I am heartened to see the Internet buzz created this week when news sufraced that Yelp is now embroiled in a lawsuit alleging Yelp is involved in an extortion plot.  Now, whether there is actual extortion going on is beyond my experience — and I wonder if there really was extortion in any circumstance.  Perhaps just really, really inept salesmanship.

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

Bottom line though — the PR nightmare for Yelp is beginning.  If authenticity is what we crave in this hyper-connected time — the lack of authenticity Yelp shows its community will be its downfall.

I get the reasons Yelp might want to pull or flag a review here or there — the whole Yelp for Yelpers’ sake argument… that you ought to be a regular on the site to have your voice heard.  That way, you can trust that the reviews you read are also from regulars.

But in a market like the Twin Cities and their suburbs… how the hell does that make business sense?  Take Red Moon Chinese Cafe, for instance.  In the last year or so, more than a half dozen reviews have been written about my restaurant.  All glowing, positive and supportive.  Each one has been removed by Yelp.  Why?

Beyond my anger as a small business operator — let’s consider the business sense of this move… even if each of them came from fringe Yelp users who aren’t really apart of the “community.”

Yelp is huge in Chicago, San Francisco, Manhattan.  So huge, Google was ready to pony-up mad cash to buy Yelp.  But look to the Minneapolis market to see whether this company has legs… and I cannot find the evidence that Yelp has staying power outside of Minneapolis proper.

If you can’t land the users, Yelp… you have already hit your peak.  And if you want new users, you need to be able to show them there is value in the site.  So when someone goes looking for Chinese food in Eden Prairie, MN and restaurants continually pop up with one or no reviews, people will continue to get the idea that your site is worthless.  Meantime, CitySearch or other Web sites have 10+ reviews for similar listings.

If I were Yelp — I would completely trash the system currently in place that removes reviews seemingly haphazardly.  I would restore every review ever written.  You know why?  Because authenticity is so easy to see for all of us looking to the Web for answers to our everyday questions.  Bogus reviews will appear bogus.  Overly-hateful reviews will appear as such.  Cruel words will be ignored.  The truth will shine through.  We do not need your corporate-wannabe-minders doing our jobs for us, Yelp!  So stop the funny business!

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!