Interesting question. Yelp uses an algorithm who desides which reviews gets posted and which does not. The main criteria of whether or not a review is published is how helpful a review is to the reader. That's what they explained to me. But interesting is, we have dozens of current 5* reviews which are hidden and bad reviews (before 3 and more years ago) which are publised! That's interesting to me because we do not have a payed account with Yelp. Of the other side, competitors with payed accounts (ad) they usually get published a perfect 5* rating! I think that's not a fair system! So our experences with Yelp are not good!
Stay away from them at all costs. They are the worst company to deal with and they will rip you off. The sales rep will tell you anything to get you to sign a contract, but then, you will find out they lied and you are screwed. I own a small restaurant, and they kept calling me and harassing me for almost two years, and they would not stop until i finally gave in to their sales pitch. And it was a freaking nightmare. You will pay a whole lot more than you bargained for, and then you will find out they have so much crap in their contracts, and you will end up paying 3-4 times more than you planned to. MY POINT IS, THEY ARE A RIP OFF COMPANY, AND THEY WILL BE YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE.
Do not pay them a dime. One thing I absolutely hate about Yelp is that they list your competitors right inside your own ad. Horrible in my opinion. We are on it but it was a free listing. I have received notifications of new reviews about us and every one is a review that was pulled in from Google. You would do much better with local networking such as this, the chamber, and BNI events along with word of mouth referrals.
Yelp does help when you have reviews. This is true for all major directories which supports Reviews (like Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...).
The latest research shows that 97 percent of consumers now read online reviews for local businesses. On top of that, 85 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from real people.
The fact is, your customers will gravitate toward local businesses with the best reviews. This is either going to be your business, or it's going to be your competitors.
I think Yelp can help in some cases but it also can hurt businesses as well. Yelp allows for people to write reviews about any and everything and a lot of times the reviewer may not be educated on the topic they are writing about. For example: A property management company may be tasked with managing and entire community which entails collecting HOA monthly dues. These dues are set by the builder initially but re-evaluated by the Board of directors which are guided from reserve analyst or professional engineers to come up with the monthly figure homeowners have to pay. An owner may not like how high the fee is, so they go on Yelp and defame a management company who as nothing to do with the setting of those figures. To make matters worse, you can plead your case to a robot at Yelp but nothing changes. This can negatively impact that business. On the other hand, it can be positive for places like restaurants. Obviously taste is subjective, but for the most part we all know good food when we taste it and good service when we receive it. Going on Yelp and writing about these experiences can be helpful. In closing I think Yelp may have had good intentions when it was first developed but they really didn't know what they were getting into. Theyreally left themselves open for a lot of people complaining about the drop in business as a direct result of their negative reviews and theydon't/didn't have a staff to appropriately investigate each one. The default is that they respond every time with the same generic “we have reviewed your complaint but we feel the reviewer was within their rights to say what they said" or something along those lines. When a person starts a business and works hard to maintain it and provide a living for their family; that response simply isn't good enough, period. Hopefully people reading this post will understand the message behind it. If Yelp had more regulations on the content that was posted (before it was posted) then it would be a better “business" model. Currently they are not set up to handle the business owner side of the story which is a flaw in concept. It would be equivalent to going to court where the judge hears the plaintiff speak but doesn't hear the defendant and rules in favor of the plaintiff.
DO NOT PAY THEM A DIME !!! I thought they were based in Illinois because they are a "pay to play" company. 7 years ago I had 3 very good reviews for my business. It was a retail location then where reviews can make or break you. Less than 2 weeks after I turned down a sales rep asking to pay for advertising 2 of the 3, the better 2 or the 3 reviews were hidden by their algorithm. Coincidence? I don't thing so. 2 years ago after they changed their ridiculous offering, and with my revamped business I tried a month to month plan. Miraculously one of the hidden reviews was released. Coincidence? I ran a paid run for 6 months. For $300 / month I couldn't track a single client to yelp. NOT ONE !!! I cancelled and much to the shock of the sales rep, who was spewing all kinds of numbers at me, telling me I'd be giving up 100's of calls a month. Well I've survived, and even thrived with out them. They started on me this year as well. with a very high pressure call and they will give you staggering numbers and make you think, "Oh my, even if they are half right, I cannot let this go". Well my advice. HANG UP !! They're recommending a $850/month plan that was going to drive all kinds of calls to my business, and even though there are cheaper plans, if I followed their recommendation I'm all but guaranteed a growth spurt. Well the glaze fell off my eyes and I finally saw the through their little scheme. They are good sales people. They probably have behavioral scientists on the staff. They know what to say and present it well. But... HANG UP !
