The oddity of this scenario becomes evident when one of their sales reps tries to convince you to become a paying member of the community. Yelp is a controversial network because they cater to their users, but ask businesses to pay for everything ( see this story for the latest controversies). The age breakdown from Yelp’s audience shows that 25-34 is the largest age group and likely the most active. If you’re a business that primarily caters to an older demographic, the way Yelp filters reviews isn’t likely to properly reflect your actual customer base, as recognized Yelpers tends to be the younger, more tech savvy crowd. Yelp also tracks the IP address of each review, so soliciting reviews while a customer is at your business is another big no-no. The consumer alert essentially says that they caught someone at your business offering cash, discounts, gift certificates or other incentives in exchange for reviews, so the reviews shouldn’t be trusted. The last one is really important to understand, because Yelp not only frowns on businesses creating incentives or soliciting reviews for their Yelp page, they will actually flag your business with a ‘consumer alert’ if they believe you are doing it. Other potential contributors include the lack of the user’s profile pic or other profile info, the user being from a location other than where your business is located or anything in the review that might suggest that it was solicited by the business. So basically, if your customers have posted a review for your company, but not used Yelp for anything else, their review will remain filtered. Some of these reviews are fakes (like the ones we see originating from the same computer) and some suggest a bias (like the ones written by a friend of the business owner), but many are real reviews from real customers who we just don't know much about and therefore can't recommend.” For example, the review may have been posted by a less established user, or it may seem like an unhelpful rant or rave. Yelp is steadfast in proclaiming that their system is designed to filter out fake reviews, even if that means some legitimate reviews get filtered in the process.Īccording to Yelp’s website “There are a number of reasons why a review might not be recommended. The most likely reason for the filtered reviews is that Yelp’s algorithm does not consider these folks to be ‘trusted Yelpers’ and therefore tags their reviews as ‘not recommended’. Yelp’s entire methodology is by design a great mystery for even the most tech savvy, but there are a few known reasons for why you may be seeing these results. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting. ![]() Reviewers who are connected to lots of friends on Yelp are a bit less likely to have reviews filtered, but this is less important than the other factorsīased on this, if someone asks what they can do about a review that is not recommended, the best things you can suggest are that they add a profile picture to their Yelp profile, add photos to both the review in question and other reviews, and post reviews on a regular basis.This question was answered on May 6, 2015.Reviewers who post lots of photos rarely have reviews that get filtered.Reviewers with more than 6 or 7 total reviews rarely have any that are filtered – and previously filtered reviews often become unfiltered once a reviewer hits this threshold.The presence of a profile image for a reviewer makes their reviews less likely to be filtered.So, what does make a difference? For details, go to the source, but to summarize: Their algorithm creates some winners and some losers, but the net difference does not tend to be very high, at least for businesses that get a steady flow of reviews. While your results will vary, the point here is that Yelp is in no way “stealing” positive reviews from businesses. The results show that the average rating for not recommended reviews is just as likely to be worse than your recommended reviews as it is to be better. ![]() ![]() The first important takeaway from the study relates to the rating of the review. ![]() If the review’s writer has a profile image.The study looks at the following variables: To balance this perspective, this post summarizes the most detailed data analysis of Yelp reviews that I have found. Last month, I provided official information from Yelp to explain why some reviews are hidden in the “not currently recommended” section of your page.
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