Yelp Publishes 2023 Trust & Safety Report
February 28 2024 - 6:00AM
Business Wire
The company closed more than 278,600 user
accounts for violating its policies, and prevented more than 40,700
potential new business pages from appearing on the platform for
being associated with spammy behaviors
More than 23,600 inappropriate reviews were
prevented from publishing on Yelp due to a new system that uses
LLMs to flag potentially inappropriate reviews for evaluation by
the platform’s moderators
Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP), the company that connects people with
great local businesses, today released its annual Trust &
Safety Report, providing insights into the extensive measures the
company took in 2023 to mitigate attempts to mislead consumers,
including efforts that were orchestrated off of Yelp. The report
provides information on how Yelp’s automated recommendation
software helps surface the most reliable and helpful reviews; how
the company combats compensated and incentivized reviews through
various efforts, including an index of Consumer Alert recipients;
the extensive work to remove inappropriate content and bad actors
with new technology leveraging large language models (LLMs); how
Yelp moderates business pages that gain public attention and takes
action to protect consumers from abuse of the legal system; and
more.
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the full release here:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240228422659/en/
Of the reviews contributed to Yelp in
2023, about 20% were either not recommended by its automated
recommendation software or removed by its User Operations team as a
result of the company's extensive trust and safety measures (as of
December 31, 2023). (Graphic: Yelp)
“Defending the integrity and quality of content on Yelp is the
foundation for everything we do,” said Noorie Malik, vice president
of User Operations at Yelp. “As we release our 2023 Trust &
Safety Report, it’s clear that our rigorous approaches that blend
advanced technology with dedicated human moderators uphold Yelp as
a reliable resource for our users. In fact, the Journal of
Marketing Research recently deemed Yelp as a ‘Guardian of Trust’
and we are consistently working on new ways to further maintain the
trust and safety of our users.”
Key findings from the 2023 Yelp Trust & Safety
Report:
- Approximately 22 million reviews were contributed to Yelp in
2023, up nearly 6% from 2022.1
- Of these reviews, about 78% were recommended by Yelp’s
automated recommendation software, which helps surface the most
helpful and reliable content to consumers. Additionally, 16% of
reviews were not recommended, 4% were removed by Yelp’s moderators,
and 2% were removed by reviewers themselves.2
- Yelp relies on its community of consumers and business owners
to report reviews that they believe violate the company’s policies.
In 2023, Yelp removed more than 207,300 reported reviews, with 26%
of these reported reviews being removed for not sufficiently
reflecting a firsthand consumer experience.3
- More than 278,600 user accounts were closed for violating the
company’s Terms of Service, including suspected deceptive or
abusive behaviors.4
- The platform prevented more than 40,700 potential new business
pages from appearing on Yelp for being associated with spammy
behaviors in violation of Yelp’s policies — up 24% year-over-year.5
- Yelp also removed more than 1,500 business pages for being
associated with lead generators, or bad actors that attempt to
create fake business pages with the goal of generating leads and
auctioning them to other contractors.6
- Yelp strictly prohibits compensated and incentivized reviews.
In September 2023, the company began indexing recipients of
Compensated Activity Alerts and Suspicious Review Activity Alerts
to make it easier for people and regulators to identify suspicious
review behaviors.
- 99 Compensated Activity Alerts were placed on business pages
after Yelp received evidence of someone offering payment or other
incentives in exchange for writing, changing, preventing, or
removing reviews.6
- 589 Suspicious Review Activity Alerts were placed on business
pages after Yelp detected a large number of suspicious positive
reviews coming from a single IP address, or reviews from users who
may be connected to a group that coordinates the buying or selling
of online reviews.6
- In 2023, Yelp saw a 50% year-over-year increase in alerts
placed related to an inordinate number of suspicious positive
reviews coming from the same IP address, a common tactic used to
inflate a business’s rating.6
- Yelp made more than 1,300 reports to other online platforms
(such as Facebook, X, Pinterest, and more) to warn them of content
from more than 900 suspicious groups, posts, or individuals found
on their sites attempting to trade or pay for reviews.6 Other
platforms took action related to only 54% of incidents Yelp’s
investigators reported — down nearly 30% from 2022.