I use Yelp and have been very satisfied with it's results. The amount you spend depends on how many areas you want to cover. You can start off with just a few (5) cities and grow from there after you see the results. The key factor with yelp is offering customers an opportunity to go online and share their thoughts of their completed projects. The other key point about Yelp is that we find the Leads to be legitimate, not like some of the other sites ie; Home Adviser.
You will be assigned a sales adviser if you work with them and complete your entire profile 100%, I think you'll be surprised with the results. It is a small cost of doing business, it doesn't take to many sales to pay for itself.
Yelp is all about themselves and are an anathema to small business. Their algorithms are bogus and their review choices for publication are all about getting you to sign up for their useless packages. They do absolutely no policing of reviews on their site, will do nothing if you have legitimate complaints concerning bogus reviews and are being rightly sued by any number of businesses. And this from me, who overall has good reviews from them. -Rick
For our business Yelp is not too helpful. Good reviews get hidden, you can't rearrange photos unless you pay $50 a month (last time they spoke with me) They are extremely pushy trying to sell their service. I've had to block numerous numbers because of the nuisance even though I'm telling them we are not interested. The calls We get from Yelp are most usually price shoppers and competitors trying to glean pricing info. Legit reviews don't show yet you will see fake and peer reviews not customer reviews in some listings. There are plenty of no fee legit sites to get reviewed. Yelp gets no stars from us.
Answers (1-10)
Hi Lucy,
Just type 'yelp' in the search box at the top of the page and see it light up with all the opinions about Yelp.
And, absolutely DO NOT pay them a penny before doing this simple research.
Mark
Interesting question. Yelp uses an algorithm who desides which reviews gets posted and which does not. The main criteria of whether or not a review is published is how helpful a review is to the reader. That's what they explained to me. But interesting is, we have dozens of current 5* reviews which are hidden and bad reviews (before 3 and more years ago) which are publised! That's interesting to me because we do not have a payed account with Yelp. Of the other side, competitors with payed accounts (ad) they usually get published a perfect 5* rating! I think that's not a fair system! So our experences with Yelp are not good!
Stay away from them at all costs. They are the worst company to deal with and they will rip you off. The sales rep will tell you anything to get you to sign a contract, but then, you will find out they lied and you are screwed. I own a small restaurant, and they kept calling me and harassing me for almost two years, and they would not stop until i finally gave in to their sales pitch. And it was a freaking nightmare. You will pay a whole lot more than you bargained for, and then you will find out they have so much crap in their contracts, and you will end up paying 3-4 times more than you planned to. MY POINT IS, THEY ARE A RIP OFF COMPANY, AND THEY WILL BE YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE.
Do not pay them a dime. One thing I absolutely hate about Yelp is that they list your competitors right inside your own ad. Horrible in my opinion. We are on it but it was a free listing. I have received notifications of new reviews about us and every one is a review that was pulled in from Google. You would do much better with local networking such as this, the chamber, and BNI events along with word of mouth referrals.
Yelp does help when you have reviews. This is true for all major directories which supports Reviews (like Google, Facebook, Amazon, ...).
The latest research shows that 97 percent of consumers now read online reviews for local businesses. On top of that, 85 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from real people.
The fact is, your customers will gravitate toward local businesses with the best reviews. This is either going to be your business, or it's going to be your competitors.
