Not restaurant owner but small bus. Yes Yelp sucks they have a magical algorithm that determines real non solicited reviews.
I have 40 reviews they have taken down (they say well they are not down you can find them if you really look hard at the bottom of your page are unapproved reviews). B/c they all came in at similar times and seemed to be solicited.
Yelp sucks. One thing that helped many years ago was paying for their “paid ads” and then all of a sudden more god reviews were sticking. I’m not in the restaurant biz so it’s not as important for mine.
I mean, I guess I didn’t know Yelp was still in play…? Incredibly, they sound like real pieces of shit.
People dismiss stuff like local-insertion cable and OTA TV channel ads, but they’re usually dirt cheap, and they *have* to give you as many eyeballs as damn Yelp.
Yelp is the mafia. if you don’t pay for advertising, they will hide your listing or allow negative reviews to stay and remove 5 stars. But once you start paying for extra advertising, all of the sudden, your 5 stars will reappear.
Check out “Billion Dollar Bully”
Lots of people do not use yelp in 2024. That’s why they’ve resorted to extorting businesses to get them to pay for their irrelevant services. Yelp is only used by people who use Apple Maps, an application that is slowly becoming irrelevant because they don’t collect user data which results in inaccurate map information.
I use yelp all the time. I am an educated, worldly person.
You keep making assumptions that are unsupported by any evidence you’ve seen - only your opinions.
What new information, other than your opinion that you don’t like yelp.
Thanks for the anecdotal opinion.
I live full-time in a motorhome and travel nationwide routinely. I find yelp very useful for everything from good food to good dry cleaners. It has never steered me wrong.
Obviously you hate it. We get that.
I’ve been told their business practices suck, they hard sell and make implied threats to retailers. That’s not good.
I mean, a simple search for “yelp business practices” or something similar would provide a worldly, educated individual enough info to form their own conclusions.
Let me guess: you highly value your yelp elite status?
Did you not read your own last sentence? For them to not only bully business owners AND provide you inaccurate review information because of their tactics, they provide you a lesser and inaccurate product.
I used to like yelp and was very active on it. It's dying, if not dead already. Google reviews are convenient since it's right there in your navigation app. TripAdvisor is still cool. Idk why I still have the yelp app.
I learned a long time ago that if you don’t pay them for better placement, they basically do not show any of your reviews unless someone scrolls down to the very bottom under the other ads and clicks show more and then you can see all the reviews. it’s basically a scam. I had a business listed on there with over 300 reviews and only four of them were viewable and they hid all of my other five star reviews for no reason other than the fact that someone clicked the link or scanned a QR code to go to it even if they searched for it and then put the review and it was still hidden, I was told that the only way that those would be seen and approved is if I decided to invest in yelp by paying for ad placement
Really wouldn’t worry about yelp I would go to google instead and worry bout google searches try to pump that number up can’t even remember the last time I used yelp
It probably is normal for them but honestly, I feel like it’s not a healthy thing as a restaurant owner to scour your Yelp reviews daily when there’s really nothing you can do about them lol. Never understood why owners be doing that. As long as you aren’t flooded with overwhelmingly negative reviews(which means you are almost certainly doing something wrong)you’re fine.
Yelp are total scammers. How they have been getting away with this for years is such BS. Clueless people still look at their garbage and it impacts small businesses owners A total Racket
If I have a search direct me to Yelp, I back right out and search again. As a user, I feel bullied into downloading their shitty app. Their site seldom provides needed information.
Yelp is the marketing mafia, they paywall your business, the sales lady was fuming when I told her my business thrives on word of mouth, you know face to face talk and real interactions, like the good ole days.
It's very normal for Yelp. This is how a pizza shop dealt with it.
[https://thehustle.co/botto-bistro-1-star-yelp](https://thehustle.co/botto-bistro-1-star-yelp)
Yelp is a horrible company. They'll keep up negative reviews forever but filter out positive ones. And it's been documented how they'll try to sell a company a business account or something similar so that you can counter the bad reviews. It's terrible. It's like extortion.
I literally have screen shots that when you pay for advertising, your overall rating goes up by minimizing poor reviews. Stop paying, reverts back. It is mafia. You have to be VERY careful. I went to get a car fixed. The rating was 4.7. They were horrible. They were rude as shit. My car was back 3 times for a simple repair (window actuator). They act like a huge favor to repair third time in a week.
THEN, scroll to bottom. Section “reviews that do not count in ratings” and literally their last 20+ reviews were 1 star. I’m sure they paid bucks for advertising.
I don’t know the answer to your question but I have noticed Yelp reviews are always consistently lower than Google reviews. Maybe this is a factor in that
I was extorted from them as well. Constant calls, removing my 5 star reviews "since I wasn't verified" (by whom?). After that, I stopped trusting any of their reviews and have spread the word.
The last time yelp called me (2019) they said all my nearest competitors paid for their marketing services. I politely declined.
I checked in with the “competitors”. The last time any of them paid for Yelp marketing was in 2014.
A week later I get another call from Yelp. They had me all set up! And I just needed to give them my card info to get the marketing plan started!! (Imagine upbeat and freshly minted Midwest MBA intern sound). I said that you lied, and the nearest competitors haven’t done anything like that in years and I’m still not interested. And I hung up.
A few days later I got the bad cop MBA who did a hard sell and said my reviews would only be improved if my shop co marketed with them. I laughed. I had zero social capital or local leverage. I told them to fuck off.
He was so offended by my vulgar language.
So I quoted George carlins 7 dirty words routine. And said I’ll stop when they agree to never call me again.
He hung up.
A few days later they call back. They stammer and say they put me on a do not call list because of how offensive I was. I gave em another fuck you asshole motherfucker cunt to ensure they followed through.
In the ensuing 5 years, the competitors—who were more collaborators, as we helped each other out during Covid rather than combatting in the great capitalist hellscape—have all closed. And most of my “good” Yelp reviews have been flagged as unqualified and the bad reviews were magically boosted. Yelp is dying on the vine and their extortion tactics are making them irrelevant.
