OK, here I go. I own a small business and I saw the YELP application on the Iphone apps store so I downloaded it and thought that it was pretty cool. I saw that you could advertise on there and I decided to do it. I would like to note that it is probably a terrific site for restaraunt reviews however the company is still very new and it is not exactly a "go To" place for finding in my case a plumbing company.I would say it was a poor decision at best to advertise with them especially when they guarantee you 450 impressions per month and they offer no way to track how many impressions you actually get they only offer for you to track how many page views and ad clicks you get. It would be better if you could pay per click and this is not offered.I will tell you that so far this month I have had only one click. So instead of paying anywhere between .50 per click to even an extravagant 40.00 per click you are actually paying about in my case so far $350.00 for one click!!!Also if you write a review that they don't think you should write they censor it and take it off. I think that as long as you are behaving yourself and writing a healthy review and not being obscene that the review should stand.
I would also note that if you try to cancel your paid advertisement that you have to write to them to cancel and then they get a pushy salesman to call you and when you tell them you want to cancel they don't listen and send you an email saying how much they enjoyed the chat and thanks for advertising with us and your next automatic payment is scheduled.I know that I canceled..I was there I heard me say it!! How could they possibly be that difficult to deal with? I have sent several emails to cancel and they just don't get it. I think that yelp is a great idea but I think that the company needs a lot of maturing. I would like to try it again in the future if it gains in popularity but only after I am more confident of their policies....
One of the other ridiculous things is that once you put your information on the profile they LOCK it and you can't change it and that includes your credit card number !!! After trying unsuccessfully to cancel paid advertising I tried to go in and remove my credit card information and it was locked.I just tried before writing this.I wrote another email to them and I wonder if they will get the picture. I wonder if I am going to have to get in touch with the bank and block them or if I need to get a lawyer to get them to listen to me...I don't know what to do.anyways if you read all this thanks I just needed to vent this frustration.

Ok im not a professional writer but also I would like to point out that if you search for plumber it pulls up plumbers and also if the word plumber is mentioned in someones crazy rant about the plumbing in a restaraunt stinking. This is tolerable unless you are wanting to actually find something you are looking for or want to be found by appropriate customers.

I will return here and complete this review after this issue is resolved and I will let you know if they make up for this ridiculous experience.
By the way heres my website shameless plug haha www.fixxercompany.com

I have found this to be a really helpful site. You can see that everyone has their own opinion and look at the different writing. Some of the writing goes on and on. It does seem to be helpful for rating restaurants. I am a little worried with some of the reviews that the business may be sending in the review themselves.

YELP in HELL!
We pray YELP goes bankrupt and sinks to the bottom of hell, and takes its MAFIA YELPERS with them. We pray that GOD shows no mercy for all the personal damage and EXTORTION they have inflicted upon small business owners and the children they support. YELP is a den of snakes and deserve to BURN for the lies and slander they spread on the world wide web.
Pray Psalms 140 for their destruction.
Say 5 times..."Archangel Michael destroy YELP! now"

This was my review of Yelp on Yelp right before I left. True Story.

"Oops, Yelp is overworked and cannot handle your posts right now"

Yelp sucks. It is filled with ugly, bitter, opinionated people who have nothing better to do than sit on the internet and type out verbose reviews to justify their existence.
I've been to a few UYEs and it is filled with overweight, horny douchebags. Seriously, why does the internet attract such people? Only on Yelp do people of dastardly character get any attention at all. I couldn't tell if it was a UYE or if I walked into a D&D convention.
Unfortunately the girl's seem desperate enough to have sexual intercourse with these fat fucks, so the economy of yuckiness seems to be working.
Why would any sane person want to join Yelp? I don't know. Maybe Yelpers that look sane are just that, they look it.

If I could award 0 stars I would. This site sucks.

The reason I was so pissed was they were censoring my replies to a thread made on their boards about me. However other people were allowed free reign to post whatever bullshit they wanted about me, including the false rumor that I had herpes.

When I first moved to LA two years ago, I had no idea where to go for good eats. I would randomly try out places reviewed on food blogs but you can never account for individual tastes. Yelp channels the power of the MASSES - and because of this website I have found countless awesome restaurants to go to that have become my favorites. The best part is how many user submitted pictures there are, can't find that on any other food rating website.

Minus one star because not all the votes on yelp are equal in weight and value. That's not democratic, yelp!

Worthless

Neat site. Sort of like a poor man's (or more accurately, rich man's) RateLocal. It's basically the yellow pages morphed with user reviews morphed with social networking. It really is a nice concept, and these guys did a very good job with their site. What I don't like is the hipper than thou feel of the site. It seems a little smug or something. And after a while, it's only so much fun to rate restaurants and bars and drycleaners... The site lacks the breadth of stuff to rate that RIA has.