Yelp’s Algorithm & Why Your Reviews Don’t Show
One of the biggest consumer review platforms online is filtering your reviews. Yelp developed its own algorithm in hopes to filter out fake or spam reviews in order to publish a more reliable customer review source. Unfortunately, some of those positive “legit” reviews are being filtered out as well.
Why Does Yelp Filter Reviews?
Yelp tries to filter reviews that it thinks are likely to be fake or spam. These could be reviews Yelp thinks are malicious, inside influenced, an individual who has never visited the business, or competitors attempting to damage the business’s reputation. Consumer Reviews are highly important to any business and can heavily influence a potential customer to choose you, or look elsewhere.
Yelp will filter out reviews good and bad based on some of these factors:
- A reviewer with no photos, profile info, or profile picture
- Lack of details in the review
- A reviewer with only 1 review
- Reviews from an account consisting of all 1 star or 5 stars
- Frequency of reviews
How Do I Get My Yelp Reviews to Show?
A few recommendations you can try to help get those customer reviews to show on your Yelp listing:
- Click the buttons: Cool, Useful or Funny for the 5 star reviews – normally located at the bottom of the review
- Add the reviewer as a friend
- Send a message to the reviewer
- Respond to the review – I always recommend replying to your reviews, especially the harmful 1 star reviews
Interacting with the reviews and the Reviewers tell Yelp these are “legit” and hopefully sway them to start showing. You’ll want to focus on the 5-star reviews to interact with since this encourages visibility. The more people do this, the better. The customer can also increase the power of their opinion as well with the suggestions below.
How to Show Yelp My Reviews are Legitimate
As a consumer, I would want my review I spent time writing to show. Here are a few recommendations to share with your customers to beat the Yelp Filter:
- Write more reviews ( a lot more)
- Fill out your profile and add photos
- Connect with other members on Yelp
- Write more details in your review
- Leave “Tips” for the business you’re reviewing too
- Become a part of Yelp Elite
Though doing these will never guarantee your reviews will show but it’s a step in the write (pun intended) direction!
Need some guidance with reviews and reputation management? Contact us to find out more on how we clean up an online reputation.