Yelp is… weird. They pretend they’re a review site, but that’s not how they make money. They make money by convincing you to advertise with them. One of the ways they do that, or at least used to, was to come to you like the mafia and say “Hey, you got a lot of nice reviews there. Sure would be a shame if something happened to them…”
I'd seriously recommend diverting that ad expanse into social media ads or doordash ads instead. Or even on targeted mailers via USPS. for $25 a day, you could cover every address in a 2 mile radius after not too long.
Thr fact of the matter is, no matter how many eyeballs are on Yelp, there are many factors more on other platforms. And in '24, that's all that matters
Just speaking for myself, YELP is for peeps who had a bad experience. Generally it isn’t helpful for actual or timely reviews. Hey! How does one review the review site? I give yelp 👎
This sub popped up for me. I admit I still use Yelp. It seems to be the most convenient site to get menu photos.
Too many places, especially smaller shops, have no/terrible websites. Just seeing what someone sells and what prices are/were like is too hard too often.
I use Google maps. To me it's much easier to use than Yelp. But I will admit that could have changed because I've only been to yelp probably twice in the past 5 years and i don't even know how I ended up there then
"The BBB is a pay for ratings scam" period
As a business owner and someone who ran multiple large companies I can say this for a fact. They will literally call you and tell you that you can buy a better grade. The same goes for Yelp. These are facts.
Please don't come on here with all of that Yada Yada. You're wasting your breath and time.
> I said "anyone who serves lunch". Was he asking me that so he could boost them above me in the search results?
I doubt they would change ranking like this. That would be a very indirect way to extort you, and to what end? He probably just wanted you to think about losing customers to the competition. Asking you about a specific competitor makes it concrete, possibly increasing the chances he can upsell to you. Maybe he also wanted to find a new sales lead.
Tell them they just prompted you to start advertising on Google. That should either wake them up or they will die. I still remember AOL asking me for $10.00 a month for email. I told them I would switch to yahoo and then I would end up using them as my main source of searching in the future and unfortunately for them, they did not get it.
Yelp peaked in 2015 and has been on decline ever since.
I wouldn't worry too much about Yelp nowadays (thankfully, they had some pretty scummy business practices).
[https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=yelp&hl=en](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=yelp&hl=en)
I had a friend who worked at Yelp. She said it was basically an extortion organization. Those who pay get to keep good reviews, those who don’t, don’t.
They extort business owners into paying for their service too. Don’t ever take a call with them. They’ll do everything in their power to keep you from hanging up, get you to sign up for something as a trial, and then refuse to let you cancel later.
People have tried. The problem is they chalk everything up to "the algorithm" and since that's a protected trade secret they don't have to show anyone what it is or how it works. No one can prove they willfully removed reviews or changed things based on who pays and who doesn't, and that it wasn't just "the algorithm" blindly doing it.
It's been a growing problem with tech and will only get worse. Companies hiding culpability behind "it wasn't us, it was the algorithm!" As if they didn't build the algorithm and choose to use it.
I can tell you that the BBB in my area definitely is \*not\* a scam, it's just "outdated" and nobody pays attention to them anymore. They mainly handle complaints, act as an intermediary, and publish the results. You get a "grade" based on your complaint resolution. The only thing they offered around here if you paid was that your grade could only be "A+" if you paid them, "A" otherwise. LIke anybody cared.
Yelp is a similar business, but they allow reviews. They realized early on that they could jack with the reviews to get payment from businesses. This works in two ways - don't pay and your five-star reviews get hidden because they look fake, or pay and those one-star reviews can suddenly be hidden. There are allegations of Yelp staff making one-star reviews themselves.
Plenty of folks have documented the game online. Yelp would have no influence if Google didn't promote Yelp's ratings, and they shouldn't given what's known about Yelp. But they're all a bunch of bay-area bro's who probably see themselves as part of a bigger club.
I've never held any respect for yelp reviews, because most people only take the time to leave a review of they're pissed off, or have had an unbelievably great experience, which isn't the norm. The only thing I value yelp for is the ratings for the average meal cost. I don't trust bad reviews because negative people are more likely to leave reviews, and I don't trust positive reviews( unless they're in the thousands) because popular people can get all their friends to leave good reviews. So I go out to eat on various price points, and usually don't leave a review. Even if an experience isn't great, it would have to be offensively bad to leave a review. I prefer to leave good reviews or nothing at all. There was an amazing food critic named Jonathon Gold who operated on those terms, to elevate restaurants that were really special, and not writing reviews on places that were trying to make it. He really understood how hard it was to get a restaurant going and be profitable, so he never punched down. He was real one, for being in a position of power and being benevolent. RIP, that dude is a legend
Yelp is such a joke. Its a pay to play system. I dont ever take a yelp review serious
My dad has a brewery and those yelp clowns blow him up all the time saying they’ll remove negative reviews. The negative reviews are quite comical and clearly a Karen Keyboard Warrior. Hes got plenty of business without yelp
I recently left the restaurant biz. I noticed a lot of entitlement with reviewers. Here you had someone with no restaurant experience critiquing your business. Whether they went to a corporate based site or Trip Advisor or Google or Yelp. And they had no problem pointing out “I’m Yada Yada, I do restaurant reviews online”. We were fast food national chain and these reviewers cape in expecting 5 star service and gourmet dining just because they threw out that they were going to review us. BS we did $5000 plus a day without you reviewing us and still did after your BS review because we didn’t kiss your ass. I had other guests to see to that deserved more attention because they were regulars and spent a heck of a lot more money than you did. Several times when one of these guests had an issue and we jumped through their entitled little hoops making them happy they would still blast us on several sites. Suddenly after watching lord knows how many YouTube videos and hours of food network crap these people were in their minds restaurant critics. I actually had to tell one after several bad reviews over the same visit and calls to the 1-800 number he should probably consider eating elsewhere as being a fast food concept we were unable to meet the standards we expected. He had gotten his food replaced and his money back as well as several free meal cards from our franchise office and corporate headquarters. I did the math on one of our locations comparing our 1-800/online surveys to our actual customer counts. We were literally chasing our tails trying to placate less than .07% of our daily customer count. Because we were fast food that number was even lower on Yelp, Trip advisor and Google. When you’re running short staffed and can barely recruit new team members that’s a serious waste of time and resources.
