First things first – Nobody can remove Yelp reviews but Yelp Administrators, and nobody can guarantee to remove anything on Yelp.

Reputation Management companies can only guarantee you won’t pay until it’s removed, and normally they charge upwards of $1000.00 per review removed. Crazy.

That being said, here’s how to identify and dispute bad yelp reviews that qualify for removal..

(credit: Objection.co)

According to this article, there are primarily 5 main reasons why Yelp may be willing to remove a negative review.

#1 – The review doesn’t describe a personal consumer experience. ” If the review was written in the third person, yelp may remove the review. For example, “My husband spoke with them and they were very mean to my husband.” That review may violate content guidelines, and yelp may remove it. Another reason to use this approach is that the review doesn’t describe an actual experience, for example, “The doctors here are really nasty and don’t care about the patients.” This review may qualify for removal because it doesn’t talk about any actual experience.”

#2 – The review is too short, or not descriptive enough. According to the Terms of Service, a review must be rich in details and contain a wealth of narrative. If the review is one sentence long, and they don’t really describe much, chances are it may qualify for removal. We’ve even seen reviews that literally contain one word, emoji or sad face.

#3 – The review contains racist language. Here’s your opportunity to talk about this review and how it might be promoting bigotry, or any other distasteful reason that you can write about. If the review insinuates anything that’s racist or culturally unacceptable, flag it; Yelp may decide to remove it.

#4 – The review contains promotional content. For Example, “Jon’s Plumbing wanted to charge me 900$ so instead I went to Roto Rooter, they were amazing.” If the review mentions another person in the same industry as you – yelp may choose to remove that review.

#5 – The reviewer wrote the same review for multiple locations of the same business. If the review is a duplicate, Yelp may choose to remove one or both of the reviews.

Here’s an interview with an Online Reputation Expert, Curtis Boyd about the subject: