Yelp Reviews can make or break your business. Negative reviews on Yelp can result in the loss of existing and potential clients, which results in lost revenue and in some cases bankrupted entire companies."
The primary aggravation for entrepreneurs is that only the negative reviews are displayed. The positive reviews are lowered to a "not recommended" area, which causes them to hard to discover.
Even though Yelp has a filtering system, false and defaming reviews haunt many business owners around the world. But since fake reviews are not allowed by Yelp, you can flag defaming reviews for removal.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on 2-Sep-2014 that even if Yelp did manipulate reviews to penalize businesses, the practice would not constitute extortion…
“the threat of economic harm that Yelp leveraged is, at most, hard bargaining.”