Yelp for business owners is Great in My Opinion
The majority of business owners who interact with Yelp seem to like it. I have personally helped several business owners get on Yelp, and they pretty much all have thanked me for it.
I highly recommend Yelp to small business owners. I recommend that business owners get over to Yelp and claim their business and interact with their reviews.
I also suggest that business owners understand the Yelp review system. Not every bad review will end up on your page, nor will every good review.
Yelp Review Filter Explained
Yelp just put out a video that gives an overview of their review filter and which follows up on the reason business owners should not ask people to write reviews for them (this advice was given out last year on the Yelp blog).
There is very little value in a review system which is manipulated and just like some people are unhappy with Google that their site doesn’t rank well, some business owners are unhappy that their reviews do not always show up. If you are a business owner and you have your friends and family review you it can be seen as spam. Many people who are unhappy with Yelp are people who have even stated that this is exactly what they did, they asked people to write them good reviews, the people wrote the reviews, and some of them didn’t appear on Yelp.
They then assumed that Yelp is “withholding reviews” so they can get money out of business owners.
Which simply isn’t the case.
Just like Google identifies links that have value, Yelp identifies reviews that have value.
A review coming from a Yelp user that has been using Yelp for a long time and who has reviewed many businesses is considered a stronger review than one written by a first time user of Yelp.
Some sort of filter is naturally needed to ensure that reviews seen by users are legit. If they did not do this, then a business owners could just create a whole bunch of usernames and make bad reviews about their competitors.
The very same business owners who are complaining now about not having instant good reviews on Yelp would also be complaining if Yelp let reviews go up instantly that were negative about their businesses.
Use Yelp Well
Here is a great video of a business owner who is taking full advantage of Yelp for his business…
Yelp is great. I highly recommend it. They also have a great blog.
There are people complaining about Yelp right now, but not many people praising them for what they have done overall, which is create some of the most trusted reviews on the web and a wonderful resource for both business owners and business customers.
Agreed Yelp sucks! They only post comments they feel are real. Our business has 6 positive comments, all are filtered. What a waste of time. Our customer recently had a death in the family and we catered her gathering after the funeral. She was so impressed she wanted to write a nice comment on the web and discovered Yelp. Her comment was filtered too. Apparently Yelp filters reviews from people unless they have a picture on their profile and has also written other reviews. Don’t waste your time on a website that is unethical, what a scam. Yelp is horrible!
Someone form Yelp called to sell me on their advertising. Basically, it costs about $2 a click. During the sales call, the person on the phone must have clicked on two dozen paid listings–and asked me to do the same. After about 20-plus minutes of this, I asked “are these people paying for all these impressions and clicks?” “Uhh, yeah, I guess so” the sales person responded. — What a crappy company!!
Thankyou for writing on a topic like this. I am so going to bookmark this web right away.
But it would have been better if there were more screenshots.
Yelp filters the reviews so that people will believe that there is no corruption on Yelp. The filter is just a tool to gain peoples trust. It is all BS. Be sure to read the filtered as well as the none filtered reviews and you be the judge don’t let Yelp fool you.
Yelp has filtered 31 5 star reviews, all legitimate from poeple that have worked with us for my small business! THIRTY ONE! and has only left 17 reviews and all the bad ones for people to see, some which are from people that have not even come to our studio to shoot. It’s really ridiculous. And there is NO WAY to get a hold of them. How convenient.
YELP IS A BIG SCAM! THEY DELETE POSITIVE POSTS AND LEAVE FAKE NEGATIVE POSTS IN ORDER TO PROMOTE THE COMPANIES THAT PAY THEM!
See for yourself!
My page is filtered of many positive reviews and the only FAKE review (of which I have informed them on numerous occasions) still exists surrounded by advertisements of people who pay for their services!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/arash-hakhamian-dds-south-gate-2
I agree with many of the comments here. I have a friend who have many of her clients reviewed and mostly were filtered out, but leaving one or two very negative review always there. The points is, most of her clients do not know so much about computers. How would you expect them to review a lot shops online? If Yelp do the filtering based on that, it is definitely wrong
I complete agree with this, I am from Canada but have many clients in the USA. I have set most of them up with the yelp listing. Have had great success from it. The review filter is somewhat of an issue sometime. Overall yelp is great the review system has worked great.
