Yelp hides my reviews
-
Hello,
This is pretty frustrating. This is the third time Yelp has hidden a review for my business. I don't know why. I am trying to get lots of reviews on different platforms but I feel at the mercy of Yelp as they decide what to show and what not. I think it was triggered when I actually replied to the reviewer on Yelp. I should have done nothing I think. Any hints or reasons why this might be happening?
-
I completely get it. It's frustrating. Though, I get lots of leads from Yelp because of the time I've invested in making it work for me, so I find the frustration mainly worthwhile.
I teach Yelp classes for business here in Sacramento. I tell them "Yelp is like a report card, you're getting a grade whether you like it or not. If you want an A+, you have to do the Extra Credit work."
-
Thanks for your answers. It seems bizarre that there are so many hoops to jump to post a visible review. I understand that it could be opened up for spam but at the same time it is hard enough to get a review sometimes and my clients won't be spending time writing loads on Yelp- Facebook yes- but not Yelp. So I guess I just have to hope!
-
Yelp's terms of service prohibit you from asking your customers to write you a good review.
When you ask someone to write a yelp review and they're not yet a yelper, yelp will hide their review.
If you want to ask for a review you have to teach the client how it works. First they get an account, upload their photo, connect with their Facebook friends and write themselves a funny bio. Then they write several reviews over the course of a month or so. Then they write one for you.
I know that you don't like this, but Yelp has their own game.
-
Hi There!
The most common reason for this would be that the Yelp users who have left the reviews are not yet established enough in Yelp's system to have their reviews shown. Yelp has the most stringent quality filters in the review world. Check out the profiles of the people who have reviewed you. If they have left few reviews, this would likely be the answer as to why their reviews are being filtered out.
The other thing to consider would be whether you are falling outside of Yelp's guidelines in any way. For example, Yelp is very insistent that they don't want owners to ask for reviews. Would there be anything in your strategy that might be falling afoul of this guideline?
-
You are not alone. We have a wedding and photography business and Yelp constantly hides our reviews as well, all real customers. Just focus on Google or whatever platform your customer base uses most. They have been doing this for years so don't feel singled out.
I was thinking a good experiment to do on yelp would be to advertise on there and see how many reviews, that are currently hidden, would pop up magically once you started paying.
Just write them off and focus your efforts elsewhere; fighting with them gets you no where.
-
I have written a number of business reviews for yelp and have done a good job of it with photos, generous descriptions, etc.
But, yelp often does not show them. When I first started writing reviews they never showed them. Then, after I had written a couple dozen a few of my reviews began appearing without digging for them.
From what I can see yelp shows the reviews of people who have written a lot of reviews, who are connected with other yelp members, and who have written lots of reviews that have been favorably received by others. If your reviewers are not hard core yelpers, a lot of those reviews will be buried.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Schema Code Not Working – Used Business Review Bundle Plugin
Debt Collectors – Debt Collection Agency Melbourne Hi Moz Community One of our client website JMA Credit (https://www.jmacreditcontrol.com.au/ ) We have installed Business Review Bundle Wordpress plugin to display our Google Reviews on our website. https://richplugins.com/business-reviews-bundle-wordpress-plugin Enabled Rich snippet option – to display aggregate rating Schema code available on the source Also, tested on structured data testing tool – it shows everything is fine https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jmacreditcontrol.com.au But, Aggregate rating (star) not displayed on the SERP Page Waiting for valuable response to get this issue fixed
Reviews and Ratings | | Bhisshaun0 -
Google Removed All Anonymous Reviews from GMB Listings with No Warning
I just saw that Google is no longer accepting anonymous reviews for businesses, and in fact have REMOVED all current anonymous reviews. This just happened in late May, but I'm pretty surprised there hasn't been any talk about this, it's a pretty big deal. Before I knew this I called their "specialists" to ask why we lost so many reviews. I specifically asked if Google had changed their review requirements that would result in old reviews being removed. She said no. She's either not well informed or just lied. https://orthopreneur.com/anonymous-google-reviews-disappeared/ My company just lost 20+ positive reviews. Anyone else hurting from the change and finding solutions?
