Tag: Yelpers

Yelp DOES protect businesses from non-consumer experience review attacks

Do you remember last year when that dentist from Minnesota killed the lion in Africa? I was curious as to if the public would go to the Yelp page for his business and trash him. They did just that. I followed his reviews for a week and the one-star reviews just piled up. Other then manually flagging these reviews because the review “… doesn’t describe a personal consumer experience”, I was curious if Yelp was going to step in and filter the “attack” reviews. For the past year if a business owner made the news for being horrible, the same thing usually happened.

Locally, the El Sombrero Mexican Bistro in Las Vegas was under fire because Donald Trump paid them a visit. I only ran across this due to a story in the Las Vegas Review Journal yesterday written by Colton Lochhead, featuring the headline, “Las Vegas restaurant still cookin’ despite Hispanic community stir from Trump visit“.

So once again, in conducting research for our reputation marketing business, I went to the Yelp Page for the El Sombrero Mexican Bistro to see if the political attack reviews were hot and heavy. I was surprised to the the following pop up window:

I had never seen a notification like this from Yelp ever. I was pleasantly surprised to see Yelp proactively protecting the online integrity of a small business from non-consumer reviews. Once you click “Got it, thanks!” and you are taken to the page this statement is in the header:

Living in Las Vegas and as a “Foodie”, I love going out to family owned, small, off the strip restaurants. I am also an active Yelper. Locally and when I travel, I rely on Yelp for trying new places. When the general public starts attacking a business due to politics it skews the online review process of whether the El Sombrero Mexican Bistro is a great place to eat.

FOOD not Politics

With that said, if you are a Yelper and ever see a post that does not represent an actual consumer experience, you can flag the review like I did here:

If you are a small business owner, whether a presidential candidate visits you or not, you should always be aware of your online reputation.

Realtors need to quit trying to manipulate Yelp

Referencing a blog post I wrote on Active Rain earlier this year, I continually see Realtors trying to manipulate their Yelp reviews. Enough real estate agents know about me and my company, Agent Reputation, that I am continually getting questions about how to get Yelp reviews to stick. Or maybe they think there is some kind of conspiracy that requires buying advertising from Yelp in order to get non-recommended reviews published or bad reviews removed.

  1. No conspiracy. There were some overzealous Yelp sales reps back in the day that may have inferred a relationship between reviews and ads but that was firmly dealt with. Anybody that claims different is misinformed.
  2. Yelp does not want you asking for reviews. They want “active” Yelpers to be motivated by the service you provide to leave organic reviews. As a real estate agent, you can have a Yelp presence on your website or reputation marketing program and the Yelpers who feel motivated will know what to do.
  3. DO NOT send out an e mail blast asking everyone you know to leave you a Yelp review. Yelp has an algorithm that tracks the review. If you send out a blast, Yelp will see red flags because too many reviews came in at once which is an indicator you sent out a blast asking for reviews. Secondly they track new Yelp users. They know when somebody signs up just to leave a review and depending on their future Yelp activity, this review will wind up under the line as a non-recommended review. This can also protect you because it will also push some of your bad reviews under the line. So basically if you went to the effort to ask a bunch of non-Yelpers to leave you a review, you just wasted their time when they could have been leaving you a review on Google, Facebook or Zillow.
  4. What is a Yelper? A Yelper signs up to participate in the online review community. They are interested in the reviews of other Yelpers and are motivated to leave their own reviews. Yelpers have a profile photo. They have downloaded the Yelp App to their phone. They check in from businesses they are visiting via the app. They write reviews from these businesses they have checked in from. They have Yelp friends and at the end of the day if these active Yelpers leave you a review, it will be above the line and credible.

Yelp should be embraced. I have real estate agent clients that have over 50 positive reviews with very few under the line. And in fact once these clients get their reviews up they are buying Yelp ads and are killing it.

CJ Hays – Follow me on Twitter

#CJ4marketing