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Want to Smear a Multi-Location Business on Yelp? Just Regurgitate Your Review

December 19, 2017 by Phil Leave a Comment

Let’s say you had a bad experience at a local business with half a dozen locations, and you feel the need to review the business. How many bad reviews do they deserve from you?

a. One bad review on one site. You’re one customer. You had one poor experience. You can’t remark on their other 5 locations, but don’t plan to visit them. You’ll pick a site where people will probably see your review, you’ll say your piece, and that will be that.

b. A few bad reviews: one on each major review site. Normally you stick to one site, but your experience was so awful you feel you’d be a Bad Samaritan by not spreading the word. Your 3-4 bad reviews should do the trick. You know they’ve got 5 other locations you didn’t deal with, but you can’t comment on those, and 15-20 bad reviews from one customer seems crazy (and sounds like a lot of work for you).

c.Unlimited bad reviews: you’ll write a scathing review on as many sites as you feel like, and for every location they’ve got. Who cares that you didn’t deal with their 5 other locations? The owners should have thought of that before mistreating you so. No such thing as a bad review they didn’t earn! If they had 100 locations you’d be justified in writing 100-200 bad reviews.

As a reasonable person, you’d probably pick A or B. Choice C seems excessive. It’s also less credible: Your criticism is more believable if it’s clear you’ve stuck to the locations you’ve dealt with. Won’t seem as much like a personal crusade to destroy the business.

Yelp doesn’t care. Apparently, any given customer can review as many locations of your business as he or she would like, as long as each review is at least a little different. Just regurgitate n’ reuse.

To Yelp, if you’ve got 3 locations and 1 angry customer, that customer is entitled to 3 nasty reviews.

Recently, I reported a redundant Yelp review of one of my clients, a doctor with 2 practice locations. He’s got solid reviews: mostly good reviews, with a few bad ones. One patient wrote a review of his main office location, and that review seemed legitimate, but then she reviewed his other location. Admittedly she didn’t even go there. She said, in effect, “Check out all the bad reviews of the doctor’s main location. As I said in my review of that one, he’s terrible because…blah blah blah.”

I’ve had some success in reporting unfair and non-compliant Yelp reviews, and getting them removed. In the past, I’ve been able to get them to remove reviews that are exact copies: a customer writes a 1-star review of one location, and does a simple copy-and-paste for the other location(s). Yelp has always removed carbon-copies.

Why should redundant, near-duplicate reviews be any different? Why should customers be able to “spin” the same review and reuse it against you?

They shouldn’t be able to. I don’t know how to explain why Yelp HQ thinks that (other than by pointing out the obvious: they’re idiots).

Yelp’s review-writing guidelines (like Google’s) appear deliberately broad, so as to allow for a “know it when we see it” judgment when one party flags a review for removal. I suspect one reason Yelp doesn’t remove redundant, near-duplicate reviews is that Yelp doesn’t know which one is the “correct” review, and doesn’t care to make a call. For a company with a motto of “Real People, Real Reviews,” Yelp never has paid much attention to basic facts of the reviewer-business relationship, like whether the reviewer has had experience with 12 locations or 1 location or 0 locations of a business.

The other reason, I suspect, is that if Yelp lets fly more bad reviews than they should, business owners are more likely to feel the pinch and try Yelp’s advertising out of desperation. Just a guess.

Anyway, besides reporting redundant reviews from the same customer, what should you do? Fill out this somewhat-buried form. Explain that you don’t dispute the reviewer’s right to review one of your locations – just not all of your locations. Highlight any language that makes it clear the customer didn’t deal with those other locations. Your request may still be ignored, but it’s a stone to turn over.

Also, get dialed-in on your review strategy before this kind of thing happens.

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Any experience in getting redundant Yelp reviews removed?

How about getting other types of Yelp reviews removed?

No need to tell me how much you hate Yelp in general, but please do leave a comment on your experience with reporting reviews.

Is There Anything You Can DO to Get Yelp Reviews These Days – without a Public Shaming?

November 22, 2017 by Phil 42 Comments

For years Yelp has told business owners not to ask for reviews on Yelp. Not that you shouldn’t ask only for positive reviews or tell customers what to say. Not that you shouldn’t ply them with discounts or gift cards or other wampum. You’re not supposed to ask for Yelp reviews, period.