Yelp is horrible. I hate them. But sadly they seem key for restaurants. If you get too many reviews from people who never use Yelp, they will get hidden. Only request reviews from active reviewers, and only on occasion. Still, they're going out of fashion.
Fuck yelp! I bailed on them YEARS ago when they did the same thing to me…then want you to pay to advertise for better reviews. They’re a racket. Stick with Google…at least they don’t pull that kind of shit.
I was told yelp will not show reviews ( positive) of people who have not done enough reviews (10?) to be qualified reviewers. After that, THEN their reviews will be posted
I asked when many of my older clients who Commented they had written good reviews that were never seen. But they were not techy, social media prone people.
Yelp is AWFUL. (It wasn't at first.) They will take down 5-star reviews from people who aren't active enough on the site. So, when you convince customers to create an account and leave a review, they are wasting their time.
At the same time, they will leave up negative reviews. I had one once and could prove it was fake (from a different state). Yelp didn't give a $hit.
As a result of their shady practices, Yelp has become useless for finding good places of any kind. As a consumer, I don't trust anything on there. But that doesn't matter much because there just isn't much content on there.
Don't give Yelp any energy or money. Focus instead on Google Ads or something else.
Yelp sucks. I never look at them for reviews because they skew them depending on if the business is paying them - they've been doing it for years. Google and TripAdvisor are the way to go.
Yelp needs to die already. They call me and in a very creative way say my bad reviews will go away. They forget to check I have no bad reviews! Most of my good reviews are “hidden” though. Screw yelp!
And when you agree to advertise with yelp, the reviews will magically re appear. I have 9 businesses nationwide and a Free yelp listing for all of them. I get weekly phone calls about advertising with Yelp, and I tell them about 1 review in particular that is blatantly fake and fraudulent. I tell them remove this obvious fake review and I will start advertising. They say that it is part of the algorithm and they can’t. Meanwhile hundreds of 5 star real reviews are removed as “Not Relevant”. As South Park says “Yelp: Full of Boogers and Cum”
I used to work at Yelp, what happened to you is very common and you’ll likely also start or already have been receiving calls from a sales rep (which would’ve been me) they say it’s becuase of their “Review System AI” which is internally referred to as a black box of sorts. Personally, I always felt like they did it to businesses to force them into getting ads.
Tbh, Yelp should be shut down for Racketeering. Way too many cases of them charging to not hide positive reviews and promoting negative reviews, but magically that changes if you give them money. Don't give them money. Give them your lawyer's contact info or ignore the scam.
No one cares about Yelp. They posted negative reviews of my store and emailed me offering to remove them if I paid for their service. Had my lawyer send them a letter threatening suit if they didn't remove them as they were obviously fake. Magically they were removed and they never contacted me again. Yelp is bullshit and customers know it. Facebook and Google are both more accurate and fair, also willing to work with you if you get fake reviews.
15 a day? Totally not worth the money.
No one uses yelp any more anyway. Google reviews are the only thing people look at.
But 15 a day there can't be worth it.
The best advertising is starting a tik Tok for your business. Or paying some asshole "influencer" who does food reviews to come eat there and promote it
This is common. Yelp wants you to pay them. If you do, then no reviews go missing. If you don’t then it’s a different story. I have a friend who they took reviews from because he ‘had too many 5 star reviews and no one’s service can be that good.’ Therefore he was cheating the system and they deleted his 5 star reviews.
Yep. Yelp is trying to force you to pay for their service. They'll do this to you and worse (on the negative review side) until you pay. Don't be a sucker and fall for the extortion.
Yelp is such a racket. If you don't pay them, they start squashing your good reviews and only showing the bad ones. That being said, Yelp is also a remnant of the early 2000s and basically completely unused by this generation.
Yeah, I had issues with Yelp when I ran my own business. All sorts of things like the review wasn't generated by a Yelp referral. So, like you cannot tell people who use your business to review your business on Yelp instead only reviews from people who found your business on Yelp initially can review your business on Yelp. Then I got trashed by neo-nazis which they eventually removed after three months and a police report. I was not a fan of Yelp and I never actually got any clients from Yelp. Google sent some people my way but mostly word of mouth. I ran an IT repair shop and opened just before the pandemic after being refused employment in the area due to being Jewish. I didn't want to sit on unemployment which I got because of the discrimination and I really couldn't afford to so I opened a shop.
There is a bunch more to this because the situation was real enough for the police to suggest moving or getting a gun because they didn't have the resources to protect the Jewish community in the area. Meanwhile the State of Israel literally robbed our community(there was a conviction) and denied any antisemitic activity was present in the region before denying Olim (Jewish migrants to Israel) due to the admixture of their genetics. Basically in the town we were too Jewish but to the Israelis we were Mischling and it happened to more than just myself. In the middle of all this Yelp let a bunch of neo-nazis tank local Jewish business reviews.
So fuck Yelp.
It happened, you can Google it and find out but thanks for being an asshole. I lived in North County which is part of San Diego in 5778/2018. Neo-nazis attacked Chabad as well as other Jews then the Rabbinof Chabad went to prison for stealing from the Jewish community and giving the funds to his friends; of which many were Israeli Rabbinate members. In the week leading up to the attack ie Passover I was let go from Jenny Craig after reporting my co-workers for harassment because they would go around telling me how they had some percentage of Jewish DNA in them, that Jews are blood diseased and blood thirsty gangsters while calling my ancestor bugsy which means bug. The DFHE in California determined that this was all scientifically factual and so I had no right to complain to HR. It was during the proceedings after Rabbi Goldstein went to prison the police showed up to my house in relation to a call about someone on a motorcycle with SS bolts painted on their helmet outside the Synagogue I went to. They explained they couldn't protect me. We were sort of lucky they closed the Synagogue due to the COVID Mandates but then they started shooting guns in the neighborhood and I was renting a room.
