r/Yelp

Some businesses are obviously boosting their rating with new burner accounts, but the real reviews from long time yelp users are in the "not recommended" section? This is outrageous!

Basically what I stated in the post topic and also if they seen your review. When you do or they do, do you ask your friends or family member directly about it? Also do you reach to it like voting Helpful or Oh No?

My siblings, friends family, friends and etc would see my review. They usually compliment me on my pictures and detailed review for a place or service.

How do you feel about other people judgement when they see you take pictures of your food or drinks or just taking pictures?

I'm asking this because I went to grab dessert with my partner and the presentation was so beautiful that I took pictures of it at the bench outside of the place and notice people were giving me the "eyes" if you know what I mean. I wasn't bother by it but just wanted to hear other people opinion.

I've received several reviews in the past month from people on Yelp who haven't been to my business. I can tell based on their language - for example, one called yoga instructors "trainers". We never use that term. Many have 1 or 2 reviews only. We've had 2 recent Google reviews from folks I don't know as well with only 2 other reviews that they've made. Good news is that they are 4 and 5 star reviews. Any ideas why this is happening?

Most folks smile when they get a new Follower! Let's see how many folks are following Reddit Yelpers!

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It's tough out there! How is this economy affecting your Yelping? Are you writing less reviews? Are your reviews for less expensive places. Something else? Please share your thoughts!

A customer emailed us stating that she thought she got food poisoning from our food and after a kind and productive back and forth conversation, she realized it was probably her food sensitivities acting up and not food poisoning from us. However, see has already left a poor review on yelp stating that she thinks she got food poisoned by us and has not updated it after we conversed. What should my next steps be? I really don't want potential customers to see her negative review saying, "the food was delicious, but food poisoned me" and have that negatively impact our business.

Since she stated it was probably her food sensitivities acting up and not food poisoning, I don't feel that her review is accurate or honestly reflects our business... Let me also be clear that she did not notify us of any of her sensitivities when we prepared her food, so there was nothing that our business did to cause her issues.

Is there anything I can do to fix this? Is it appropriate to ask her to change her review now that it's clear the issue isn't food poisoning? What if she doesn't change her review? Could I ask yelp to remove her review if I provide the email evidence that she clearly states it's isn't food poisoning and it is instead her food sensitivities?

Am I just going to have to accept that we have a negative review? (We had only 5 star reviews until this, but not very many reviews total, so I'm really not thrilled about this).

If you own a business on Yelp, Google, or Bing (apparently?) please read this. I just got a call from +13253260067 (Texas) and asked if I owned my business. I said yeah, he said he was going to verify my Yelp, Google, and Bing. I don't have Bing. Do not fall for the scam. I'm not sure what comes after, but there were too many red flags. When I kept dodging him, he eventually hung up. The number showed up as "Telemarketer" on the incoming call.

I made a post in this group about how Google was becoming Yelp by removing my legit reviews and not giving a clear reason. Since I made my post, I would get notification about posts here and see the toxic comments that isn't in other group. Why is this group hostile?

Twice now I have been contacted through Yelp messages by single, Asian, females, fitness loving, and living in Canada. They were asking about the area I live in. It seems legit. But something about it seems like a scam. The first person ghosted me after about two weeks. Now I have been contacted by another one. I am stringing this one along to see where it goes.

I left a 4 star rating to a sushi place I ate it and I added context on why it was a 4 star experience. Another Yelp Elite user sent me a message about my review today and told me to change my review to a 5 stars because of this and that. They wrote a 5 star review for the restaurant and is a regular there, they check in over 30 times. Has anyone else experience this?

I am looking at a business with 3.6 stars and all recent reviews are pretty good. I click on the one star reviews to see "the bad." The newest one star review is 2016, and the oldest is 2008. How can they assign a fair "star rating" that includes such out of date information. The obvious answer is they don't care and only want to try to squeeze money from businesses. Seems like they should rectify this since they've been around so long now.

I was looking through Yelp's own statistics and something doesn't add up.

Yelp says it has roughly 8.4 million businesses listed and 330 million reviews. That's an average of about 39.3 reviews per business.

They also report around 2.4–2.5 million visitors per day, with the average visitor spending just 2 minutes and 7 seconds on the site.

Here's where it gets interesting.

Yelp has also stated that users spend about 2.5 times more time looking at photos than reading reviews.

If the average session is 127 seconds and photos get 2.5x the attention of reviews, that suggests only a small fraction of a user's visit is actually spent reading written reviews.

Let's be generous and assume users spend 35–40 seconds reading reviews during a visit.

If the average business page has around 39 reviews, that works out to roughly 1 second per review if someone were to look through them all.

Obviously people aren't reading every review. Most likely they're scanning star ratings, looking at a few photos, glancing at the first review or two, and making a decision.
Which brings me to the part I can't stop thinking about.

Based on Yelp's own numbers, it doesn't seem mathematically possible for the average visitor to spend meaningful time reading reviews.

The platform contains hundreds of millions of reviews, yet the average visit lasts just over two minutes, and Yelp says users spend far more time looking at photos than reading review text.

If that's true, then what is the actual purpose of all these reviews?

Consumers appear to be making decisions based on star ratings and photos. The written reviews seem to be the least-consumed part of the experience.

Yet businesses are constantly told they need more reviews. Customers are encouraged to write longer reviews. Elite reviewers write essays. Reviewers are rewarded for producing more content.

For whose benefit?

Because if consumers aren't spending much time reading reviews, then the primary value of those reviews may not be helping customers at all.

Instead, the reviews may function as an endless stream of user-generated content. Every review adds more text, more keywords, more location references, more service descriptions, more food descriptions, and more searchable content attached to a business page.

The reviewer thinks they're helping future customers make a better decision.

But based on Yelp's own usage statistics, the average customer may never spend enough time on the site to read more than a tiny fraction of what's written.

The customer looks at the stars.
The customer looks at the photos.
The customer decides.

Meanwhile, reviewers spend their time creating detailed descriptions filled with the exact words and phrases that search engines love: menu items, neighborhoods, services, products, amenities, experiences, and local keywords.

At some point, you have to ask whether Yelp is really a review platform or whether it's a search-engine content machine powered by unpaid contributors.

The irony is that the people investing the most time in reviews may not be the people reading them.

They're the people writing them. 🤣

So I started Yelp Biz on the 11th. The same day. My partner, a woman gets a call from Yelp. Starts off okay but only for the first 15 seconds. The man from Yelp begins talking over her and saying stuff like
“Oh, you don’t make the decisions! Then I don’t need to talk to you.” “Who really makes the decisions over there? It’s not you!”
Amazing sales tactics by the way. Disrespecting my partner wasn’t really necessary, was it?
I finally answered the phone when Mr Overbearing called back and explained that we needed nothing from such a disrespectful person.
Now I started on the 11th. Yesterday was day 14.
On days 12 and 13 my phone was almost blowing up and then day 14 dead silence.
Real cute Yelp. Guess the rumors are true and you either pay or you get booted to the bottom or invisible.
But if you just started, Yelp will steadily throw you leads (real or fake is still being debated) and increase the number of leads to almost make it look organic. If you haven’t subscribed to their services by the end of the first two weeks they hide your page and cut you from searches.

I signed up for ads and was warned about Yelp reps. When people say they are rude and awful, they aren't kidding! The sales rep actually hung up on me!

Excuse me while I post negative reviews everywhere I can.