In practice, Yelp’s as bad at enforcing that dumb demand as it is at consistently enforcing other, more-commonsense standards – like that the reviewer is a real customer (or client or patient).

That hasn’t stopped Yelp from piling on even more no-nos. Recently they demanded that makers of review-encouragement software not present Yelp as an option to customers (which I know also because some of those software-makers have told me so). Yelp also has threatened to issue “Consumer Alerts” or Yelp-rankings penalties to any business caught asking for Yelp reviews (no matter how ethically).

Worst of all, Yelp has left it vague as to whether you’re not supposed to encourage reviews on any site. Let’s just assume they haven’t gone quite that far yet. Let’s also assume that, like me, you’ll only bend so far to comply with absurd demands.

Anyway, the result is that these days you need to tiptoe around more – whether you ask for reviews by using any kind of outreach product, or a “Review Us” page, or an email, or any other nonverbal approach. Whether you interpret “tiptoe” to mean either (1) “Sounds like I need to cover my tracks even more” or (2) “I’ll follow Yelp’s rulebook to the letter” is up to you.

Yelp’s hope is that your customers review you spontaneously there. Sometimes it works out that way, often in cities where Yelp is popular. Where that becomes a pipe dream is in places where few people give a hoot about Yelp or write reviews there, but where it’s hard to miss Yelp search results in Google’s local search results. In that case you’ve got a glaring hole in your online reputation, but no way to fill it.

Even though Yelp often isn’t fair, and most of their policies are moronic, you might want at least to try to play by Yelp’s rules. But you also want to get some reviews there (and elsewhere). Can you do both?

Your options now are more limited than they’ve ever been, but there are a few ways you can try to rustle up reviews and not (1) violate Yelp’s silly rules outright, or (2) risk becoming the first business owner Yelp makes a public example of because you tried a sly workaround.

Here are the 4 most Yelp-policy-friendly approaches (that might actually work for you) to encourage customers to speak up:

1. The “Find Friends” strategy, with a twist (more on that in a second). “Find Friends” is a feature in Yelp that allows you to see who’s an active reviewer on Yelp. You can enter a name or email address one a time, or bulk-check a list of email addresses. (You can also do a “Find Friends” search by syncing with your Facebook page, but that’s not as reliable.)

Once you’ve determined which customers have written more than a few reviews (let’s say 5), just ask them for a review/feedback in whatever way has worked for you. Because Yelp is probably their preferred review site, they’ll probably review you there without your needing to ask for a Yelp review specifically, or drop a link to your page, or do anything else that Yelp discourages.

2. Make your “please write a review” link a query string in Google that shows your Yelp page near the top of Google’s search results. The link should look something like this:

https://www.google.com/search?q=Local+Visibility+System

Again, customers can pick Yelp if that’s their preferred review site. You’re not asking them to pick Yelp, explicitly or implicitly.

3. Splatter your best Yelp reviews all over your site. (Or your one good Yelp review, if you only have one at the moment.)

Try to pick reviews that are relevant to the content of the pages you stick the reviews on. For instance, if you’re a dentist, maybe don’t put a review from a tooth-whitening patient on your “Full-Mouth Reconstruction” page.

If you do it right, you may condition new customers to think “Yelp reviews” when they think of your reviews in general. When it comes time to ask them for a review anywhere, there’s a good chance they’ll think of Yelp again.

It’s also a nice passive way to encourage reviews in general, if for whatever reason you just aren’t comfortable with asking anyone for reviews (even if you don’t specify the site). You probably won’t get a gusher of reviews as a result of this approach, but you’ll probably get a little trickle.

Yelp’s embed feature is convenient. Here’s a great example of that in practice.

4. Do a Yelp “check-in offer.” They’re only available to bricks-and-mortar businesses, and not to service-area businesses, so there’s a good chance this one just isn’t relevant to you. But if you do see customers at your business address, then it may be an arrow in your quiver.

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What’s worked for you – or hasn’t worked for you – on Yelp?

How “by-the-book” do you figure it is?

Any new strategies you’re considering?

Leave a comment!