Reviews and Ratings | | HammerandHand1 -
Rich snippet not enabled, on aggregated review pages
We have a website where you can book on restaurants, and afterwards you can review the restaurant you visited. So we have this page: https://www.r2n.dk/restauranter/restaurant-bonjour-vietnam (We have one for each restaurant). English version https://www.r2n.dk/en/restauranter/restaurant-bonjour-vietnam The page is marked up in microData, and when I test the site in google structured data it shows no errors https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.r2n.dk%2Frestauranter%2Frestaurant-bonjour-vietnam . But the page does not show up on google with a rich snippet (The review stars). I am thinking it might be one of the following things. Either it is because there is multiple "Restaurants" on the page, where the others appear in recommended restaurants, where we also marked them up as much as possible. Or else it could be because the reviews are hidden behind the "Anmeldelser"(Reviews) button, where they are retrieved via a ajax request, but if this was the case I don't get why this other site where the reviews does not appear is working fine: https://www.just-eat.dk/restaurants-bonjourvietnam Also it is a week since we finaly correctly implemented the structured data on the page, so I don't know if I should wait a longer time(Though the page has been cached by google multiple times since we updated the code)
Reviews and Ratings | | Christian_T0 -
Query on Product Reviews
Hello Experts, For my Ecommerce site I am using third party review service. Now my query is :- The reviews which is showing on my third party site if same review I can show on my product so will google consider this as duplicate content? Now that product listed on one of the category and that category page before footer section I have section of "Recently Reviewed" section in that section also it is showing same review of that product so is it fine? Will google consider it as duplicate content? Lastly I do have few subcategory pages before footer section I have section of "Recently Reviewed" section in that section also it is showing same review of that product so is it fine? Will google consider it as duplicate content?Note - Image attached of Review section - Which is visible on category and subcategory pages.FYI - This I am doing for two purpose 1) For Visitors purpose so he or she will know reviews about my products 2) As it is customer own written reviews so my pages will get fresh content.Please share your viewsBiKmp
Reviews and Ratings | | wright3350 -
Best process for asking customers to leave reviews?
This might be too off-topic for Moz, but I think many of us might face the same issue, so I thought I would ask. Love them or hate them, we get 90% of our business from being #1 on Trip Advisor. My biggest competition is trying very hard to take over that #1 spot, so we are working to keep it. Has anyone found a seamless way to ask customers for TripAdvisor reviews? We email, text, ask over the phone. But here the problem, Trip Advisor is not the easiest site to leave a review on. If you are on your phone, they want you download the app. Some people don't like to download apps. Or, if they have the app already and click "yes" to open the site in the app, it goes to the app store instead. There doesn't seem to be as much of an issue on the PC, but most people do everything from their phones now. And if something is a little bit hard, people are less likely to go out of their way to leave a review. So, here's my question. Has anyone found a better way? Maybe a form on my website? Or a process that seems to work better? This does have some SEO implications in that my Trip Advisor page does show up in search results quite a bit as well as much home page. Sometimes they are #2 and #3 together.
Reviews and Ratings | | CalicoKitty20002 -
Google Reviews Hassle Reduced - Will It Affect Your Strategy?
Hey Local Pals 🙂 As you may have read this past week, Google has FINALLY stopped requiring users to have a G+ account in order to leave reviews. I find this such a breath of fresh air, given what a hassle it was for many customers who simply didn't ever get into the whole Google+ thing to leave reviews on this major player. I believe this can be seen as one of the last stages of the plus/local separation that has been ongoing for many, many months. Given this change, I thought it would be a good time to discuss reviews. My main question is, now that the only thing your customers need to leave a review is some type of Google account, will you be ramping up your Google-specific review outreach? And, in your own experience, do you feel that Google, Yelp or a different review source has the most impact on your business? Would that be ranking impact, leads, conversions, something else? Best practice is to be diverse, of course, but if you could earn good reviews in just one place, which would it be, and why? And, if you have any unusual tips for review outreach, I know the community would love to benefit from them. Thanks for joining the discussion!
Reviews and Ratings | | MiriamEllis1 -
How does decimal rounding of reviews to stars work in ios appstore? Starting from which average review score to get full 5 star rating?
How does decimal rounding of reviews to stars work in ios appstore?
Reviews and Ratings | | lcourse
Starting from which average review score to get full 5 star rating? Duolingo has a 5 star rating, but I doubt that they really have an all time review average larger than 4,75. In the google playstore their average of the android version is 4,6. Does anybody know how apple calculates the star ratings or has an URL reference where this is explained?0 -
Blocking Reviews by Blocking Words?
A client sent me an email this week, stating that you could block bad reviews on social media sites by "blocking" certain words from comments such as "I", "you", "them", "they"......she heard it at a conference from some other CEO's that had some problems with bad reviews. Essentially these CEO's blocked these words making the pages read only pages so no one could leave a review on social media sites. Now, I have never heard this tactic, nor think this is a good idea in any way shape or form. And I know that you can't block bad reviews from happening (without looking at the bigger picture and encouraging some look at internal processes and customer service). Has any one heard of this tactic? Or better, know of anywhere online that documents this idea of blocking words? I have to get back to her, but I have beaten the drum about how to acquire good reviews so much, I feel I am not getting through! Help! Thanks
Reviews and Ratings | | cschwartzel0