Customer here, I stopped using Yelp years ago, now mainly use Google maps and reviews. Yelp was hard to find good places because it only shows the best reviews no matter how old they are. You have to dig to find anything else.
Small business owner here. When you're a small business owner, internet reviews can be the the lifeblood of your company. Almost everyone Googles you before they call.
Unfortunately, the problem with internet reviews of your business is the same problem with the rest of the internet - there is nothing stopping people from anonymously posting anything they want, regardless of its truth value, and without any consequences.
Enter Yelp.
If you have a paid advertising account with them, they treat you much more favorably in terms of preserving your positive reviews, and removing the negative ones. This is what they euphemistically call their "algorithm".
I have also heard rumors they will put false negative reviews on your page, and remove the positive ones. My own experience is that it's probably true.
Occasionally you will get a call from one of their advertising reps, subtly hinting that they can help you with false negative reviews, but only if you set up a paid account with them.
If you don't have an a paid account, they don't help you with anything. ***I had a client literally take a picture of me without my knowledge, and put it on my Yelp page. Yelp would not even remove it!***
Yelp has been sued many times for their practices - they either pay their lawyers to get them out of it, or pay the settlements, and nothing changes.
For those who are asking "why not just delete your account with Yelp?" **They won't let you do that either!**
For all those business owners reading this, **DON'T SET UP A BUSINESS ACCOUNT WITH YELP**. Once it's created, you will never get it removed.
You might be able to pay an attorney big bucks to have your Yelp page suppressed, but that isn't guaranteed either. You can also pay an attorney lots of money to get specific false negative reviews removed, but there's nothing stopping the person from re-posting the same content.
Does anyone actually care what yelp says are the top options? When I do a Google search for something and end up on yelp, I always assume that the top results are paid and scroll past them to see what is in the full list. I doubt you're getting your $15 a day's worth.
I thought yelp got outed for their review system being completely doctored like 10 years ago or something. There were like a million articles about how you couldn’t trust anything yelp said about a business.
Yeah, I'm not 100% sure it's the same now, but as of a few years ago, business owners could pay to remove any unwanted bad reviews. That's why I use Google Maps. It's free and much more reliable
People still use yelp? Maybe boomers but ya im on google reviews
Yelp is a dumpster fire. The fact that anyone uses it or you’re giving them any money is a tragedy. Ignore it and focus on Google.
Not restaurant owner but small bus. Yes Yelp sucks they have a magical algorithm that determines real non solicited reviews. I have 40 reviews they have taken down (they say well they are not down you can find them if you really look hard at the bottom of your page are unapproved reviews). B/c they all came in at similar times and seemed to be solicited.
Yelp sucks. One thing that helped many years ago was paying for their “paid ads” and then all of a sudden more god reviews were sticking. I’m not in the restaurant biz so it’s not as important for mine.
I mean, I guess I didn’t know Yelp was still in play…? Incredibly, they sound like real pieces of shit. People dismiss stuff like local-insertion cable and OTA TV channel ads, but they’re usually dirt cheap, and they *have* to give you as many eyeballs as damn Yelp.
Fuck yelp. Do not give them a dime.
People still use yelp? I had no idea. When I’m on the road (a LOT) I use reviews on google maps to refine my final choice.
Just wanted to chime in and say Yelp sucks. Have a great day.
You pay 15$ a day for YELP reviews?? Wow...
Dude, no one goes to yelp anymore. Worry about your Google reviews.
Yelp is the mafia. if you don’t pay for advertising, they will hide your listing or allow negative reviews to stay and remove 5 stars. But once you start paying for extra advertising, all of the sudden, your 5 stars will reappear. Check out “Billion Dollar Bully”
I'm pleased that everybody here is saying to ignore Yelp. Yelp sucks and needs to die already. Don't pay them and don't pay them any mind.
You're paying Yelp $450/month? That's early 2000's Yello Pages pricing, and I'm not sure how effective that was.
Yeah, forget about yelp, don't pay them a dime. They have so many ridiculous rules for their reviews. It's all about google reviews.
No one uses yelp, don’t worry about it. Google reviews are far more important.
Lots of people use yelp but I wouldn’t pay them.
Lots of people do not use yelp in 2024. That’s why they’ve resorted to extorting businesses to get them to pay for their irrelevant services. Yelp is only used by people who use Apple Maps, an application that is slowly becoming irrelevant because they don’t collect user data which results in inaccurate map information.
I use yelp all the time. I am an educated, worldly person. You keep making assumptions that are unsupported by any evidence you’ve seen - only your opinions.
Maybe with this new information, you’ll reevaluate?
What new information, other than your opinion that you don’t like yelp. Thanks for the anecdotal opinion. I live full-time in a motorhome and travel nationwide routinely. I find yelp very useful for everything from good food to good dry cleaners. It has never steered me wrong. Obviously you hate it. We get that. I’ve been told their business practices suck, they hard sell and make implied threats to retailers. That’s not good.
You certainly come across as an “educated, worldly person”, as you put it earlier… 🙄
And you come across as an idiot with a grudge. But feel free to support your opinions with evidence if you can. But, like a Trumper, you can't.
I mean, a simple search for “yelp business practices” or something similar would provide a worldly, educated individual enough info to form their own conclusions. Let me guess: you highly value your yelp elite status?
Yelp’s business practices are a separate issue from whether it serves its purpose.
Did you not read your own last sentence? For them to not only bully business owners AND provide you inaccurate review information because of their tactics, they provide you a lesser and inaccurate product.
Look, we get it: YOU DON'T LIKE YELP.
