From the get-go, Yelp has always been a spammer’s paradise.  Within a day or two of Yelp launching member profile photos, Jeremy Stoppleman emailed me asking me to stop spamming Yelp simply because I used another member’s photo for my own to test out the functionality. I take great pride in having beem Yelp Spammer Zero.

Since then, as Yelp has grown in popularity and importance, the number of businesses and their agents trying to manipulate the service has gone through the roof.  Yelp has done a pretty good job of killing a lot of SPAM, but as we can see with Google, dealing with this stuff is like putting your fingers in the dike hole only to watch 1,000 other holes burst open.  With any popular UGC Web service SPAM is to be expected, but some of the stuff I have seen on Yelp is just plain ridiculous.

So when the lads at Dream Systems Media and I were talking about how bone-headed some of these Yelp Spammers were, they whipped up this classic collection of helpful tips on how to use SPAM Yelp.  Now I am no fan of spammers, but, as the great master himself, George Michael, said nearly thirty years ago, “If you’re gonna do it, do it right.”

 

 

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8 Response Comments

  • Nyagoslav  July 9, 2012 at 9:57 am

    Just a side note: the link to Dream Systems Media is broken.

  • Andrew Shotland  July 9, 2012 at 10:06 am

    Before you can successfully spam Yelp, you need to be able to successfully QA your links. Thanks.

  • Chris Silver Smith  July 9, 2012 at 11:37 am

    From what I’ve seen, one prime inspiration source for Yelp spam you could add would be: Keeping up with the Jones’s — many people turn to spam when their competitors falsely slur their business in reviews — they then try to counteract the negative shill reviews with good ones, and post their own negative reviews on their competitors to return fire.

  • Mike  July 10, 2012 at 8:34 am

    Last I checked, our couseling business had no reviews…one of the downsides for us is that few people we work with are willing to publically review us. Appreciate your sense of humor. Mike

  • Rosenstand  July 12, 2012 at 7:44 am

    Or you could behave in a way that generates huge amounts of good reviews – all natural. Just an idea… 😉

  • Nick Stamoulis  July 13, 2012 at 7:10 am

    If you provide a good service, you will get good reviews. No “spamming” necessary!

  • Tony  October 31, 2012 at 4:21 am

    Jeremy Stoppelman CEO of Yelp is a real winner. Well, no, not really. This man runs a company that not only thrives on negative attention, but refuses to respond to legitimate concerns.

    Don’t take my word for it. See here for yourself what others are saying about this company:

    http://m.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco