Buying Better Yelp Results
If you’re a Yelp business owner, no doubt you saw the Important Message that went out today from Yelp talking about “reputation management” and how you can’t buy results on Yelp.
That is TRUE! You can’t pay for Yelp advertising to remove bad reviews, you can’t bribe them to take down negative reviews, you can’t pay a reputation management firm to have it removed. All of it, TRUE!
But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything. You CAN take control of your reputation and make Yelp irrelevant to your bottom line!
Using the right customer engagement strategies, and encouraging reviews on Google rather than Yelp, focusing on building citations from all over the web and a robust internet presence that gives customers the chance to experience bits of your brilliance is what it’s all about.
Turning over the reins of your business to just one site is crazy business. And I’m pretty certain nobody here is in that business!
Yep, you can't buy better Yelp results but you can sure as hell expect a ton of your good reviews to magically get "filtered" if you don't purchase their asinine advertising service. Also, funny that two bad reviews popped up not too long after I refused to buy their advertising scam. Also funny that both of those negative reviews were from new users with only one review and mentioned products I don't even sell. According to their ridiculous video, that's the type of reviews that should be filtered. I usually have either four or five reviews filtered and it's always (100% of the time) the good reviews. They're reviews from established and "elite" Yelpers so I don't see why they would be considered "questionable" by their little filtering system. It's absolutely mind boggling how ridiculous Yelp is. They're basically e-thugs. I hate to say it, but many hardcore Yelp users are a giant pain in the backside too. Haha, before I found this site, I typed yelpsucks.com into my browser and it redirected to Yelps main site. Pretty damn funny that they took that domain name. I'm just gonna end my rant at that and the bottom line is that Yelp sucks!
So what are we supposed to do to fight the negative reviews? We have some on Yelp and on other sites but they are all extortionists, pay or it stays….advice?
I heard you breifly on KFI this morning but I dont understand what I'm supposed to do here. I got an email from Yelp the other day saying that they wouldn't even accept our business listing since we aren't a store front. This is so unfair and stupid and wrong!
You have to make Yelp irrelevant to your business. If you aren't a storefront, the using Search Engine Optimization to push the Yelp listing to the back pages is best. Lots you can do. LOTS! Don't pay 'em. They just take your money and the sucky reviews stay. You have to take control!
I didn't realize until recently that Yelp is as honest as our Congress and insider trading.
I read the filtered reviews, so if I was checking out your establishment I would see them.
On a recent episode of Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsey concerning a place her in L.A. called ''The Hamburger Kitchen" (check them out, they're closed now…but they were getting slammed on Yelp), and the owner swore that Yelp had it in for him.
Fact was their food stunk and service was just as bad.
In fact you should check these episodes out, (2 parts). on http://www.hulu.com. Episode title :Hamburger Kitchen
They really do suck. As soon as I listed my website on Yelp, I got a call from my 'account manager' with advertisement requests. I said no and guess what, all my reviews have been filtered!! I called her again to find out why and again the same pressure to advertise to get results!! They need to be behind bars.
I know they "say" that the ad department and the filter department is separate, but if you listen to the hundreds of complaints I hear about small businesses who have great reviews being offered advertising, and when declining, all of a sudden and right afterwards, their good reviews are filtered. It certainly smells bad.
WHy can't you yelp yelp?
You can Yelp Yelp. And I suggest doing it. http://www.yelp.com/biz/yelp-san-francisco
I need help. Adryenn, what do I do?
I'd like to be a part of the class action against Yelp.
On http://yelplawsuit.com/, it said they can not find my yelp information to peruse this law suit. PLEASE HELP
Phil you are off topic, we are not talking about a bad business. We are talking about good people and businesses that get trashed by YELP.
Our business has 11 filtered reviews. All but one are 5 star ratings. Go to the main review page, and it is the exact opposite. Yelp stated to me that if a reviewer is new, with no prior reviews, their first review will be filtered. WRONG – only filtered if it is a positive review.
Case in point, Claude C left a review on Gartner Hyundai (where I work), and this was his first review. Guess what, it was horrible. He then immediately left a review for another dealer in the area. Guess what? Both reviews were posted. How is that possible?? I mean after all, yelp said new reviewers are filtered, right?
Anyway, please like my facebook page, and let's do our best to bring down yelp together.
http://www.facebook.com/yelpisafraud
Hello to any one,
I totaly agree for your coments , YELP just start to like the GREEN 🙂 just like BBB
I have my company listed on Yelp to and thay filtered all my reviews ?????????