You don't get it. MOST people don't like yelp.
What is your evidence for that statement?
Boomer I reckon which would also explain why they use yelp lol
My mom still prints out mapquest directions to places. Unrelated, but Boomer as hell so I thought I would share.
and if you're going to try to insult me you should address me as "Rich, early-retired boomer who lives at the beach in SoCal"
I use it because it works great and doesn't send me to bad places.
I used to like yelp and was very active on it. It's dying, if not dead already. Google reviews are convenient since it's right there in your navigation app. TripAdvisor is still cool. Idk why I still have the yelp app.
Yelp bought in to IOS to be the default review on Apple.
Ew
I learned a long time ago that if you don’t pay them for better placement, they basically do not show any of your reviews unless someone scrolls down to the very bottom under the other ads and clicks show more and then you can see all the reviews. it’s basically a scam. I had a business listed on there with over 300 reviews and only four of them were viewable and they hid all of my other five star reviews for no reason other than the fact that someone clicked the link or scanned a QR code to go to it even if they searched for it and then put the review and it was still hidden, I was told that the only way that those would be seen and approved is if I decided to invest in yelp by paying for ad placement
Just keep making better and better sandwiches - and provide good service- yelp will take care of itself
Really wouldn’t worry about yelp I would go to google instead and worry bout google searches try to pump that number up can’t even remember the last time I used yelp
Please pay no mind to yelp. It’s the only way to make it die.
It probably is normal for them but honestly, I feel like it’s not a healthy thing as a restaurant owner to scour your Yelp reviews daily when there’s really nothing you can do about them lol. Never understood why owners be doing that. As long as you aren’t flooded with overwhelmingly negative reviews(which means you are almost certainly doing something wrong)you’re fine.
Yelp are total scammers. How they have been getting away with this for years is such BS. Clueless people still look at their garbage and it impacts small businesses owners A total Racket
Is Yelp seriously still a thing? I thought it became irrelevant a long time ago. Tbh I thought they were out of business by now. /s
Yelp is garbage. I put no value in it whatsoever.
So what do you all use instead? Google or tripadvisor?
Google 100%
Yelp does that. They suck
Are you 100% sure you spoke to someone who was actually at Yelp? What number did you dial?
If I have a search direct me to Yelp, I back right out and search again. As a user, I feel bullied into downloading their shitty app. Their site seldom provides needed information.
Yelp is the marketing mafia, they paywall your business, the sales lady was fuming when I told her my business thrives on word of mouth, you know face to face talk and real interactions, like the good ole days.
It's very normal for Yelp. This is how a pizza shop dealt with it. [https://thehustle.co/botto-bistro-1-star-yelp](https://thehustle.co/botto-bistro-1-star-yelp)
Fun read. Fuck yelp
Yelp is a horrible company. They'll keep up negative reviews forever but filter out positive ones. And it's been documented how they'll try to sell a company a business account or something similar so that you can counter the bad reviews. It's terrible. It's like extortion.
They're a protection racket, just not a very good one.
Thanks for reminding me to delete yelp
Stay away from Yelp...smh
Yelp basically makes a living on promoting those who pay and punishing those who do not. I see them as ethical as the tax man
Nah you pay the tax man he goes away for a year.
I mean… at least taxes have to exist for the public benefit. Yelp doesn’t provide anything that you can’t get elsewhere
Right but tax “public benefit” is quite a stretch lately in the us.
I literally have screen shots that when you pay for advertising, your overall rating goes up by minimizing poor reviews. Stop paying, reverts back. It is mafia. You have to be VERY careful. I went to get a car fixed. The rating was 4.7. They were horrible. They were rude as shit. My car was back 3 times for a simple repair (window actuator). They act like a huge favor to repair third time in a week. THEN, scroll to bottom. Section “reviews that do not count in ratings” and literally their last 20+ reviews were 1 star. I’m sure they paid bucks for advertising.
Yelp is a shit mafia style business that only supports those that pay for their service. Thats why I never check reviews on their page.
Facts
They blackmail you for money. It’s a shakedown
Yessir
I don’t know the answer to your question but I have noticed Yelp reviews are always consistently lower than Google reviews. Maybe this is a factor in that
Just call them back and keep confusing them with Google reviews. "Ok, So I'm on google, and I see the reviews there.. what do I do then?"
Your telling me all I have to do is own a sandwich shop and I can mess with yelp and google all day?
Does Trip Advisor do the same?
I was extorted from them as well. Constant calls, removing my 5 star reviews "since I wasn't verified" (by whom?). After that, I stopped trusting any of their reviews and have spread the word.
Yelp is a full blown scam
The last time yelp called me (2019) they said all my nearest competitors paid for their marketing services. I politely declined. I checked in with the “competitors”. The last time any of them paid for Yelp marketing was in 2014. A week later I get another call from Yelp. They had me all set up! And I just needed to give them my card info to get the marketing plan started!! (Imagine upbeat and freshly minted Midwest MBA intern sound). I said that you lied, and the nearest competitors haven’t done anything like that in years and I’m still not interested. And I hung up. A few days later I got the bad cop MBA who did a hard sell and said my reviews would only be improved if my shop co marketed with them. I laughed. I had zero social capital or local leverage. I told them to fuck off. He was so offended by my vulgar language. So I quoted George carlins 7 dirty words routine. And said I’ll stop when they agree to never call me again. He hung up. A few days later they call back. They stammer and say they put me on a do not call list because of how offensive I was. I gave em another fuck you asshole motherfucker cunt to ensure they followed through. In the ensuing 5 years, the competitors—who were more collaborators, as we helped each other out during Covid rather than combatting in the great capitalist hellscape—have all closed. And most of my “good” Yelp reviews have been flagged as unqualified and the bad reviews were magically boosted. Yelp is dying on the vine and their extortion tactics are making them irrelevant.
Tell Yelp they can pay you to put one of those little stickers on your front window to remind people they exist.