- To rein in reputation management companies, Yelp filed a
lawsuit against Reviewvio in December 2023, which offered “review
gating” services to local businesses. This deceptive practice
involves only inviting consumers with positive feedback to write a
public review, while criticisms are diverted to non-public
communications. Reviewvio also falsely claimed to be able, for a
fee, to remove “bad reviews” from Yelp and other online review
platforms.
- To keep potentially inappropriate content off of the platform,
Yelp integrated LLMs to its automated systems to detect and flag
reviews with egregious instances of hate speech, vulgar language,
or threats for the company’s moderators to evaluate before they are
published to Yelp. This update enabled its moderators to prevent
more than 23,600 reviews from ever publishing to Yelp.3
- Since determining whether content is inappropriate can be
context specific, Yelp also continues to rely on users to report
content that may violate its Content Guidelines. As an additional
line of defense, Yelp’s human moderators removed more than 28,800
reported reviews for containing threats, lewdness, hate speech, or
other potentially inappropriate content.3
- Yelp proactively removed more than one million photos for
violating its content policies.6
- Relatedly, in 2023, Yelp enhanced its neural network-based
systems to better detect photos that may violate its policies, and
introduced a new system that proactively removes suspected
inappropriate video content. These systems flag visual content for
Yelp’s moderators to review before they are published on the
platform.
- As part of Yelp’s broader Consumer Alerts program, 986 Unusual
Activity Alerts and Public Attention Alerts were placed on Yelp
pages related to a business gaining public attention, resulting in
the removal of more than 49,100 reviews.3
- 60% of these alerts stemmed from a post associated with a
business that went viral on TikTok, X, Facebook, or other social
media in 2023.3
- At times, the legal system can be misused to silence consumers,
which is why Yelp often objects to legal demands that seek personal
user account information. In 2023, Yelp avoided producing
information related to 97% of user accounts that were the subject
of legal demands from law enforcement, government agencies, and
private parties in 2023.3
- The company places Questionable Legal Threat Alerts on business
pages when it receives evidence that a business may be abusing the
legal system. In 2023, 53% of these alerts stemmed from gag
clauses, or contractual terms that attempt to prohibit consumers
from posting feedback about goods or services.3
For more information, read Yelp’s 2023 Trust & Safety
Report, as well as a blog post and one-pager, which provide a
high-level overview. Assets and images from the report can be found
here. To learn more about the ways Yelp maintains the integrity and
quality of its content, visit trust.yelp.com.
1 Data is sourced globally as of Dec. 31, 2023, and reflects
reviews contributed from Jan. 1, 2023 through Dec. 31, 2023. This
number has been rounded and includes reviews that are currently
recommended, not recommended, or that have been removed. 2 Reviews
removed by Yelp’s moderators or reviews removed as a result of
account closures for content policy violations. Yelp users can
remove their own individual reviews or remove all their reviews by
closing or deleting their accounts. 3 Data is sourced from the U.S.
only. 4 Data is sourced globally. These account closures stem from
both user reports and proactive investigations. When an account is
closed due to suspected deceptive or abusive behaviors, the
associated reviews are removed as well. 5 Data is sourced from the
U.S. and Canada. 6 Data is sourced globally.
About Yelp Inc.
Yelp Inc. (yelp.com) is a community-driven platform that
connects people with great local businesses. Millions of people
rely on Yelp for useful and trusted local business information,
reviews and photos to help inform their spending decisions. As a
one-stop local platform, Yelp helps consumers easily discover,
connect and transact with businesses across a broad range of
categories by making it easy to request a quote for a service, book
a table at a restaurant and more. Yelp was founded in San Francisco
in 2004.
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Yelp Inc. Julianne Rowe press@yelp.com
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