YELP – REAL PEOPLE – FAKE REVIEWS or PAYD
So i have to sign up my business on
Angie's List . com and local website elpono.com
Yelp Blows! They filter all our good reviews saying the people are new or only place one yelp review, or some other bs!. Yet they post people who have never done business with us and have only one review our crappy one. They suck and shouldn't even be in business! We aske people if they had a great time and enjoyed the service to write a review most of them are not yelp people, new timers so to speak and their reviews almost always are filtered. Seriously they suck big time, and I agree with the others about holding you for ransome with their trash advertising program.
yelp sucks… they are just greedy web millionaires… trying to outdo some other web billionaire. Sad people really.
*YELP = You Extort Local Places
If you want to discredit YELP do the following;
Go to every random business you can (5 per day) and leave the following 5 star review
"YELP SUCKS, FUCK YELP"
The business won't complian because it is a 5 star reveiw and yelp can not remove it. It will be viewed by millions of people. Lets do what we CAN do to ge rid of YELP.
I just want to say that I think YELP discriminates against businesses that do not pay YELP a monthly fee of $300 on YELP….. My company Mobile Mac Techs all together has 24 reviews. That of which only three reviews are showing. Two of them my worst reviews ever and only one of my better feedbacks leaving me with a rating of 2.5 stars. The other 21 reviews are filtered and they are from way more reliable resources and all/most of them are 5 stars!!!. All together I would have a 5 star rates business if it wasn't for YELP discriminating…
I say Discriminating because I have competitors that I know pay YELP and YELP makes their company look like angels. I am sorry I am not interested in paying YELP $300 a month of my hard earned money just to make my company look better. I get a call from time to time from YELP asking me to pay to be on YELP and they would highlight my business. I do not care to be highlighted but I do care that they discriminate on businesses that do not pay. It is flat out not right! I wonder if there are other businesses dealing with the same discrimination! So I leave 1 star for YELP. If I could leave 0 stars I would. I also do not like the fact that when I try to contact them there I never get a return call back.
This company blows and they need to figure out there filtering system ASAP!
Yelp sucks ass: One: It says I have to have a personal picture to comment, I don't think Microsoft using a picture of Bill Gates they use a company logo like all businesses. Also, its funny a reviewer on my page doesn't have a picture.Second: All they want is the money for you to advertise!!!!! i would never advertise with them. Also, isn't it funny that Groupon doesn't have a yelp page, although they are the ones that screwed me over by not paying me!!!!!
We have several restaurants and opened in a new location. As all restaurant people know there are always kinks to work out. The first week we received a few bad reviews. One review specifically was a LONG 4 paragraph dissertation on how bad it was that we had forgotten to order powdered sugar and therefore his monte cristo was served without powdered sugar. The terminology he used would only be known by a restaurant manager or seasoned server/bartender. We also had several good reviews, however they are filtered in the unreliable opinion section. To test this I had a couple of staff and asked some regular guests to post some positive reviews. Some of those you can't find or are filtered.
Our opening was I march and the bad ones still show up. What the heck can I do about this???? I'm so frustrated with this whole media thing. HELP!!!!!!!!!
Have you seen the pictures on Yelp's listing on Yelp? Just saw a few, pictures of employees you can tell they were hand picked, I don't think normal good people would want to work for Yelp! There is one picture of this "Yelps Rules" wrote in the sands! This alone shows the mind set of these inhuman people! They believe they have they are ruling our lives! They are aware of destroying lives and they are proud of it! Hoe creepy is that!
People in over seas pull down dictators by putting their lives on the line, why can't we have a organized demonstration to bring light and attention to this?
The lawsuit website link works, but the website itself doesn't show dates or any details – do we know if this lawsuit is in effect? The "submit info" section of the website doesn't work either. I DEFINITELY want to be part of any class action lawsuits against Yelp.
I'm a relatively new business (<2 yrs), but have received 8, 5-star reviews from actual unsolicited clients. I've emailed and complained, I've called, and get zero response from Yelp. I don't care whether I even have a Yelp listing, but since so many of my clients have given me glowing reviews, I'd like them to at least be seen by potential new clients. Their algorithm is completely unfair and biased, and works against honest businesses.
