)

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're just not paying any attention to what's on those pages, as opposed to actually being an idiot.

Obviously the totals for November 2015-October 2016 are going to be different from the totals for a single week in February. And obviously the number of people who visit your Yelp page is going to be much larger than the number who click through to your website.

Were you not given the opportunity to set a budget for your ad campaign? If so, are they going over your budget, or are you just not satisfied with how much you got charged for each click? Hate to break it to you, but that's just how ad auctions work -- if you got charged $5/click, that means you're competing with other businesses who were willing to pay just as much.

like....tax evasion? consumer fraud? money laundering. defrauding investors.

No, this is not money laundering, and if you think it is you might actually be an idiot.

[–]foleycapecod[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

i only had the advertising for 3 months as a free trial (that they wanted $170 for)...i dont'' still have it i only showed febriary because it was the only full month the advertising was running.

i dont claim to be a genius, but i'm not drool on myself retarded either. the graph is ONLY for feb 2016. thats why i put my mouse over it. and commented on it, and compared it to feb in google analytics. it was the only full month the "ad" ran"

and none of the numbers match up

did you not look at the reports they sent me or any of that? i did not have yel advertising in nov 2015, and i cetainly don't have it now lol.

i had it from the last week in jan 2016, to the first week of march 2016. it was supposed to be a free trial. but now they want $168 or it...and they went and changed all the numbers like 8 months later.

and $168 for 15 clicks over a month and a half period is fucking insane by any standard,especially for a free trial price.

[–]teraflop 12ポイント13ポイント  (1子コメント)

I honestly can't understand why you would expect any of those numbers to match, because they're all measuring different things, and each of them quite clearly explains what it is.

  • The first graph shows that there were 1,020 views of your Yelp page. That has no correlation with anything from Google Analytics, because Google can't show you activity that happened on yelp.com.
  • The totals in your email reports are each for a single 1-week period. The totals don't match because the emails you posted don't cover all of February.
  • Google Analytics says you actually got more visits from Yelp than Yelp is charging you for. Image #2 shows 15 sessions referred from yelp.com in February, and image #6 shows that you were charged for 10 ad clicks. (This is probably because, like most search advertising providers, Yelp deals with "sponsored" and "organic" ad clicks, and only 10 of your clicks resulted from your ad campaign. The other 5 probably came from normal search results, and would have happened even if you weren't paying for ads.)

As for the "free trial", I have no way of knowing what trial arrangements you made with Yelp. Do you have anything in writing saying they were going to give you free ad clicks?

EDIT:

and $168 for 15 clicks over a month and a half period is fucking insane by any standard,especially for a free trial price.

Ha ha ha, no it's not. First of all, 12+10+3 is 25 clicks over 3 months, not 15. And secondly, a cost of $7 per click is totally reasonable in a lot of situations; it all comes down to how competitive the market is. Ads on Google for keywords like "insurance" or "attorney" can easily run $50/click.

[–]masterxc 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's why the $50 adwords credits are pretty much a drop in the bucket. When I tried starting a small business (just myself doing computer repair) ads were very expensive and the credit was gone in a week even though it generated no clicks (they charge per impression regardless).

[–]nikapo 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Agree that's an insane price, but if people aren't clicking your ad, how is that yelps fault? If they display it as agreed and no one clicks it, that's because the ad isn't enticing enough to check out. Your ad isn't going to be the only ad on the site.

[–]overcomebyfumes 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yelp's whole business model has been extremely shady for a long time. I'm a small business owner, and I refuse to deal with them for this reason. Google "Yelp extortion" sometime. It's really eye opening.

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Original Post:

Author: /u/foleycapecod

I caught yelp fudging all sorts of their advertising numbers red handed (with plenty of photos from multiple sources)...should someone do something about this?

all images and bacstory are in the photo album http://imgur.com/a/tn2MR

am i seeing something different, or is this as blatant and illegal as it appears to be at first glance?

[–]TotesMessenger 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

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