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    The BLOG

    Yelp Content Review Filter

    Why aren’t my Yelp Reviews Showing Up?

    In the early days of Yelp, they were just glad to have any reviews for a business.  Like most startups Yelp allowed a lot of junk to flow into their front doors in order to get momentum.  Now that they have momentum they have begun cleaning house.

    Below are observations we and others have made concerning Yelp and their automated filtering system.  This is not a perfect analysis but it should give you as a business owner some understanding into why so many of your reviews will not show up.

     

    The Yelp Review Filter – This automated system is responsible for the automatic filtering of reviews.  Sometimes these filters are temporary sometimes they lead to a very nasty warning that displays over your business.

     

    Number of reviews:

    80% of filtered reviews are from people who have written less than 5 reviews.  It is human nature for people to want to promote their own business/prime the pump.  Yelp knows this and leaves reviews filtered until the user has made more than 5.

    Number of Friends:

    Even if you have 5 reviews if you aren’t willing to share them with Facebook friends, Yelp has filtered them.  The majority of people don’t have a problem sharing reviews with their friends but review spammers do.  So those of us who are privacy conscious are filtered out.  We have seen people with over 50+ reviews filtered out because they didn’t have any friends on yelp.

    Uniqueness of content:

    Real reviews begin with your experience.  They aren’t a short blurb.  They also don’t tell the same story across all the reviews that have been left.  Yelp can look at the uniqueness of a review.  If the experience is 70% or more the same, it’s going to be filtered out.

    Other Trust Factors:

    Do you check-in to businesses?

    Do you have a profile picture?

    Do you leave tips for others at restaurants?

    Is your profile detail complete (things you love, hometown etc.)?

    Location Tracking:

    Yelp can see where you are when you leave a review.  They can see what device you’re on.  If you clicked a link in an email to get to the review.   If you are the business owner they can see if you are using the same computer/location to login to Yelp to check on your business.

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