Q&A on BBB Customer Reviews: Not Just Another Unkempt Local Review Site

October 30, 2017 by Phil 4 Comments

Love or hate the Better Business Bureau, it’s one of the bigger sites to have dipped a couple toes in the greenish-brown pond of local business reviews. In my experience it’s a great place to get reviews, as I’ve written.

But the current local-reviews landscape is the Wild West. The sheriff in TripAdvisorville seems to shoot straight, but the one at Yelp Rock ain’t no Will Kane. Meanwhile, the sheriff of Mountain View is never in town, and his one deputy managed to lock himself in the cell with the town drunk.

And those are the big sites that actually attempt quality-control of reviews. Facebook and YellowPages? Ha.

Like Angie’s List, BBB actually seems to try. Not to say that no bogus reviews wind up there (bogus reviews are everywhere), but at least there’s an effort.

A higher-up at a regional BBB chapter read my post on how it’s an “underrated” review site, and sent me some info, which prompted me to ask him a few questions. He prefers not to be named in this post, but here’s the inside scoop he gave me on BBB reviews:

Q: Is there an automatic filter on BBB reviews? (Like Yelp’s or Google’s filter.)

A: No, there is no automatic filter on BBB reviews. We have BBB staff that read them, as well as ask the business if this person is a customer.

Q: Under what circumstances do you remove a customer’s review manually?

A: Since October 2015 (at my chapter of the BBB) 17% of our online reviews submitted to the BBB were not published. Reasons could have been that 1) BBB was not able to verify that the person writing the review was a customer, or that 2) the review contained abusive language.

Q: Under what special circumstances will BBB reveal the identity of an anonymous reviewer to the business owner?

A: The BBB does not post any anonymous reviews. Once the BBB receives a review it goes into a 3-day “holding tank” before we publish that gives the BBB time to email the business to verify that the review is in fact from a customer and gives the business an opportunity to respond. The BBB does protect the identity of the reviewer by not posting identifiable information. Same regarding formal complaints. We would not publish a complaint that was sent anonymously.

Q: Do formal complaints factor into the “star” rating of a business, and not just against its “letter” grade?

A: No, formal complaints do not factor into the star rating. Currently we have 2 separate grading systems. The A+ – F grading system is based on standards the business meets and has earned. The star rating system is based on consumers’ opinions of the business.

Q: To get reviews on BBB, first you need to get listed. You can pay to get accredited, of course, but then there’s the free submission option (which has been relocated at least once, and never has been easy to find). Why is that form so buried and, seemingly, so ineffective?

A: We have had a massive problem with citation building services who white-label their product to agencies submitting inaccurate data – either by accident or maliciously to attempt to damage a competitor’s listing. This has created a massive amount of work for our staff. Often they submit data we already have listed. If we get a listing that we think is submitted inaccurately, we try to reach out to the business by phone and later by letter and send them a questionnaire asking them to update their file in our system (free of charge). We don’t always get return phone calls or get our questionnaires returned. If we think the data is submitted inaccurately, we don’t publish it.

We are also getting a lot of submissions that have virtual office addresses that we can’t verify have employees in the United States. The business can’t be verified in public records of the state or county.

What I really think makes our database so great is that we have humans who act as “Curators” or caretakers to verify that the information that we report to the public is correct. We take this very seriously at our chapter of the BBB. It is what we dedicate the most financial and human resources to, especially regarding our Accredited Business Directory. Those businesses and their owners have been background-checked, and we’ve checked their licenses, business start dates, verified addresses, etc. That is why you won’t find an un-licensed mover in our Accredited Business Directory, or an unlicensed handyman lumped into the licensed plumbing categories.

Another thing that I think really sets us apart from other directory sites is that we ask for sizing information from the company. For example, we know AT&T would be considered a “colossal large” business because of the number of customers they have. It would be acceptable for them to get 500 complaints a year and, as long as they respond and make a good-faith effort to resolve those complaints, they could still maintain an A+ record. Contrast that with a pool builder who builds 20 pools a year and gets 10 complaints. To us, that’s less expected and more of a concern.

Anyway, we are in the process of making some major improvements to our website and iPhone app. We are moving in the right direction digitally, just moving slower than I would wish! 🙂

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How does that square with your experience with Better Business Bureau reviews?

Any questions I can pass on to someone at the BBB?

