Yelp is one of the largest review sites around. They allow you to have a free listing.
Some doctors are complaining that they got reviews that have now disappeared.
Hmmm… why would Yelp delete reviews. Of course all the complainers of deleted reviews are complaining that good reviews were deleted and it is very understandable.
In a recent interview with a Yelp executive the PR answer is they have an algorithm that deletes reviews that look false or manufactured. One example they give is that a receptionist could go create multiple yelp accounts and review a business many times.
There was even a class action lawsuit but fortunately or unfortunately has been dismissed!
You can read about it here:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/26/class-action-lawsuits-over-yelps-review-system-dismissed/
I can see both sides of the problem and there is only one real solution.
Get people who use Yelp regularly to review your practice on Yelp.
Get people that use Google regularly to review your practice on Google.
Get people that use Yahoo (Who am I kidding, no one uses Yahoo anymore) *Humor
You get the point?
Social proof is important and there have been liars since before time so I guess it is good that companies try to protect us from scammers with rules like this. Will it piss some people off yes.
Is it because you didn’t pay yelp. Maybe. Probably.
But these are the rules of the game.
I didn’t make them I just play by them and hope that this will help you play by them and win!
So solicit REVIEWS HELL YES!
But do it smart so they don’t fall down. (or get taken down)
We built a review management software to help you do exactly this Review Wave.
So the moral of the story whether you use software or not… is get more reviews.
Get them on as many different sites as possible.
Work internally to never get a bad review.
Get so many good reviews that a few bad reviews are lost in the mix.
Cheers,
Matt
Absoultely! A friend of mine initially asked people to review him on Yelp and they(Yelp) deleted them (to my knowledge he is not a paying customer)…
I am one of those that solicited customers for reviews but they disappeared. When they disappeared, I stopped soliciting for yelp and only solicited for Google, Yahoo, and Bing. I have about 50 reviews between them… but not for yelp because they delete them. You can find my business listing on google for some samples to see if they seem fake. I think Google has pretty accurate algorithms.
-Dr. Michael Haley, Local Business Pompano Beach, FL
Interesting! We have had only 2 reviews both legit by customers, and they are still posted. The one that the receptionist did post is gone. We are not paying Yelp either.
Yelp’s algorithm deletes reviews of people who are not frequent reviewers. It has nothing to do with whether or not one is a paying customer of yelp. Of interest, we got talked into a trial paid top placement by Yelp salespeople. For $300 per month we got placed in the top position of chiros in zip code for 500 hits per month. Our new customers from Yelp went WAY down for the 3 months we tried this. Needless to say, we dropped that program. Waste of $1000!!!!
Very good article…very interesting…we have heard the same thing about yelp that they delete reviews from people who do not frequent the site. This does not make complete sense as why should someone who is not as active be penalized? Thank you for the interesting discussion.
Jeremy
Free classifieds for Local Businesss
Yes, the same thing happened to me with 2 reviews. Now I understand. Thank you for the article.