Yelp Review From My Customer Removed

[Ophelia619]

Hi,

A customer of mine told me she created a yelp account just to give me a review.  She's a good customer and wanted to show me her appreciation.  I thanked her for taking the trouble.  About a week later, I see that her review was marked as "not recommended."  This was a legitimate review made by a real customer.  I'm angry that it was removed for no reason.  I noticed a competitor of mine has 18 yelp reviews and all of them show up just fine.  I also noticed that this same competitor is paying for ads from Yelp. A couple of years ago, another customer reviewed me on yelp and it was also labeled as "not recommended."  So I now have 2 "not recommended" reviews on Yelp that, if you ask me, imply that my reviews are fake.  After Yelp and Yahoo merged, I lost the 14 Yahoo reviews I had obtained from customers over the last six years.  I have also noticed over the years, that whenever I need to sign into my Yelp business account to update the data, it's locked until some pushy sales person calls and asks to speak to me in order to try to sell me ads on Yelp.  Anyone else hate Yelp?  They're obviously not really interested in making sure reviews are "real," they're just interested in selling expensive ads.

[Ophelia619]

I didn't ask my customer for a review.  She was so happy with our service that she did this on her own and then told me about it.  That's how I know it was placed in the filtered area on Yelp.  I don't bother with Yelp at all.

[Ophelia619]

Thanks for the response.  I agree with you.  The only bad thing is that I had 14 Yahoo reviews for my business that took years to acquire from customers.  They all disappeared when Yelp took over for Yahoo.  I now have 1 Yelp review and 3 they call "not recommended."  I'm actually showing up lower on the local Yahoo map because I have 1 review now instead of 14.  When I told my customer what Yelp did, she was nice enough to go to Google to leave the review.

[David-Kley]

We have been round and round with this as well. Most likely it is from the user having just created an account, and with no other activity left a good review for your business. When we have people leave reviews for clients on Yelp, we always ask that they go out and leave a few for places they like before leaving a review. This helps the account to be seen as more "realistic".

I remember a case where companies began suing people that left reviews.

And I'll just leave this here:
Link

"John may sound paranoid, but he's got company. During interviews with dozens of business owners over a span of several months, six people told this newspaper that Yelp sales representatives promised to move or remove negative reviews if their business would advertise. In another six instances, positive reviews disappeared — or negative ones appeared — after owners declined to advertise."

In my opinion, get people to leave reviews for your business on Google places. Yelp's review system and business practices seem to be driven more towards monetary gain.

*edit BTW, I would not advertise on Yelp. We have tried it many times, using different techniques and it never pays for itself. The truth about Yelp ads is: unless people are seaching on Yelp for your services, they won't find you. It's true that your Yelp profile might come up in organic Google search results, but paying for ads on Yelp wont help that any. Most are going to search on Google, and I would dedicate my focus to improving your position in those results.

[ccbamatx]

Here is a good piece that will shine some light on your trouble.

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2013/01/yelps-rocky-relationship-with-small-business029/

[KeriMorgret]

Yelp does state in several places for businesses to not ask customers to review their site, such as https://biz.yelp.com/support/review_solicitation.

[LesleyPaone]

More than likely the reason it was removed is that it was considered spam. One way that Yelp detects spam is from new accounts that open and leave one review to never be logged into again. I went round and round with this, because /i actually ran a promotion where /i gave people a discount to leave a review. It was basically wasted money.

[junseth]

We work very closely with our customers, and reviews are a huge part of our strategy. We list all of the places customers can review us here. Yelp is the bain of review strategies. They are regarded as the most legitimate review company, but they also make it harder to leave reviews than any other site. Then, after all that, they call you and offer you advertising so that you can get more reviews that will be flagged by their spam filter. I do truly believe that they have de-coupled reviews from their ad sales, just as they claim they do, but I've also never seen a more aggressive ad sales team than Yelp, and it creates a huge amount of suspicion for those who aren't sure what Yelp is all about.

Anyhow, there are a few ways to get reviews to stick. We actually ask our users not to post on our Yelp page anymore unless they specifically tell us they have a Yelp account in good standing whose reviews stick. As you can see, that's very few people. Our page has 2 reviews (just as a point of fact, the 1-star review you see filtered was left by one of our competitors and we were very glad it got filtered, though it is upsetting that Yelp shows the negative reviews first in filtered section. That said, we have just as few Angie's List reviews, and the only reason it's less upsetting is because Angie's List is a bit of a walled garden. So, our expectation is that it's hard to get a review there. Just like Yelp, we only ask for an Angie's List review if someone indicates that they have an account on Angie's List. We also run the check against Angie's List accounts from time to time. The other, kind of odd strategy, that I have employed in the past for customers whom have a very good relationship with us, is I send them an email every 2 months asking them to basically use their Yelp account. Yelp's review filter works until Yelp decides the account as legitimate. This is done a lot of ways, but mainly, you need to convince the person to use the account. When I was doing agency, I had good results with that strategy.

[Ophelia619]

Thanks for the response.  There are naturally going to be more new people creating Yelp accounts when they try to review a business they find on Yahoo as the two have merged.  I really think if you pay Yelp for ads they will let your reviews stay.  They are corrupt in my opinion.  I'll encourage anyone who tells me they want to leave me a review not to do so at Yahoo or Yelp.  It's always about the money.  As I said earlier, my competitor has 18 Yelp reviews, in our very small town, and none of them have been labeled "not recommended."  I also notice he pays them for ads.

[KeriMorgret]

It could be that it was flagged as fishy, since the person created an account and left just one positive review.

I've seen complaints about how Yelp filters reviews from new accounts, and how it may more heavily impact companies where it's a one-time service with large fees. I'm thinking specifically a complaint someone had that a moving company had a bunch of poor reviews that were filtered. The reviews were left by people that were so frustrated with this company they created a Yelp account solely to warn other people (because this was a high-dollar purchase, unlike just a meal out at a restaurant), they were legitimate reviews, but looked suspicious to Yelp's algorithms.

No solution for you here, but a possible explanation.

[Ophelia619]

Thanks for the link but there wasn't anything over there about Yelp removing legitimate, positive reviews.

[EGOL]

There are several questions about Yelp removing reviews in Moz Q&A.  Here is a recent one with lots of background information.

http://moz.com/community/q/having-yelp-reviews-removed