Leave a comment!

Yelp Provides Embed Code for Showcasing Yelp Reviews on Your Site

March 28, 2017 by Phil 18 Comments

Last summer, Yelp quietly started providing embed code that you can use to stick any customer’s Yelp review on your site.

As closely as I monitor Yelp, I didn’t know about that feature until now. A few people wrote about it in passing, but I didn’t know about it until Mike of HikingMike told me in his comment on my 2015 post on copying and pasting Yelp reviews. (By the way, I really appreciate getting intel like that.)

The embed code might be easier and cleaner-looking than a copy-and-paste or a screenshot. Here’s what an embedded review would look like:

Read Chris B.‘s review of Local Visibility System on Yelp

How do you get the embed code? Just go to your Yelp page (or your client’s), hover over the review, and click “Embed review.”

Why embed your Yelp reviews on your site? Just because it’s usually showing off your reviews in general – both on Yelp and on any other review sites. You can’t assume everyone saw them before getting to your site. Your site should showcase what customers say about you, rather than just what you say about yourself.

Maybe hold off if only unhappy customers or unfair idiots have reviewed you.

Consider giving the embed feature a try while (1) it’s still around, (2) it’s straightforward, and (3) little-known. As Mike wrote wisely in his comment:

“This info will be coming from Yelp so it would rely on their side continuing the embed service. If there were some issue, a location move, or something out of the ordinary, I could see the reviews not showing suddenly. They could change their embed method or code as well.

“But I’m also curious about what happens if the Yelp filter removes a review you have embedded. Will the embed still work or will it disappear? I know a lot of times reviews will show initially and then be filtered within a day or so (usually people that have just 1 review), so I wonder how it will work with those.”

Did you know about Yelp’s embed code before I did?

Have you used it?

Will you use it?

Leave a comment!

If Nobody in Your Area Cares about Yelp, Should You Still Bother Getting Reviews There?

November 30, 2016 by Phil 7 Comments

“My customers don’t care about Yelp. Nobody around here cares about Yelp. Why should I even try to get reviews there?”

That’s a valid concern of business owners in most of the US – and in most of the world. Yelp, the Billion Dollar Bully, makes itself hard to avoid and even harder to like. The site is only powerful because of all the reviews. They’re its lifeblood. So why on earth would you want to ask your hard-earned customers to review you there – when they probably don’t value it any more than you do?

A few reasons to hold your nose and work to get at least a few good reviews on Yelp:

1. Even people who don’t give a rip about Yelp still see your average rating in the search results when they Google you by name. They can tell that it’s a review site, even though they may not care that the review site is Yelp. If nothing else, it’s a voice in the chorus.

2. Yelp feeds reviews to Apple Maps, Bing Places, and Yahoo Local. So if you have a 1-star or a 5-star average on Yelp, that’s what people who check out your listings on those 3 local search engines will see.

3. It’s worth having a couple positive reviews on Yelp just in case someone does a hatchet job on you there. It’s a defensive move, at the very least. The time to start trying to get good reviews is not when you’re in a hole.

4. Even though most people in the great State of _____ have the good sense not to care much about Yelp, some small segment of the population may pay attention to it. Throw them a bone.

5. Maybe Yelp will broaden its appeal one day.

6. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. Yelp doesn’t need to become your main squeeze, or a major time-commitment. The goal is to get at least a couple good reviews on the board.

7. It’s great practice for you, in the name of getting dialed-in on your review strategy. You’ll get a little better at knowing whom to ask, when to ask, how to ask, etc. If it proves too tough to get a given customer to review you on Yelp, ask him or her to review you somewhere else instead.

How to get at least a few reviews on Yelp? These posts may help:

How to Bulk-Identify Prime Yelp Reviewers with Yelp’s “Find Friends” Feature in 7 Easy Steps – me

20+ Depressing Observations about Yelp Reviews – me

8 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use Yelp’s Check-In Offers – Joy Hawkins

3 Next-Level Yelp Tricks for Business Owners – Brian Patterson

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Do people in your area give a hoot about Yelp? How do you approach it?

Leave a comment!

P.S. Thanks to Lisa Moon of Paper Moon Painting for asking me a thought-provoking question last year that made me want to write about this.

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