Should restaurant owners care about negative online reviews? A
study by Harvard Business School
indicated a one-star increase on a Yelp review can boost a
business's revenue by five to nine percent. It appears then
that low ratings from reviews may do great harm to a
restaurant's profitability. Luckily, websites like Yelp have Content
Guidelines and Terms of Service (ToS) forbidding
reviewers from writing derogatory remarks or factually inaccurate
comments. Yelp's ToS explicitly state that the website reserves
the right to remove any reviews violating Content Guidelines.
In recent times, those reviewed on sites like Yelp have taken
action of their own to bring down bad reviews. They have sued
reviewers to demand deletion of negative comments and to get
compensation for their damaged reputations. These lawsuits have,
for the most part, not been successful. In 2014, a jury found for
neither party in a defamation lawsuit brought by a contractor,
Christopher Dietz,