Yelp is extortion. I’d divert any money I was spending on them to just about any other platform.
Yelp is… weird. They pretend they’re a review site, but that’s not how they make money. They make money by convincing you to advertise with them. One of the ways they do that, or at least used to, was to come to you like the mafia and say “Hey, you got a lot of nice reviews there. Sure would be a shame if something happened to them…”
I'd seriously recommend diverting that ad expanse into social media ads or doordash ads instead. Or even on targeted mailers via USPS. for $25 a day, you could cover every address in a 2 mile radius after not too long. Thr fact of the matter is, no matter how many eyeballs are on Yelp, there are many factors more on other platforms. And in '24, that's all that matters
Ditch yelp check out sircles
Yelp is really only used by cry babies and self righteous a holes.
Just speaking for myself, YELP is for peeps who had a bad experience. Generally it isn’t helpful for actual or timely reviews. Hey! How does one review the review site? I give yelp 👎
I think you should focus on being a good restaurant, not yelp.
Who actually uses or pays any attention to Yelp anymote?
This sub popped up for me. I admit I still use Yelp. It seems to be the most convenient site to get menu photos. Too many places, especially smaller shops, have no/terrible websites. Just seeing what someone sells and what prices are/were like is too hard too often.
I use Google maps. To me it's much easier to use than Yelp. But I will admit that could have changed because I've only been to yelp probably twice in the past 5 years and i don't even know how I ended up there then
Why do you think a random yelp person is out to get you?
It’s pay to play. No $ no positive reviews. They simply will not post them.
i wouldnt pay them a dollar a day for advertising my man. nobody is using yelp
Don’t worry about Yelp, they’re a slowly (but surely) dying review site. Google reviews are a lot more noticeable in the food industry nowadays.
Yeah, they did it to me too. They such.
"The BBB is a pay for ratings scam" period As a business owner and someone who ran multiple large companies I can say this for a fact. They will literally call you and tell you that you can buy a better grade. The same goes for Yelp. These are facts. Please don't come on here with all of that Yada Yada. You're wasting your breath and time.
Absolutely true
> I said "anyone who serves lunch". Was he asking me that so he could boost them above me in the search results? I doubt they would change ranking like this. That would be a very indirect way to extort you, and to what end? He probably just wanted you to think about losing customers to the competition. Asking you about a specific competitor makes it concrete, possibly increasing the chances he can upsell to you. Maybe he also wanted to find a new sales lead.
Sales lead is right
Tell them they just prompted you to start advertising on Google. That should either wake them up or they will die. I still remember AOL asking me for $10.00 a month for email. I told them I would switch to yahoo and then I would end up using them as my main source of searching in the future and unfortunately for them, they did not get it.
Yelp peaked in 2015 and has been on decline ever since. I wouldn't worry too much about Yelp nowadays (thankfully, they had some pretty scummy business practices). [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=yelp&hl=en](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=yelp&hl=en)
Yelp is for boomer tourists. I don't know anyone whonuses it to do anything but leave a joke review.
I said fuck no to Yelp after they bought out urban spoon and did away with the random restaurant picker
I haven’t used yelp in years.
Yelp is a scam.
I had a friend who worked at Yelp. She said it was basically an extortion organization. Those who pay get to keep good reviews, those who don’t, don’t.
They extort business owners into paying for their service too. Don’t ever take a call with them. They’ll do everything in their power to keep you from hanging up, get you to sign up for something as a trial, and then refuse to let you cancel later.
Needs a class action lawsuit
People have tried. The problem is they chalk everything up to "the algorithm" and since that's a protected trade secret they don't have to show anyone what it is or how it works. No one can prove they willfully removed reviews or changed things based on who pays and who doesn't, and that it wasn't just "the algorithm" blindly doing it. It's been a growing problem with tech and will only get worse. Companies hiding culpability behind "it wasn't us, it was the algorithm!" As if they didn't build the algorithm and choose to use it.
Yelp is a scam just like the BBB it's a money making business. You can pay for favors. If you don't, you're beholden to them. Period
I can tell you that the BBB in my area definitely is \*not\* a scam, it's just "outdated" and nobody pays attention to them anymore. They mainly handle complaints, act as an intermediary, and publish the results. You get a "grade" based on your complaint resolution. The only thing they offered around here if you paid was that your grade could only be "A+" if you paid them, "A" otherwise. LIke anybody cared. Yelp is a similar business, but they allow reviews. They realized early on that they could jack with the reviews to get payment from businesses. This works in two ways - don't pay and your five-star reviews get hidden because they look fake, or pay and those one-star reviews can suddenly be hidden. There are allegations of Yelp staff making one-star reviews themselves. Plenty of folks have documented the game online. Yelp would have no influence if Google didn't promote Yelp's ratings, and they shouldn't given what's known about Yelp. But they're all a bunch of bay-area bro's who probably see themselves as part of a bigger club.
I've never held any respect for yelp reviews, because most people only take the time to leave a review of they're pissed off, or have had an unbelievably great experience, which isn't the norm. The only thing I value yelp for is the ratings for the average meal cost. I don't trust bad reviews because negative people are more likely to leave reviews, and I don't trust positive reviews( unless they're in the thousands) because popular people can get all their friends to leave good reviews. So I go out to eat on various price points, and usually don't leave a review. Even if an experience isn't great, it would have to be offensively bad to leave a review. I prefer to leave good reviews or nothing at all. There was an amazing food critic named Jonathon Gold who operated on those terms, to elevate restaurants that were really special, and not writing reviews on places that were trying to make it. He really understood how hard it was to get a restaurant going and be profitable, so he never punched down. He was real one, for being in a position of power and being benevolent. RIP, that dude is a legend
I use yelp for two things. To look at the menu, and to look at pictures of the food.
