YELP NOW HAS COURT PERMISSION TO CHANGE RESTAURANT RATINGS FOR MONEY

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has recently ruled that Yelp can revise, edit and prioritize business reviews based on advertising money that the site receives from the business.

This high profile ruling really destroys the veil of impartiality that Yelp was benefitting from for all these years.  Now its crystal clear that Yelp may (although they have not admitted that they did) delete bad reviews for a restaurant that places an ad on its site and similarly delete positive reviews given for a restaurant that refuses to place ads on the Yelp site.

Seems that this is a real wake up call for all of us (myself included) who thought that Yelp reviews were not being edited, deleted or possibly even created by Yelp itself.

#restaurantlawyerinny