That is odd, I just went on Yelp and realized that my only two one star reviews were filtered. None of my good reviews or mediocre reviews were filtered. And this wasn't just my opinion being different than others – they were restaurants with just a couple reviews where my actually mattered in the stars calculation. I suspect you can somehow get Yelp to filter bad reviews.
I have a restaurant business in Maui and sure enough my business rating is a 3.5-4 starts, but because of yelp filtering all my good reviews and left me with the bad ones, my restaurant is not even close to a 3 stars. How ridiculous is that? I am so glad to see this article about yelp and their so called and proud of filter review process which is bullshit! They need shut this piece of shit down! Trip advisor is so mich better!
After submitting many complaints and email regarding about the issue, none of my concerns were respond!
Hello fellow YELP victims,
We recently responded to a YELP review from Jessica I. in which she wrote nothing other than "this place blows!" regarding our family owned and operated restaurant. Juvenile behavior, I'm sure you'll agree. but also detrimental to our reputation. In our response we simply requested that YELP reviewers please be more reponsible and, heaven forbid, CONSTRUCTIVE, with their criticisms. We also changed our business name to "Yardville Inn PLEASE SEE OUR FILTERED REVIEWS!" because, like most businesses, all of our 5 star reviews have been filtered and we believe the regular potential customer does not realize this.
Jessica I. replied to our response, and again stated that we "blow". She received compliments from her fellow ELITE YELPsters as well as "cool" and "funny" clicks re: her eloquent review of our establishment. Interestingly, one of her fellow ELITists sent us an email reprimanding us for our response to her "blows" comment. I thought you might be interested in this email and my reply. Good Luck.
On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 1:22 PM, Kenneth DuPuis wrote:
I am writing in response to the reply you wrote to user Jessica I. regarding her review of your establishment on Yelp.com.
Firstly, as I'm sure you are aware, Yelp is a forum where users generate feedback related content about local businesses, hopefully based on their personal experiences. There are guidelines and recommendations on what can or should be posted, and nowhere in them is there a mandate that they be constructive in their criticism or detailed in their descriptions.
As not only a user of the site, but also a career management professional, I find it unseemly to berate a customer for, or lecture them about, their opinions; especially so in front of other prospective or actual customers. In terms of the values I would assign to both her review and your reply, I must go on record as saying that your posted input would carry significantly more weight than hers in a decision on whether or not to patronize the Yardville Inn. And by that, I mean that I would decide not to.
Yelp is a community where people speak their minds. Not all of them may do so with the same degree of clarity, or speak from the most qualified positions, but all feedback is valuable to a business. If someone tells you that you are bad at what you do, it is ultimately your responsibility to fix yourself, not theirs. If the feedback you are getting is consistently bad, there are problems, and you need to rectify them if you do not want to deal with negative word of mouth advertising, which I am sure you are well aware is poisonous. If you also feel the need to fix the person who is spreading that negativity, well, I would refer you to the old saw about flies, vinegar, and honey.
Lastly, on the subject of your impassioned plea to read your filtered reviews tacked onto your business name, it is cheap and transparent. It is not part of your business name, and in my opinion should not be published there. A request has been submitted to remove that, and should you change it back, I will request that it be removed again. If you feel the need to ask us to do what most of us do anyway (essentially implying at the same that we are stupid), you should include that in a description of your business, which I see no one has bothered to write. That doesn't seem like a very good idea, though. It would smack of desperation, as it does now.
Above all, please be aware that offending the users of Yelp with questionable tactics is probably not the best way to drum up business. No one is out to hurt you, only to guide others. I hope you take these suggestions to heart, I wish you luck and success in your enterprise.
Regards,
Kenneth DuPuis
Toms River, NJ
Yelp Elite '12
OUR REPLY:
To: Kenneth DuPuis
Toms River, NJ
Yelp Elite '12
Thanks for contacting us with your reprimands and threats to report us to YELP, but You miss the point, Sir.
Why is it that 15 of Yardville Inn's legitimate customers' reviews have been "filtered"?!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/yardville-inn-please-see-…
As far as Yardville Inn's opinion of Jessica I.'s public YELP insult and subsequent tardy explanation: Here's my challenge. If Jessica will give us a date and time, we will review the security cameras..and if she ever waited 20 minutes "without a SOUL waiting on us", I will change our listed business name to "WE ARE VERY SORRY JESSICA" and I will personally hand you both $1000.00. Why am I so sure? Because it's a lie. And because our management team and I don't allow such things to happen. But that's actually besides the point. Let's just say it did happen?…."this place blows" is not the helpful or constructive way to let the world know. But that's just my opinion, which, for some reason, according to you, deserves far less respect or publicity than one of my supposed customers'.