Yelp is essentially and extortion racket. If the goal is unbiased reviews, why should businesses that “work with” Yelp fair better. This article totally misses the point. I don’t use yelp in deciding who to patronize precisely because the system is rigged.
Any ideas on how to get off of Yelp?
This is a quote from Yelp: “A review coming from a Yelp user that has been using Yelp for a long time and who has reviewed many businesses is considered a stronger review than one written by a first time user of Yelp.” We are a wedding venue and caterer — we have 3 different websites/businesses on Yelp and their filtering system is WRONG! Our clients may not be typical yelpers; they just had the most beautiful day of their life (their wedding) and they want to tell people about it and give us praise for what we did and YELP FAULTS them for not being a regular Yelper. Our Perry House Yelp page is new, only 3 reviews so far — the two five star reviews from brides were filtered off and the one remaining 4 star for a guest at an event who gave us 4 stars DUE TO THE COOL WEATHER was kept on because he yelps frequently — PLEASE!
My company have 18 reviews. 17 filtered.
How can I get more unfiltered reviews w/o asking if my customers comes from references.
I have yelp account but most of the customers check website too. I post a lot of pictures from our recent painting projects. It helps a lot to get new business. I understand why the system filters 6 positive reviews posted in 3 days. It looks suspicious unless you have 300-500 opinions.
yelp filtered reviews wrongly, and it’s their problem, not mine. We did not ask people to write reviews, actually my first review which is filtered was done with a highly satisfied client who thought me how to correctly put business category in yelp, meaning obviously I was not that “anxious” about promoting my business on yelp and asking for reviews from everyone I could. Tye have one positive review and one negative left on the “filtered” portion. The only problem is that we did not do any work for the negative review. Also, I found out who he is, and he just tricked our inspectors, the called me I told them that do not want to provide him a service since he told he was a realtor to get a free inspection, and then it turned out to be he lied. I think in the near future google will implement review filter, and it will be much better than yelp. The only thing yelp does right is having review filter, but since nobody else has even though they don’t do it right, it still allows them to have much more trust that others.
I had a former disgruntled operations manager write fake reviews that were negative from a past client, when I emailed the client she stated she didnt write that review. It gets better, she is a soldier in Iraq, the date of the review she was in combat.I forwarded her email to Yelp, sent documented proof that it is the correct person and Yelp disregarded it. It damages your search results….the badge is an awesome idea. I would like anyone who would like to initiate a class action law suit against Yelp’s filter contact me at mhenry@haloamerica.com. I would like to contact 60min or 20/20 and put Yelp on blast. There are too many people that have been extorted by this company. I emailed them and stated that if the filter, filters reviews of new clients who say anything positive, then the same should be with the clients who are negative. I don’t feel like we should have to manipulate our clients into getting past their filter. They terminated my business account and I can not even respond to any negative statements after I posted negative reviews about Yelp on their Yelp page. They have messed with the wrong business owner. I hit back!
Yelp posted a fraudulent review about my business from a compeditor. I had the documents to prove it. As soon as I posted a responce, their sales people called. They will help you get the review off if you pay them by advertising. These guys are all crooks that extort money from small business. They don’t filter bad reviews because that wakes up a business to advertise with them.
The initial reaction of individuals who’ve learned their reviews were filtered is to never attempt to post a review again on Yelp out of fear of discovering they have again wasted their valuable time. As a research PhD with a statistics background, I can tell you this will introduce a bias of its own into the review library. Yelp will ultimately acquire the reputation of the place you DON’T want to go because the review library will be severely truncated and not contain anything original.
