Yelp Added COVID And Vaccine Policy Tools

It was reported in several sites that more businesses around the U.S. are choosing to implement vaccine requirements for patrons or staff. To cater to these growing requirement, business discovery and review site Yelp is introducing new tools that allow businesses to communicate those changes to their customers.

Last 5 August, Yelp begun rolling out two profile attributes, "Proof of vaccination required" and "Staff fully vaccinated," to help consumers to understand how a business is operating with regard to the pandemic.

While there is no federal mandate for businesses to require proof of vaccination, some cities are introducing their own policies. Recently, New York City became the first to require proof of vaccination for indoor restaurants and gyms, and, San Francisco is now exploring a similar set of mandates. Other cities may choose to follow suit in the future.

In addition, local business owners across the U.S. are implementing their own measures outside of federal or state guidance, including requiring masks or proof of vaccination for customers, or requiring their staff to be vaccinated. These choices often come at a price, as the businesses risk social media backlash and bad reviews from the anti-vaccine crowd.

Yelp's new features will represent an attempt to help mitigate that reaction, the company explains.

Yelp says it will proactively leverage a combination of automated systems and human moderators to safeguard businesses from attacks from customers if a business opts to activate either of the two new options related to their COVID vaccine policies.

Though the company has long since had systems in place to address "review bombing" incidents, Yelp says the practice has gotten worse in recent months.

In the past, businesses that gained negative public attention may have had an influx of reviews from those who didn't have a firsthand experience with the business in question, which violates Yelp's policy. Yelp may then alert a visitor to the business's page that there's the potential for fake reviews or that there had been spikes in unusual activity. The company will sometimes even temporarily block users from being able to leave reviews. And in some cases, Yelp will also need to remove false reviews or those that otherwise violate its policies.