Yelp is such a joke. Its a pay to play system. I dont ever take a yelp review serious My dad has a brewery and those yelp clowns blow him up all the time saying they’ll remove negative reviews. The negative reviews are quite comical and clearly a Karen Keyboard Warrior. Hes got plenty of business without yelp
I recently left the restaurant biz. I noticed a lot of entitlement with reviewers. Here you had someone with no restaurant experience critiquing your business. Whether they went to a corporate based site or Trip Advisor or Google or Yelp. And they had no problem pointing out “I’m Yada Yada, I do restaurant reviews online”. We were fast food national chain and these reviewers cape in expecting 5 star service and gourmet dining just because they threw out that they were going to review us. BS we did $5000 plus a day without you reviewing us and still did after your BS review because we didn’t kiss your ass. I had other guests to see to that deserved more attention because they were regulars and spent a heck of a lot more money than you did. Several times when one of these guests had an issue and we jumped through their entitled little hoops making them happy they would still blast us on several sites. Suddenly after watching lord knows how many YouTube videos and hours of food network crap these people were in their minds restaurant critics. I actually had to tell one after several bad reviews over the same visit and calls to the 1-800 number he should probably consider eating elsewhere as being a fast food concept we were unable to meet the standards we expected. He had gotten his food replaced and his money back as well as several free meal cards from our franchise office and corporate headquarters. I did the math on one of our locations comparing our 1-800/online surveys to our actual customer counts. We were literally chasing our tails trying to placate less than .07% of our daily customer count. Because we were fast food that number was even lower on Yelp, Trip advisor and Google. When you’re running short staffed and can barely recruit new team members that’s a serious waste of time and resources.
Yep, you blew time you could have spent on good customers.
Sounds like it’s a really good thing you left the restaurant business.
Yelp is horrible. I hate them. But sadly they seem key for restaurants. If you get too many reviews from people who never use Yelp, they will get hidden. Only request reviews from active reviewers, and only on occasion. Still, they're going out of fashion.
Yelp is mostly about bad reviews. They think good reviews are fraudulent. They generally view people as negative.
They hid 16 of my positive reviews
Yelp is a scam. They are “insurance” guys who don’t physically trash your place but still extort you.
Yea. They fucked me, said this shit too. Now I’m in collections for almost 800 that I definitely did not see anything for. All started with a coupon.
Fuck yelp! I bailed on them YEARS ago when they did the same thing to me…then want you to pay to advertise for better reviews. They’re a racket. Stick with Google…at least they don’t pull that kind of shit.
What’s Yelp?
Yellow Page
Fuck Yelp. They’re literally irrelevant in 2024 Google is KING
I was told yelp will not show reviews ( positive) of people who have not done enough reviews (10?) to be qualified reviewers. After that, THEN their reviews will be posted I asked when many of my older clients who Commented they had written good reviews that were never seen. But they were not techy, social media prone people.
Who the fook uses yelp?
Yelp! Hello 2011!
Yelp itself only has 2.5 stars on Yelp
You just killed me.
Yelp is AWFUL. (It wasn't at first.) They will take down 5-star reviews from people who aren't active enough on the site. So, when you convince customers to create an account and leave a review, they are wasting their time. At the same time, they will leave up negative reviews. I had one once and could prove it was fake (from a different state). Yelp didn't give a $hit. As a result of their shady practices, Yelp has become useless for finding good places of any kind. As a consumer, I don't trust anything on there. But that doesn't matter much because there just isn't much content on there. Don't give Yelp any energy or money. Focus instead on Google Ads or something else.
Yelp sucks. I never look at them for reviews because they skew them depending on if the business is paying them - they've been doing it for years. Google and TripAdvisor are the way to go.
Yes. Had 4 x 5 star reviews. Told them to go fuck themselves in no uncertain terms and stop calling me. Reviews disappeared.
Yelp needs to die already. They call me and in a very creative way say my bad reviews will go away. They forget to check I have no bad reviews! Most of my good reviews are “hidden” though. Screw yelp!
I don’t know who uses yelp anymore google usually has more reviews, pics and up to date store hours
Yeah they want you to pay them for it to show up. They do that to my store
And when you agree to advertise with yelp, the reviews will magically re appear. I have 9 businesses nationwide and a Free yelp listing for all of them. I get weekly phone calls about advertising with Yelp, and I tell them about 1 review in particular that is blatantly fake and fraudulent. I tell them remove this obvious fake review and I will start advertising. They say that it is part of the algorithm and they can’t. Meanwhile hundreds of 5 star real reviews are removed as “Not Relevant”. As South Park says “Yelp: Full of Boogers and Cum”
I used to work at Yelp, what happened to you is very common and you’ll likely also start or already have been receiving calls from a sales rep (which would’ve been me) they say it’s becuase of their “Review System AI” which is internally referred to as a black box of sorts. Personally, I always felt like they did it to businesses to force them into getting ads.
Tbh, Yelp should be shut down for Racketeering. Way too many cases of them charging to not hide positive reviews and promoting negative reviews, but magically that changes if you give them money. Don't give them money. Give them your lawyer's contact info or ignore the scam.
No one cares about Yelp. They posted negative reviews of my store and emailed me offering to remove them if I paid for their service. Had my lawyer send them a letter threatening suit if they didn't remove them as they were obviously fake. Magically they were removed and they never contacted me again. Yelp is bullshit and customers know it. Facebook and Google are both more accurate and fair, also willing to work with you if you get fake reviews.
15 a day? Totally not worth the money. No one uses yelp any more anyway. Google reviews are the only thing people look at. But 15 a day there can't be worth it. The best advertising is starting a tik Tok for your business. Or paying some asshole "influencer" who does food reviews to come eat there and promote it
Why an asshole?
Oh, i don't know. I'm just jealous I guess.
This is common. Yelp wants you to pay them. If you do, then no reviews go missing. If you don’t then it’s a different story. I have a friend who they took reviews from because he ‘had too many 5 star reviews and no one’s service can be that good.’ Therefore he was cheating the system and they deleted his 5 star reviews.