I’m a writer. So when I am moved to compose anything, I put a lot of thought into it. I could also be long-winded and take 500 words to convey a sentiment others sum up more tersely in 50 — but I love ideas and I love words. I also pride myself on making the effort to offer viewers something they have not read before — a fresh and original angle to stimulate thinking. So when my 500 word review ended up in Yelp’s filter, I was deeply disturbed. Algorithms make mistakes all the time; in fact, mistakes are an inherent by-product of algorithms. They are actuarial in nature, which is to say they take a probabalistic approach to filtering out reviews based on the appearance of a word you would expect to find in an undesirable review (i.e., malicious / shill) but which any Yelp executive knows also appears in reviews that are not written by malicious defamers or shills. Yelp knows good reviews are caught in its wide net so what is deeply disturbing is that it does not seem to care about your time, effort, and opinion nor does it care the quality of its collection is being compromised. It just plays a numbers game and figures it will all wash out over a number of reviews. With so many reviews, you can rest assured some will be good — some bad — and who cares whether the star count is accurate as long as Yelp managed to trick the community into thinking it is credible and scientific.
What this means is that you and I as individual reviewers are just livestock to Yelp. It is not about building a good library of reviews nor is it about the individual reviewer nor about the product / service under review. It’s all just to prop up Yelp. I know this as a statistician who has worked in business. Believe me — Yelp knows what it’s doing. No one in their executive offices could be so stupid as to have never learned the lessons we have all learned over the years about trusting everything to technology or to a set of rules. These lessons are embodied in decades of film-making and centuries of literature — not to mention real world history. And yet Yelp is greedily — again, not stupidly — turning out a technological device that blindly and indiscriminantly applies a set of rules to your thoughts and feelings and rejects them without regard to their intrinsic worth.
Yelp aspires to become the Google of Reviews by wrapping itself in the symbols of technology and professionalism. Ironically it is creating the most untrustworthy of review sites.
As of today, Yelp has filtered all of our reviews (all of which are five star), leaving only one negative review.
When this negative review was first written, I tried to contact Yelp about it. I wrote them many many emails because the review was false. And what happened? They took down all of my positive reviews and left only that false negative one.
The best part of it is that the negative reviewer is anonymous, has no picture, and has only written one review on Yelp…ours. Yet, it hasn’t been filtered.
Yelp is the worst.
Yelp sucks, and they know it. Just type http://www.Yelp Sucks.com and goes directly to Yelp. I too have experienced the scam, they called me to advertise when I have 5 good reviews, and when I refused to pay $350 per month with 12 month commitment all got filtered and two negatives showed up. One was not even about me. I emailed them and they responded: It looks legit to us. So we are not going to change it. WTF?
They are going IPO soon. Please write Wall Street Journal and tell their story, so their stupid worthless stock goes to a dollar or less. They have six kids working there and won’t answer the phone to correct a problem.
Just say no to Yelp. If they don’t show all of the reviews, then the reviews and summary star ratings they do show are bogus. I feel their secret “proprietary” filter is a scam and it is apparently being abused by Yelp in an effort to get clients. Why isn’t there a way for a business owner to say, “no thanks Yelp”, we don’t want your stinking reviews. Why can’t reviewers and prospective customers do their own filtering? Checkout Amazon – they have a great review system. Now if someone could do something like that, it would be more useful and failr than Yelp. Say no to Yelp.
Yelp has filtered out 1/4 of our reviews most had a 4 or 5 star rating. I complained and just go their canned explanation of their policy. Now they want me to have an ad. No way. They have cost me more customers then any ad could ever make up. Would not recommend to anyone. There are many other restaurant review sites that do put you or our customers in time out ……… especially if they haven’t rated another place on their exclusive lol network.
STOP BUSINESSES FROM ADVERTISING ON YELP!!! Contact every business that advertises on yelp that you can and let them know what is going on. YELP WILL SINK LIKE A BRICK IN WATER!!! They only exist because of us!!! Lets take back what is ours!! This will be the SWEETEST revenge ever!!!!
We are having the same problems as everyone else so I dont have to explain. Just make it a priority to stop businesses from advertising.Everyone that stops paying takes money out of YELPs pocket!!
The Yelp rep said “we think the filter does a pretty good job”. You THINK?? If you want to be awesome, you shouldnt THINK, you should KNOW.
