Poor Yelp. In addition to seeing lunatic business owners breaking into their downtown office--a recent incident, at least according to our sources--they're continually hit with allegations of manipulating users' feedback on businesses that advertise. That is to say, Yelp, according to many, practice a kind of advertorial blackmail. Or, so says some small business owners who possibly fear the interwebs.

So, in an effort to squash said allegations, according to AP, "Yelp is adding links to take visitors to those once-hidden reviews — a change that gives businesses and individuals a rare peek at decisions rendered by the popular startup's software."

Although Yelp won't admit why they shunned the reviews, "Yelp CEO and co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman said Monday that the company wants to make people understand that Yelp does give all businesses fair treatment, despite allegations that advertisers are favored." Stoppelman writes on the Yelp blog, in a post called We're Increasing Transparency and Eliminating 'Favorite Review', "Despite our best efforts to educate consumers and the small business community, myths about Yelp have persisted" and that unfiltering any and all reviews will "make it even clearer that displayed reviews on Yelp are completely independent of advertising -- or any sort of manipulation."

See, Yelp has a fancy program that allows the site to automatically review and remove Yelp posts deemed "potentially unreliable" (e.g., a business owner writing a shit review about a competitor). Now, it seems, those reviews are now available for all to see.

Although class-action lawsuits have been filed against the site claiming otherwise, Yelp still maintains that they do not "manipulate reviews aside from letting advertisers choose one review that they want to feature at the top of their page."