Yelp Unfair and Unclean Practices?

[SCLTeamShip]

I discovered that one of my competitors, a new and mysterious company with a business name that reeks of spamming- is now on first page thanks to the few reviews received through Yelp.

A few days ago, they were not even part of the game, and suddenly they are propelled to the top among big companies. I never heard of this company with a fishy business name such as I LoveKeyworddotcom.

The key phrase I am talking about took me a lot of work, and we are still not on first page at this stage- there is a lot of competition for it.
Curious to see how this new company got to the top for this key phrase, I investigated further.
Our company is also on Yelp, minus the reviews.

It would be no problem for our company to receive good reviews, but I don't know if that would be enough to help get us on 1st page, as well. So, I kept digging a bit more.

I discovered  some strange things about this company on Yelp:

1. Their Yelp category was a specific keyword, which was not present in our category list. This keyword is part of the key phrase that everyone is aiming for.

2. Their business name also had another important keyword added to it, making it in fact, not the real business name. This other keyword is also part of the key phrase that everyone is fighting for. For example, I LoveKeyword1Keyword2dotcom

3. They are advertising through Yelp.

4. This particular category/keyword is not available for us (we do not advertise on Yelp).

I am thinking this is a Yelp trick, but I don't want to jump to conclusions. What exactly is going on here? Is this fair?

[Personnel_Concept]

that's true, it has happened in some cases where even a new site gets ranked in Google thanks to yelp. All you can do is try to get your site in right category, optimise your site titles for that key phrase or target keyword. Once you sort out yelp forget about it and rather work on your own site to optimise it, make some quality links and work on social profiles like google +

this will get you rank well in Google.

[EGOL]

Yelp Unfair and Unclean Practices?  I discovered that one of my competitors, a new and mysterious company with a business name that reeks of spamming...

If this is true, my bet is that the competition is not very tough.

I almost never see spammers holding rankings in Google for anything very competitive.

I don't want to jump to conclusions.

That's my bet.