No, we are not perfect. But we strive for it. We stake our lives and livelihoods on it. Do we make mistakes? Absolutely. Have we apologized, comped meals, sent out letters of contrition? Yes certainly, and we will always take responsibility for what's not working about our business and then work ceaselessly to change for the better. But when exactly is it constructive or helpful to ANYONE besides Jessica (who garners her little "funny" and "cool" clicks), to simply write: "this place blows"? Surely you can't believe this to be the reason that YELP should exist? So that disgruntled former employees or their friends can seek revenge for feeling wrongfully terminated? So that a local competitor can bring another business down? So that you can be too lazy to communicate using your actual mouth and not just your keyboard? To speak up and contact a manager? So that you can't just let us know on the spot what happened to cause your dissatisfaction, and allow us the grace of making it right? So that you can just throw out insults which affect more than 30 hard working individuals' ability to be employed and pay their bills? But again, this is not the point, and not why we must answer and defend our reputation against YELP's unfair business practices.
"If the feedback you are getting is consistently bad, there are problems, and you need to rectify them.."
-and here IS the point, once again, clearly delineated:
The feedback for our business is consistently and overwhelming EXCELLENT, and it's ALL word of mouth, because we 've always felt that our customer's opinion is the very best advertising…but YELP is stacked in such a way that the innocent and ignorant are not easily aware of the inherent lie.
It's the reckless irresponsibility of you YELPers and your ignorance of YELP's completely biased review setup which really deserves to be examined: The ASSUMPTION that because it's filtered, it must be a lie. The only way to fight back is to educate. That's why we changed the name. And will continue to do so, along with joining the thousands of businesses across the country who are filing class action lawsuits against YELP and demanding that the deck be unstacked. Drawing attention to our legitimate, but for some odd reason, filtered, reviews will hopefully wake some potential guests, and perhaps even self righteous "Elite" YELPers, up to the fact that legitimate reviews are NOT being shown to them.
As we've stated before..we have NO PROBLEM with our negative reviews being posted. We make mistakes and we support the first Amendment…BUT YELP NEEDS TO UN FILTER OUR POSITIVE REVIEWS.
You can contact any one of the reviewers whose posts were filtered. We did not pay them or bribe them in any way. We were not aware that they were posting until they complained to us that their positive review was removed. They simply love our place and appreciate all the hard work we put into making customers happy. Yet because they don't review as much as yourself or Jessica, they get filtered???
Is that the reason, or could it be because we refuse to pay YELP for advertising, that only mostly negative reviews remain? Why no negative reviews being filtered out? Why is it that businesses across America are told by YELP reps that in order for their "filtered" reviews to be revealed, they must pay$ 300-1k per month in advertising? That in order to remove their local competitors listing from the top of their very own Yelp Business page, they must ante up $$$? Why can readers click your Elitist review as being "cool", "funny", "useful", but not "biased", or "inappropriate", nor simply "not useful"? Why are you allowed to flag the business owners response to a review as "inappropriate", when no one is allowed to flag the reviewers response to that response? If you look between the lines and past your nose you'll see the answer.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/yelp-and-the-bu…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/28/yelp-rev…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhandy/2012/08/16/t…
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/11/presidential-be…
http://www.discoverhawaiitours.com/blog/2012/01/0…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/30/yelp-ext…
https://yelp-sucks.com/category/yelp-lawsuit-2/
We have no problem with criticism, public or private. But why is it not being given its proper context? All we ask, even if you "Elite" YELPers must continue to pride yourself on insults like "this place blows", is for fairness. Yelp can track the IP addresses of our filtered reviews and can easily satisfy any suspicion of impropriety. If the filtered reviews are legit, which they are..then include them along with the negatives and let our business's adjusted star rating speak for itself.
Do a little research first and I'm positive that you will begin to see what's inherently biased (and in my opinion, evil) about YELP, and anytime you or anyone you know would like to take me up on my challenge, I'll have $1000.00 earmarked, or you might simply stop in to enjoy what our community regards as some of the very best food and service around.
Sincerely,
S. Lenahan
Owner, CEO
Old Yardville Inn, Inc.
