I’m getting really frustrated with Yelp.com.  For the third time in a year — its internal policing system (whether automated or human-directed) has removed three reviews of Red Moon from the restaurant’s Yelp business page.

Star-rating? Gone. Two reviews? Gone. Why are Yelp.com's legit-police all over Red Moon? It's unfair and uncalled for!

All three happened to be positive reviews.  Two were posted by acquaintances of Red Moon but neither was done because we asked anyone to.  In fact, I didn’t know about the reviews until a new customer traveling in the Twin Cities from Chicago told me she loved our food and was so glad she discovered the reviews written on Yelp.com.

Now those reviews are gone.  And a genuine and involved “Yelper” like that gal from Chicago cannot benefit from the thoughts those writers had about Red Moon.

Recently, I put up a framed placard at our front counter asking Red Moon fans to share their love of our food online… the display includes logos for four Yelp-like sites including Yelp, Citysearch, Metromix and Trip Advisor.  I was told this was not an ethical violation (in a Web 2.0 sense).

This fall, a sales person from Yelp tried to get us to purchase an advertising package that would get us prime page ranks and sponsored links on Yelp.  I was very interested because I’m very interested in Yelp.  What could be greater for a small business owner than a social media site whose sole purpose is to promote organic buzz (both good and bad) about businesses among the very consumers who frequent them?

Ultimately, we declined to purchase advertising because Yelp’s organic participation is clearly what makes it great.  We did not see that level of participation out in the suburban Twin Cities… so I couldn’t justify the cost of advertising with Yelp… yet.

I learned from the sales rep that Yelp’s self-policing metric is complicated — and allegedly a very separate entity from the sales team, which I appreciate.  But apparently the system looks for criteria including whether reviews are posted by people who are either frequent contributors or return-visitors to the site.  If not, like perhaps our reviews, the posts get flagged as suspect.  I can see how this contributes to the Yelp-for-Yelpers purity of the “community.”  But I wholeheartedly think that it goes way too far in penalizing business owners and operators who are working their asses off to build and maintain a transparent and fair Web presence for themselves.  When will Yelp cut us a break?

I ask that anyone from Yelp with veto power restore the reviews to our site’s page — because they were organic, honest and real.  It’s the least you could do in maintaining Yelp as the site I hope it was meant to be!