There are lots of stories on the internet about how people, mostly business owners, hate YELP. And there appears to be a good reason to hate them.
We work hard to deliver great customer service to our clients and we like to be rewarded with positive reviews. It is important as social proof when our clients leave us a positive review because folks considering using our service look to those reviews when deciding on using our service.
As of this writing, we have Ten (10) Five Star Reviews on Yelp. However, Yelp has decided to “filter out” half of them, leaving us with only 5 reviews. In fact, this “filter” has kept us at 5 reviews for a long time. Almost like there is a cap on how many reviews they will allow to be posted.
I find it a bit suspicious. A review that seemed to make it through the filter for months, will suddenly be filtered out when a new review is posted.
What is frustrating is that all our reviews are legitimate customer reviews. Yelp says that their filter is there is filter out certain reviews so that only credible reviews are shown. How is it then that we have reviews show up for months and then suddenly drop off when we get another great review.
And I have one more thing to add, and it may be a coincidence, but just after a salesperson from Yelp called asking for us to spend over $300 per month in advertising with them, which i refused, we began seeing more of our reviews become filtered.
Now, let’s talk about the positive side of Yelp. Lot’s of people go to Yelp looking for reviews on business’s. But, more importantly, they rank really well on the search engines.
So when you search for businesses on Google, they will generally come up on the first page. So I am sure we are getting some free traffic from Yelp that we may not ordinarily be getting.
I just wanted to share our love- hate relationship with Yelp. I may advertise with them in the future, but not because I think they will release our reviews that are being held hostage.
Where do you weigh in on Yelp? Has it helped or hurt your business?