Yardville Inn
Wine, Spirits, Restaurant & Tavern
Yardville, NJ
Yelp is a joke! We've been in business for over 22 years and have been very successful. Several of the "1 star" reviews on our Yelp page though, are completely false. We have no idea who these people are! One reviewer actually threatened us and Yelp hasn't "filtered" that one out! I thought that was against the law? Yet, our longtime customers that have left positive reviews have been filtered out? Small businesses need to band together and support each other against these extortionists. That's really all they are…. Just DON'T give in and pay their ridiculous monthly fee to get good reviews, because as soon as you cancel, all the negative ones come back. It makes me really angry that business owners, the ones who put it all on the line and take the risk, through their hard work, blood , sweat and tears have to take out of their day to even deal with this. If there's a lawsuit, sign me up!
Here's the problem with Yelp. If you own a small business, and someone puts you on Yelp, you can not be removed. Yup, that's right, small businesses out there are captive to Yelp.
Yelp uses the CDA to protect it's right to keep small businesses from leaving. The Child Decency Act (CDA) was meant to protect children from internet pornography and other disturbing content, but was voted down by the corporate owned supreme court. Instead of protecting children, this law was twisted into protecting companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp from any accountability of their user's content.
If you call Yelp, and ask them to remove your profile, they will say, it is in the public's interest to know your business. If you threaten to sue, they will say that they are protected by the CDA. This law needs a definite update. Here's the problem, you can delete your profile on sites like Twitter, and Facebook. Also, on these kinds of sites, comments roll off in very little time. They disappear into the either.
With Yelp, everything is permanent, a lot of money is involved, and you can't delete your profile. There has to be some way that we can change this law. There has to be some way to override the results of the CDA.
Businesses should be aloud to leave Yelp!
I totally agree with you and I want to stand and fight against companies like Yelp and Tripadvisor! Sincerely Marissa
Can someone please answer these 2 questions about yelp for me?
1- How come yelp does not have an independent panel of software engineers (a third party that is completely unbiased) verify that their filtering "algorithm" is truly unbiased? If there's nothing to hide, then I think this shouldn't be a problem.
2- why do they hide the filtered reviews tab on the bottom of the page, and not on top, next to the other menu choices? And why the captcha code? What purpose does this serve?
Thank you in advance.
They don't want you to read the filtered reviews therefore they make it hard to find, while still being able to say they don't hide them. And they will never let anyone see the code because it's not that the code review would say they were biased but that it's broken IMHO.
please call or e-mail me, I would love to discuss some issues and see if you have any advice. I am currently suing Yelp in small claims court. Bill
Do you still monitor this…I would really love to discuss a couple things with you regarding a current issue with Yelp 818-625-4004
I do but somehow missed your message. I skim comments so miss those. message me and lets talk.
I know that when my competition pays for their ads, my review does not show up on the search results. I have watch this and it makes me crazy. They suck.
Be happy you can't get on yelp, they are horrible. Those that write reviews on yelp believe that they are entilled to rag on businesses in the nastiess way possible and not have a chance for the business to "make it right". Much of it is slander and it doesnt matter if you have hundreds of satisfied happy customers and five negative , the five negative will get front and center and it may not be based on much or any truth.
[…] travel there is no site better than Tripadvisor. It is impartial, doesn’t try to scam its clients for advertising money and has pretty much every location you could possibly think! As well as searching hotels you can […]
Yelp is using "trade secrets" to protect their algorithm from scrutiny including litigation. As far as I know they don't have a PhD statistician on staff or ever having worked on it or verified that it is statistically relevant and produces repeatable results.
They are protecting the filtered reviews from robots who could in theory scrape all the filtered reviews looking for similarities in order to reverse engineer the filter requirements so as to avoid them. I think the link shouldn't be grey and hidden, but I am fine with the captcha.