I think Yelp can help in some cases but it also can hurt businesses as well. Yelp allows for people to write reviews about any and everything and a lot of times the reviewer may not be educated on the topic they are writing about. For example: A property management company may be tasked with managing and entire community which entails collecting HOA monthly dues. These dues are set by the builder initially but re-evaluated by the Board of directors which are guided from reserve analyst or professional engineers to come up with the monthly figure homeowners have to pay. An owner may not like how high the fee is, so they go on Yelp and defame a management company who as nothing to do with the setting of those figures. To make matters worse, you can plead your case to a robot at Yelp but nothing changes. This can negatively impact that business. On the other hand, it can be positive for places like restaurants. Obviously taste is subjective, but for the most part we all know good food when we taste it and good service when we receive it. Going on Yelp and writing about these experiences can be helpful. In closing I think Yelp may have had good intentions when it was first developed but they really didn't know what they were getting into. Theyreally left themselves open for a lot of people complaining about the drop in business as a direct result of their negative reviews and theydon't/didn't have a staff to appropriately investigate each one. The default is that they respond every time with the same generic “we have reviewed your complaint but we feel the reviewer was within their rights to say what they said" or something along those lines. When a person starts a business and works hard to maintain it and provide a living for their family; that response simply isn't good enough, period. Hopefully people reading this post will understand the message behind it. If Yelp had more regulations on the content that was posted (before it was posted) then it would be a better “business" model. Currently they are not set up to handle the business owner side of the story which is a flaw in concept. It would be equivalent to going to court where the judge hears the plaintiff speak but doesn't hear the defendant and rules in favor of the plaintiff.
Thank you,
Peyton
DO NOT PAY THEM A DIME !!! I thought they were based in Illinois because they are a "pay to play" company. 7 years ago I had 3 very good reviews for my business. It was a retail location then where reviews can make or break you. Less than 2 weeks after I turned down a sales rep asking to pay for advertising 2 of the 3, the better 2 or the 3 reviews were hidden by their algorithm. Coincidence? I don't thing so. 2 years ago after they changed their ridiculous offering, and with my revamped business I tried a month to month plan. Miraculously one of the hidden reviews was released. Coincidence? I ran a paid run for 6 months. For $300 / month I couldn't track a single client to yelp. NOT ONE !!! I cancelled and much to the shock of the sales rep, who was spewing all kinds of numbers at me, telling me I'd be giving up 100's of calls a month. Well I've survived, and even thrived with out them. They started on me this year as well. with a very high pressure call and they will give you staggering numbers and make you think, "Oh my, even if they are half right, I cannot let this go". Well my advice. HANG UP !! They're recommending a $850/month plan that was going to drive all kinds of calls to my business, and even though there are cheaper plans, if I followed their recommendation I'm all but guaranteed a growth spurt. Well the glaze fell off my eyes and I finally saw the through their little scheme. They are good sales people. They probably have behavioral scientists on the staff. They know what to say and present it well. But... HANG UP !
I use Yelp and have been very satisfied with it's results. The amount you spend depends on how many areas you want to cover. You can start off with just a few (5) cities and grow from there after you see the results. The key factor with yelp is offering customers an opportunity to go online and share their thoughts of their completed projects. The other key point about Yelp is that we find the Leads to be legitimate, not like some of the other sites ie; Home Adviser.
You will be assigned a sales adviser if you work with them and complete your entire profile 100%, I think you'll be surprised with the results. It is a small cost of doing business, it doesn't take to many sales to pay for itself.
Yelp is all about themselves and are an anathema to small business. Their algorithms are bogus and their review choices for publication are all about getting you to sign up for their useless packages. They do absolutely no policing of reviews on their site, will do nothing if you have legitimate complaints concerning bogus reviews and are being rightly sued by any number of businesses. And this from me, who overall has good reviews from them. -Rick
For our business Yelp is not too helpful. Good reviews get hidden, you can't rearrange photos unless you pay $50 a month (last time they spoke with me) They are extremely pushy trying to sell their service. I've had to block numerous numbers because of the nuisance even though I'm telling them we are not interested. The calls We get from Yelp are most usually price shoppers and competitors trying to glean pricing info. Legit reviews don't show yet you will see fake and peer reviews not customer reviews in some listings. There are plenty of no fee legit sites to get reviewed. Yelp gets no stars from us.