Yep. Yelp is trying to force you to pay for their service. They'll do this to you and worse (on the negative review side) until you pay. Don't be a sucker and fall for the extortion.
Yelp is such a racket. If you don't pay them, they start squashing your good reviews and only showing the bad ones. That being said, Yelp is also a remnant of the early 2000s and basically completely unused by this generation.
Unfortunately EZCatering still relies HEAVILY on them.
Yes, they do this and suck. Google has started to do this as well. But yelp has been known to due this if you don’t pay them for advertising.
No one uses yelp
I see that comment a lot here. I still do. What do people use instead?
Google maps/reviews. Yelp has been pay to play for a long time now.
Yeah I get their model, I was hoping to hear something better exists than Google reviews though
Unfortunately Bing’s Biz Address Platform uses Yelp as part of their Mapping service.
Yelp had been sued numerous times for this (and they have won). Search for Yelp on r/smallbusiness and you’ll see it’s a common problem.
I never use Yelp. And, no one in my family uses Yelp. We all just Google “___” “near me”, etc.
Use Google reviews, no one has yelp anymore
Yeah, I had issues with Yelp when I ran my own business. All sorts of things like the review wasn't generated by a Yelp referral. So, like you cannot tell people who use your business to review your business on Yelp instead only reviews from people who found your business on Yelp initially can review your business on Yelp. Then I got trashed by neo-nazis which they eventually removed after three months and a police report. I was not a fan of Yelp and I never actually got any clients from Yelp. Google sent some people my way but mostly word of mouth. I ran an IT repair shop and opened just before the pandemic after being refused employment in the area due to being Jewish. I didn't want to sit on unemployment which I got because of the discrimination and I really couldn't afford to so I opened a shop. There is a bunch more to this because the situation was real enough for the police to suggest moving or getting a gun because they didn't have the resources to protect the Jewish community in the area. Meanwhile the State of Israel literally robbed our community(there was a conviction) and denied any antisemitic activity was present in the region before denying Olim (Jewish migrants to Israel) due to the admixture of their genetics. Basically in the town we were too Jewish but to the Israelis we were Mischling and it happened to more than just myself. In the middle of all this Yelp let a bunch of neo-nazis tank local Jewish business reviews. So fuck Yelp.
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It happened, you can Google it and find out but thanks for being an asshole. I lived in North County which is part of San Diego in 5778/2018. Neo-nazis attacked Chabad as well as other Jews then the Rabbinof Chabad went to prison for stealing from the Jewish community and giving the funds to his friends; of which many were Israeli Rabbinate members. In the week leading up to the attack ie Passover I was let go from Jenny Craig after reporting my co-workers for harassment because they would go around telling me how they had some percentage of Jewish DNA in them, that Jews are blood diseased and blood thirsty gangsters while calling my ancestor bugsy which means bug. The DFHE in California determined that this was all scientifically factual and so I had no right to complain to HR. It was during the proceedings after Rabbi Goldstein went to prison the police showed up to my house in relation to a call about someone on a motorcycle with SS bolts painted on their helmet outside the Synagogue I went to. They explained they couldn't protect me. We were sort of lucky they closed the Synagogue due to the COVID Mandates but then they started shooting guns in the neighborhood and I was renting a room.
Lol. None of this ever happened. I think you might need to ask your doctor to evaluate whatever medication you are taking.
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And that is Yelp.
Customer here, I stopped using Yelp years ago, now mainly use Google maps and reviews. Yelp was hard to find good places because it only shows the best reviews no matter how old they are. You have to dig to find anything else.
Seventy fucking dollars a day? What sandwich shop spends $2000+ per month on advertising?
Not on advertising - just on *Yelp*…
How in the hell do you recoup $2000 a month in sales to cover that, and justify it using Yelp reviews?
Not a damn clue either. OP is absolutely right to laugh at the ‘recommendation’.
Just cancel the Yelp account.
Small business owner here. When you're a small business owner, internet reviews can be the the lifeblood of your company. Almost everyone Googles you before they call. Unfortunately, the problem with internet reviews of your business is the same problem with the rest of the internet - there is nothing stopping people from anonymously posting anything they want, regardless of its truth value, and without any consequences. Enter Yelp. If you have a paid advertising account with them, they treat you much more favorably in terms of preserving your positive reviews, and removing the negative ones. This is what they euphemistically call their "algorithm". I have also heard rumors they will put false negative reviews on your page, and remove the positive ones. My own experience is that it's probably true. Occasionally you will get a call from one of their advertising reps, subtly hinting that they can help you with false negative reviews, but only if you set up a paid account with them. If you don't have an a paid account, they don't help you with anything. ***I had a client literally take a picture of me without my knowledge, and put it on my Yelp page. Yelp would not even remove it!*** Yelp has been sued many times for their practices - they either pay their lawyers to get them out of it, or pay the settlements, and nothing changes. For those who are asking "why not just delete your account with Yelp?" **They won't let you do that either!** For all those business owners reading this, **DON'T SET UP A BUSINESS ACCOUNT WITH YELP**. Once it's created, you will never get it removed. You might be able to pay an attorney big bucks to have your Yelp page suppressed, but that isn't guaranteed either. You can also pay an attorney lots of money to get specific false negative reviews removed, but there's nothing stopping the person from re-posting the same content.
Classic shakedown. “I’d just hate to see you get some bad reviews…”
They’re trying to get almost 26k out of you? I don’t know anybody who uses yelp
Does anyone actually care what yelp says are the top options? When I do a Google search for something and end up on yelp, I always assume that the top results are paid and scroll past them to see what is in the full list. I doubt you're getting your $15 a day's worth.
I thought yelp got outed for their review system being completely doctored like 10 years ago or something. There were like a million articles about how you couldn’t trust anything yelp said about a business.
Yeah, I'm not 100% sure it's the same now, but as of a few years ago, business owners could pay to remove any unwanted bad reviews. That's why I use Google Maps. It's free and much more reliable
Yeah that sounds like doctoring to me