The fact that you can click on “Read filtered reviews” is basically Yelp admitting the filter doesnt work. If the filter worked, WHY STILL SHOW US THE SUPPOSEDLY FALSE REVIEWS?
We are tired of the Yelp filters hurting small businesses that can not afford the upgrade. Sign this petition. Let’s let Yelp know, that we want our reviews unfiltered! http://tinyurl.com/73jr8sx
Same thing has happened to me, they keep filtering all of my reviews from actual real clients. There is no rhyme or reason as to why they keep doing this. Meanwhile my competitors who are advertising with them have their reviews (less than my filtered ones) up and running. It seems to me like the filter chooses to filter reviews for people who refuse to give them money. I guess it is the age of cyber-extorsion.
they claimed to have removed an obviously illegitimate review but it is not removed while the 20 legitimate reviews from actual clientele are filtered …smh…tsk tsk tsk
so i offered my review on their listed name razer usa ltd. ….you should too
http://www.yelp.com/biz/razer-usa-ltd-inc-san-francisco#hrid:TimPj_2cvNa_QmuIvkHZtw/src:self
Omg
Who is buying there stock ?
This is a total scam webside and I totally agree with all above coments 100 o/o
Yelp is a joke. We too were scammed of all of our good reviews. I now print all of them (the negative and filtered) ones to show new clients. I have nothing to hide. I personally know companies that have had negative reviews but as soon as they started paying 500 a month every negative review is gone. I would never pay for extortion. I will advertise anyone to close their acct and stop using this fucked up company. Yelp is a disgrace to our business society.
Yelp is a joke. We too were scammed of all of our good reviews. I now print all of them (the negative and filtered) ones to show new clients. I have nothing to hide. I personally know companies that have had negative reviews but as soon as they started paying 500 a month every negative review is gone. I would never pay for extortion. I would advise anyone to close their acct and stop using this fucked up company. Yelp is a disgrace to our business society.
Yelp is killing small businesses. They take of all good reviews unless the reviewer has been on yelp for a long time. This no more a factual review of a business than if a business had 30 made up reviews. Yelp is still fairly new and after I signed up I found out that my reviews were taken off to favor someone who had been on Yelp longer even though their review was 6 months old. That is ridiculous unless that same person who did not like it goes back (not likely) then there will never be an improvement of the review rating.
Sorry, the correct link is here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/yelp-remove-the-review-filter-or-correct-the-review-filter
Yelp is entirely worthless. I wrote two detailed reviews that have not showed up because I’m not a “trusted user.” Well I’m not going to write any more reviews, I have better stuff to do than try to please an algorithm into paying attention to me.
Knowing that this is how the site works, I will never use it again. I went to a badly inept mechanic who had 97 5 star reviews because of yelp, and the morons working there couldn’t rotate tires or install an air filter without breaking it.
Yelp: I am in the custom clothing business in Beverly Hills, California. I have many , very high end clients that have taken their time to post positive reviews about Scott Hill Bespoke Designs; only to have your ” filter system” take them down after their being posted”. These clients support my business and their ” word of mouth” referrals are what drive my company’s growth. They are thrilled with the quality of our production and our very professional execution of their orders and timely delivery.
These positive reviews are just as important to your readers and my potential clients; as is a negative from 2 years ago.. from a disgruntled client; who wanted some obscure cloth that was unavailable .. and was given a refund for his commissioned shirt. Over $450 ; our business has had his rude, malitious, and misleading post negatively affect our profile to the community.
One negative.. even a false representation stays up for years.. and the customer’s posts who spend $20K-$30K a year and are thrilled.. their comments come down.. even when they took their valuable time to.. go out of their way to support our organization with a positive posting.. to help us..
This seems very unreasonable and not a true representation of the reputation of our business. I would be willing to advertise on your yelp site; if our positive reviews can be left alone by your filtering mechanism. We deserve our positive reviews and have worked very hard, pleasing our clients.. to receive their positive endorsements. Please contact myself; and advise the costs associated with advertising on your Yelp site. My office # is: 310-271-4455 and my cell is : 213-884-5950. Scott Hill – Scott Hill Bespoke Designs – Beverly Hills, California 90210