Zomato empowers restaurant owners in their fight against blackmail

While consumer reviews have provided a much-needed platform for users to convey their feedback to restaurants, it has also turned out to be a double-edged sword. In order to help restaurant owners fight against reviews written with malicious intent, Zomato on Thursday launched Zomato for Business app. The owners can use the "Report Abuse" button to directly flag a review that was written with malicious intent.

Available for download from iOS App Store or Google Play Store, the team at Zomato will review each reported case along with shared evidence. If the team finds any truth in the evidence provided by the owners, Zomato will moderate the review.

Furthermore, Zomato will use the data to identify such users on its platform and track their behaviour over time. The reviewer's profile will eventually be frozen and their past reviews deleted.

On the other hand, Zomato is also keen to handle bribery instances by owners to solicit positive reviews. An important part of resolving this problem will be to put up a "shame banner" on the restaurants found to be abusing the platform in this manner. The banner will be a way to tell the users to avoid such restaurants. This feature, however, will be released towards the end of this year.