Yelp is sharing on the backlash some companies have confronted attributable to pandemic security measures like masks necessities. The firm says it took down greater than 15,500 evaluations for violating the corporate’s COVID-19 tips in 2021. That’s a 161 p.c enhance in contrast with the identical interval (March by way of December) in 2020, when the corporate first applied new insurance policies relating to COVID-19 associated content material.

The stats, which the corporate revealed in its 2021 Trust and Safety , provide a glimpse into how the pandemic has affected the overview website. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the corporate has applied guidelines to mitigate COVID misinformation and encourage companies to comply with public well being necessities. For instance, reviewers are from criticizing companies for implementing pandemic security measures, like masks and vaccine necessities. The firm additionally permits companies to point and different

At the identical time, although, Yelp has needed to navigate a in “review bombing” attributable to pandemic-related restrictions. In all, almost 25 p.c of all “unusual activity alerts” — when a enterprise’ web page sees a sudden inflow of reviews that “appear motivated by a recent news event rather than actual consumer experiences” — in 2021 have been associated to the pandemic, in keeping with the corporate.

The pandemic wasn’t the one supply of overview bombing Yelp handled over the past yr. The report notes the corporate positioned alerts on greater than 80 companies, and eliminated greater than 2,800 evaluations, for “incidents related to the Capitol insurrection,” after reviewers owned by alleged rioters. The firm additionally positioned alerts on 90 companies attributable to overview bombing stemming from TikTok.