Unlike Google Reviews, the moment you turn down Yelp’s advertising, their algorithm might start marking more of your positive reviews as ‘not recommended’ and hiding them, making your reviews look sparse. In this video, I recount my own experience after declining Yelp’s ads and tell you what strategy you should use to NOT get screwed by Yelp the way I did!
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Yelp’s algorithm
While at a conference recently, I had the opportunity to speak with someone whose friend had just completed an in-depth documentary on Yelp and their business practices. There, I learned Yelp’s algorithm basically has 3 buckets you can be sorted into based on your customer status:
- Businesses who have not yet said yes or no to ads
- Businesses that are currently using pay-per-click ads
- Businesses that have said no to ads or discontinued ads.
Depending on what bucket you are sorted into, the algorithm will treat you differently. If you are sorted into the group with business that have said no to ads or have discontinued ads, Yelp’s algorithm will get much more harsh. Many of your real, positive reviews will now be sorted as “not currently recommended”, which means the reviews have been flagged by the algorithm as fake. The reviews will no longer have star ratings, will not be counted in your total reviews, and will not be displayed on your page unless customers specifically look for them. This leads to a lower quantity and quality of reviews, reducing your credibility.
SO WHAT CAN YOU DO?
If you don’t want to use pay-per-click ads, don’t say no. Say “at this point in my business, I am not quite ready for pay-per-click ads, but keep me on your list and check back in 6 months.” Say it for as long as you can and avoid saying NO.
How drastic is the punishment if you do say “No”? I can tell you first hand. When Yelp began calling about pay-per-click ads, I had physical therapy appointments booked for weeks ahead and didn’t see the need for more advertising. I asked them to take me off their call list. Shortly after, over half my reviews disappeared and became sorted as “not currently recommended”. I spend an hour of one-on-one time with each of my patients and knew every single one of those reviewers, but Yelp flagged them as “fake.” My total number of reviews was cut dramatically and sometimes I would only see 3 or 4 reviews on my front page. My business has continued to grow, but my reviews are still being censored. Right now, I have sixteen listed 5-star reviews showing up on my Yelp page…but I also have EIGHTEEN MORE 5-star reviews not showing or being counted towards my total number of reviews.
Once again:
If you don’t want to use pay-per-click ads, don’t say no. Avoid saying no and stay on their call list for as long as you can while you build up your business and credibility. And if you are already using their ads, definitely consider the ramifications on your review page before you discontinue them.
I hope this helps you guys avoid getting screwed by Yelp the way I did!
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I had the exact same issue! I had reviews and then started to pay for ads. I stopped and my reviews went away!!!!
Great advice. Don’t say no!
same thing happened to me!!
This is exactly why I’m using Tuugo.
This is very much excatly what they do:
1. You list your business on Yelp, and they will briefly “manually” rank you on the first page of organic search for your area, and in many cases even the entire given metro area.
2. Once you get some leads, they will hit you up with endless calls and emails about PPC, and once you sign up for small ads package, they will continue throwing leads by keeping you on top of organic search
3. Once your leads traffic is steady (and they know it, based on CTR), and you are just spreading your wings, they will abruptly remove you from your top positions of organic search, and all the free leads will cease, essentially leaving you only with PPC leads. Before and after that they will harrass you with offers to make it better by increasing your budget.
4. Once you refuse advertising, or increasing the budget, they will remove your listing whatsoever, which has happened to 100s of local businesses with 100s of reviews. They won’t give you any explanations, or reasons, but they will essentially try to put you on your knees.
Here is an example, how they destroy existing, licensed, and reputable business, when they refuse pumping more $$$ into their rotten system: https://bit.ly/2yGMt83
If you try to search for this business in simple organic search you won’t find it. They just deindexed the entire company, simply because it was drawing too many free leads…
Oh man! This was very useful. I wish I found this sooner. But what prompted me to do a search, was the decreasing reviews. 🙁
Their Yelp sales people won’t just admit that they’re simply trying to make a sale and close the deal. Their latest verbiage: “Is Yelp something you’d like to learn about? Or, more importantly, are you in a place where you can accept new business from Yelpers?”
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Here are my two replies:
1. “Hi Keren.
There were 22 public reviews for quite some time – probably a year or more.
This number has now all of sudden decreased to 17, for some reason.
At this juncture, I really don’t want to invest in advertising – especially now that Yelp has hidden 16 of 33 reviews.
Have a great day.”
(NO REPLY from Keren at Yelp, after several of her calls to “help me learn more”.)
2. “Hi Keren,
Is it just a coincidence that since I have currently opted out of investing in Yelp ads, that the number of public reviews are suddenly decreasing?
Now it’s down to 16 public reviews, with 17 hidden. 🤔 ”
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UPDATE (2 days after this original post):
Now it’s down to 15 public reviews, with 18 hidden.
FUCK THEM. I will not be extorted. But if they call again, I WILL NOT say no.
What do you do if you have already
Said no? Call them and be put back the list?
Unfortunately, I don’t think that is possible. If you are already seeing your reviews disappear, probably the only way to get them to reappear is to start paying for their ads. But again, if you pay for ads and then stop in the future, you’ll find yourself in the same boat.
Same thing happened to us we stopped running an add as the costs per click are way to high and there is zero ways to customize your ad (the worst ad system out there by far). We stopped in July and over the last 5 months 10 reviews have been filtered and somewhere up for 6 months before the ad campaign and they all have over 10 reviews, etc and none are affiliated with us in any way and we are a caterer so we only shared the same space for the event night (no ip, etc). There is something very fishy going on with their ads in the last two years …
UPDATE: It’s now December 15 and my Yelp page is down to 9 reviews, with 24 hidden!
FUCK THEM.
My practice had the same experience with Yelp. I even advertised with them and got 1 review that wasn’t filtered. Since I dropped advertising with Yelp I have gotten 1, exactly 1 review that wasn’t filtered in 2 years. This of course made me mad and when Yelp called to try and get me to sign up again I gave them my opinion, that Google would dominate them and that I would never do business with them again. The rep, upon noticing I’d gotten 1 review said “I don’t blame you.”
Here is the good news, I went big into PPC Google and things are going well. It’s all very expensive, and I certainly don’t completely trust Google either but I won’t be in the PPC marketing forever, just long enough to build a great business of referring patients.
Word of mouth is way more valuable that PPC. A referred patient is worth 2 patients brought in by advertising. Use PPC to build a patient base early in your practice and wow these patients with service. Then turn down the expensive PPC.
I was screwed by Yelp! I signed up for the $300 free trial credits, didn’t get a lick of business from it. Now a month later they are saying I owe them $300 and they are putting it over to collections! I don’t even know what for. I didn’t even see an increase of business, I got like two calls and they were BS leads. I don’t recommend them at all, they are terrible. Google is where it is at.
i had the same thing happen. i had 4 or 5 scammers try to get services from me after signing up with yelp. there were no true leads that i got…now owe them 276.00 for having scammers click on my ad, not one real lead.
Just starting my contracting company, decided to go with ads from yelp , first week got 3 calls , I got 3 , 5 star reviews without asking, im just a professional and a people person. I was excited to get some good reviews and the my costumers were happy with my work. I owe Yelp 300$ and the last 12 messages I have received and reached back out immediately have not called or responded to me . Seems like yelp is just generating “clicks”, from what I’m seeing and feeling it’s a scam.
Just be aware new businesses. Good luck fighting the fight in this already broken economy.