If your business has more than about 10 Yelp reviews, Yelp now will try to summarize them in 2-3 sentence-long blurbs at the top of your page.
This appears to be new. At least for Yelp. Google’s been showing the same kinds of summaries for over 2 1/2 years.
Unlike with Google’s review-sentiment summaries, Yelp lets you see at least some of how the sausage is made. If a specific keyword appears often enough in the (unfiltered) reviews, it will probably end up in a sentiment snippet.
Click on one of the blue hyperlinked keywords and you’ll see where in the reviews Yelp grabbed that word. Similarly if you click on one of the gray “# reviews” links; Yelp will show you which specific reviews it bred together to beget the review-sentiment lovechild.
Keywords in reviews have always seemed (in my experience) to help your local SEO in indirect ways. They affect your reputation – or at least the “first impression” – in obvious ways. Add another way.
I’m guessing Yelp rolled out these summaries as a way to make large bodies of reviews easier to digest for users of the mobile app. In theory it may also be of minor use when you’re looking at a business with hundreds of reviews, though in a case like that I doubt Yelp’s summaries will satisfy most people.
I’m sure there’s also a monetization scheme stuck to the bottom of the other shoe.
—
When did you start noticing Yelp’s review summaries?
Why do you think they’re doing it?
Good thing or bad thing
Leave a comment!
We noticed these started popping up after we got a few reviews. I don’t know much about SEO but I’d think this would be really helpful for people coming to our page (since we offer a specialty service that not a lot of people know about). For what’s it’s worth, I think it’s a good idea especially regarding first impressions as you mentioned. This feature basically just lets your customers tell your page’s story right?
Correct – or enough slimy competitors!