Yelp. Love it or hate it, it's here to stay.
As of Q1 2018, Yelp had 74 million monthly unique visitors on desktop computers alone. Despite its growing popularity, lots of small business owners report issues with the review and rating service (namely, the Yelp filter).
Yelp lets consumers (Yelpers) be the jury. Yelp trusts consumers to leave authentic reviews about their experiences. And with the importance of online reviews, nothing is more frustrating than when Yelp filters a perfectly legitimate review into the dreaded "not recommended" section.
In this blog post, we'll tell you why Yelp sometimes filters legitimate reviews and give you some tips for improving the chances that your reviews stay recommended.
What is the Yelp filter?
Yelp uses an automated filter to hide certain reviews in order to display only the most helpful and honest reviews. The purpose of the filter is to remove fake or illegitimate reviews. The filter is intended to protect businesses.
But there’s a problem with this. Because the filter is automated, sometimes even authentic reviews get filtered. This is an issue for business owners, who need the feedback (both positive and negative) from their actual customers.
Positive Yelp reviews can impact small businesses in a huge way. 84% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Businesses can even see a 5-9% increase in revenue if their Yelp rating increases by one star (and all those five-star reviews that are being filtered out also don’t count toward your star rating).
Why does Yelp filter your business's legitimate reviews?
When real reviews get filtered, it's frustrating. It’s especially annoying to think that, while your legitimate client reviews are being filtered by Yelp, fake reviews, or even an entirely fake business, can still appear on Yelp.
Here are some common reasons why reviews get filtered on Yelp:
- Yelp doesn’t trust users who have only written a few reviews, especially if they have no Yelp friends or profile information.
- The review is too positive or too negative. This also goes for reviewers who only post positive reviews everywhere they go. I guess Yelp assumes you can’t enjoy every experience.
- It isn’t funny or useful. Other Yelp reviewers can mark a review as funny or useful. Reviews that are too short also get filtered. “Great service!” really isn’t helping anyone.
- The review violated Yelp’s Content Guidelines, which are pretty straightforward.
- The IP is wrong. Yelp uses IP addresses to determine whether or not a review is fake. So, if a reviewer is on vacation and visits your business but waits until they get home to review it, that review is probably going to get filtered.
Is there a way to work around the Yelp filter?
While you have no real control over what gets filtered, you can still do a few things to make sure nothing you do causes problems for your Yelp page.
- Never pay someone to review your business. That’s illegal, and if you do, Yelp will find you and they will make sure everyone knows about it.
- Don’t offer a promotion to Yelpers in exchange for a review.
- Don’t use Yelp as a contest or ad space. I mean, unless you’re actually paying for Yelp’s slightly shady advertising service. (Yelp has been accused of pushing this service on businesses by threatening to push negative reviews higher on the business’s Yelp page.)
- Don’t ask your family and friends to write reviews for you. They will spot Grandma’s glowing assessment a mile away.
- You can also attempt to help legitimate reviews be recognized by Yelp. If you see a review a real customer has written on your Yelp page, but the review is being filtered, you can add the reviewer as a friend or vote the review useful, funny, or cool.
And if that doesn’t work, consider finding a solution that works around the Yelp filter.
Hibu makes monitoring your reviews easier than ever
Our reputation management tools, included within the Hibu One Platform, make it easy for you to keep track of all your online reviews.
Monitor your incoming reviews from Yelp and other popular online platforms, respond to any feedback you get, and maintain your business reputation online by managing incoming reviews and requesting more reviews—all from the Hibu One Performance Dashboard.
Complete our short Get Started form or call us today at 877-237-6120 for a free consultation.
