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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.