A small business Gym owner has asked me to look into his yelp page. I think we could legitimately make a case that yelp's filtering algorithm is broken but Yelp obviously isn't interested in talking to us. It's clear that new users who post a 5 site review for the gym get filtered. Yet 5 out of the 7 non-filtered reviews are 1 star reviews from users who have 0-2 other reviews and are over two years old. One gym member has over 100 yelp reviews and dozens of yelp friends. His 5 star review from 18 months ago only showed up unfiltered Today, after 17 check-ins. I honestly wonder if someone who works for yelp had a bad experience at this gym (again, hiding behind secrecy risks abuse)
I am a small business owner and I hate both Yelp and Tripadvisor and think that they should both be put out of business for their Nazi type tactics of holding businesses hostage on their websites. Whether you want to be a part of their website or not, you are bound and gagged by these two companies! You need to ask yourself what kind of business owners would practice such tactics in the first place? Probably one's that are desperate to keep members on their websites even against their own free will. I never did sign up with either of these pathetic pukes to advertise my business but obviously they think that I have to be a part of their sick and twisted communities. They practice unfair and unbalanced business reviews and if you try to defend yourself they will remove your rebuttlal to someone's review. They do not want to hear your side of the story but yet they let customers say whatever they please about you. They are nothing more than two gloried tabloid companies.
I had to file a complaint against Tripadvisor with the Better Business Bureau. Tripadvisor let someone post a comment about us on their webstie that was not only damaging but very untrue! (this is not the first time this has happened either) The review that was written about our business was not even by a customer that stayed at our motel recently but said they stayed there 30 years ago. Can you imagine that? 30 YEARS AGO. First of all who in their right mind would wait 30 years to post a review about a business? I contacted Tripadvisor about the matter and they said it would take 3 days to remove the review. 3 DAYS, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Why would any reputable company take 3 days. Are they so busy sitting on their butts that they cannot move on something like this?
Why would any reputable company take 3 days to remove a review that is a lie? Are they so busy sitting on their butts that they cannot move on something like this? I was so mad and had enough! That's when I filed a complaint against them with the BBB. Then the review got taken off immediately! I also got a phone call from them trying to apologize but the damage has already been done. Just think how many people checked out our business on there and without knowing us bought into that lie! I am so sick of these two companies that if there is any class action suit going on against them then I really want to be a part of it! I have had enough! No one in America should have to put up with this bullcrap!
So are you saying that you filed a complaint about the false review and it was immediately taken down? Has anyone else used this technique? Could you do a checklist and post it on the Delete Yelp Reviews page?
Yes, I filed a complaint against tripadvisor with the Better Business Bureau. Yes, then my complaint got taken down immediately and yes, a rep from Tripadvisor called me to apologize but the damage was already done. Tripadvisor and Yelp are reckless when it comes to allowing people to report false reviews about your business. Yes, I can do a checklist, Do you mean the steps I took to contact the Better Business Bureau and report Tripadvisor? I can do that but what page are you referring to that you want me to put it on. I think all businesses should file complaints against these two self absorbed companies. Matter of fact I am considering on creating my website for travel reviews.
I was reading a post about my sister company that is getting false reviews I did my own research his name is Jeremy Clark he is the Sales Manager for Chicago Title and Escrow Company. He has been all over yelp trying to protect his friends problems by giving bad reviews. I can't believe that they let him work their know he is not telling the truth and asking for money for his comments to be changed.
[…] Yelp on your good side helps, but you don’t need Yelp. If you’re getting unjustified or dishonest negative reviews and Yelp isn’t responding, you can […]
There are so many better ways to handle bad reviews than buying reviews. Someone who knows how to handle reputation management is important.
Agreed. Buying reviews is the kiss of death!
You guys also need to look at Google. After all, many new comers do a search for generic businesses and Yelp appears at the top of Google search results. If Yelp didnt have that kind of front page exposure on the most popular search engne in the world, I am sure you'd see a lot less stress over the "reviews craze" that is sweeping the country.
Exactly. That's why I say, sometimes you just have to move them to page 2
Yelp is far from accurate, can be easily gamed by most people, and Yelp often leaves unfavorable reviews despite compelling evidence to the contrary or categorizes reviews as not recommended for no other reason than perhaps it's a reviewer's first review. For the latter, you have to start somewhere. To aspire to be an Elite might have some cache and ego stroking allure, but the Elite program would seem to have a biased, self-interest trajectory.
I have a client who needs a couple yelp reviews… but before you go all nutty on me, do note, that Yelp has removed over 30 REAL reviews for my client that were not provoked or asked for. BUT, they did allow 1 1 star review a 3 star review and a 4 and 1 5 star review. Leaving it look pretty shady as a business owner over all. What do I do about this?
You need to do a review analysis to determine where your best reviews come from. Then mine that source. If they are walk in customers, getting them to check in always leads to them being prompted to write a review by Yelp, so that is a sideways way of asking. There are some awesome people who know all the ins and outs of legally and ethically inspiring more reviews. Message me and I'll intro you.