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.
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When did you start noticing Yelp’s review summaries?
Why do you think they’re doing it?
Good thing or bad thing
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