Yelp will remove any and all negative reviews when the business being reviewed comes under fire.
Even when the negative reviews are fully warranted.
Sadly, when a business is in the wrong and the negative reviews are placed by consumers to warn others…the business just needs to tell Yelp and like magic all the negative reviews go away.
Yelp says they do this to eliminate reviews motivated by news coverage.
Really?
I wasn’t the least bit encouraged or motivated by the news. I had a legitimate complaint and it was dismissed. The company I reviewed screwed up and sadly I wasn’t the only who thought so. And, the negative reviews started rolling in. One after another. The company’s perfect 5 star rating (the one we reported) started to drop. Within a few short hours the negative reviews pushed the total ratings down below a 2 star rating.
Not Fair!
The company reached out to Yelp screaming “not fair“.
And Yelp on behalf of the sucky service company took action.
A review I posted about a business was removed and I was sent this email…
Hello,
We’re writing because you recently posted a review of XXXXXXXXXX. We understand this business recently received media attention, and that people feel inclined to post their reactions on the business’s Yelp page. The best place to share your thoughts, however, is on Yelp Talk (http://yelp.com/talk). Ultimately, we remove reviews that appear to be motivated more by news coverage rather than one’s own customer experience with the business. With that said, we’ve removed your review, and encourage you to visit Yelp Talk to share your comments.
We apply this same policy regardless of the business and regardless of the topic at issue in order to avoid injecting our own varied viewpoints into the debate. You can read more in our Support Center: http://www.yelp-support.com/
Thanks for understanding, and we’ll see you on Yelp!
Regards,
The Yelp Support Team
San Francisco, California
Yup, my review along with about 15 others was removed and the perfect 5 star rating was restored.
But wait…this isn’t how Yelp is supposed to work.
In fact, Yelp on many occasions has rejected some company’s claims of negative reviews and allowed those ratings to stick.
So why did I receive an email?
What really triggered Yelp from removing all these negative reviews?
Well, it seems Yelp’s algorithm is triggered when too may reviews (positive or negative) occur over a set period of time.
If we (those of us posting negative reviews) had done so over a spread out period instead of close together those reviews would have stuck.
So in your opinion is this a resource you can place your trust in?
Knowing that reviews and rating can be adjusted or deleted as Yelp sees fit.
Nope, not at all.
And don’t get me started when consumers mark your location on Yelp as closed after you’ve moved into a nicer location. Yup, I’ve heard from several businesses that moved into nicer digs only to discover shortly after moving that Yelp had them marked as permanently closed. CLOSED! As in no longer in business. So apparently a consumer that didn’t realize the business moved went to Yelp to complain not knowing the business moved. And Yelp not doing their due diligence just believed the consumer and wham-o marked the offending business as gone…no longer serving customers…finito.
To me there are far superior ways to generate traffic on the internet and YELP is not one of them.
Other articles regarding online reviews you might find interesting…
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