How to Remove Bad Yelp Reviews
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 $1000.00 per review removed. Crazy.
That being said, here’s how to identify and dispute bad yelp reviews that qualify for removal..
According to this article, there are primarily 5 main reasons why Yelp may be willing to remove a negative review.
#1 – The review doesn’t describe a personal consumer experience. ” If the review was written in the third person, yelp may remove the review. For example, “My husband spoke with them and they were very mean to my husband.” That review may violate content guidelines, and yelp may remove it. Another reason to use this approach is that the review doesn’t describe an actual experience, for example, “The doctors here are really nasty and don’t care about the patients.” This review may qualify for removal because it doesn’t talk about any actual experience.”
#2 – The review is too short, or not descriptive enough. According to the Terms of Service, a review must be rich in details and contain a wealth of narrative. If the review is one sentence long, and they don’t really describe much, chances are it may qualify for removal. We’ve even seen reviews that literally contain one word, emoji or sad face.
#3 – The review contains racist language. Here’s your opportunity to talk about this review and how it might be promoting bigotry, or any other distasteful reason that you can write about. If the review insinuates anything that’s racist or culturally unacceptable, flag it; Yelp may decide to remove it.
#4 – The review contains promotional content. For Example, “Jon’s Plumbing wanted to charge me 900$ 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:
Thanks for introducing Curtis Boyd of Future Solutions Media. When I called the company, Curtis spoke with me personally and critiqued our Yelp profile on the spot. I knew our star ranking would go up if certain reviews that failed to comply with Yelp’s terms of use were removed. We would only be obligated to pay FSM if they produced results on our behalf.
Within several hours of contracting with FSM, Yelp had deleted select reviews from our profile that had haunted us for years. I was blown away and relieved by the results. Curtis and his team are also showing us how to revive certain reviews that had become filtered by Yelp’s “algorithm”. Yes, Future Solutions Media is that good!
Thank you Adryenn for empowering businesses to counter the nefarious and ruthless traits of Yelps business model. Curtis has breathed life into our Online Reputation and can do the same for many of your viewers. Highly recommended.
Pay it Forward: Ban Yelp from Search Engines until they stop their harmful practices. Yelp is destroying small businesses. They have gamed the search engine companies and our system of free enterprise. They have a clear conflict of interest, and this harms everyone. Help small businesses succeed, and you will help all economies prosper. This will help everyone! Thank you!
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/pay-it-forward-b…
Yelp truly sucks. Yelp reps are arrogant , Yelp doesn’t help any business except harm all of them specially small businesses that are struggling. My customers did write honest reviews on Yelp for me , but when yelps arrogant sales people call me out of the blue, I didn’t want to talk to them, in retaliation , they remove all the good reviews , I do not need Yelp , people even don’t go there to look, it doesn’t effect my business. I was the one who was telling my prospective customers to go on Yelp , they even didn’t know what Yelp is. But again, if you don’t want to pay Yelp, they will delete your good reviews if you have one. There are so many websites just like Yelp , but Yelp truly sucks.
Help a crazy client is teething to ruin me
All u need to do is private message them and then threaten a civil suit for slander,,,it is lawful to sue and unlawful to slande , and defame ones character
I have 13 suppressed yelp reviews and 3 reviews with low to 1 star ratings that posted. They are horrible yelp refuses to Allow the positive reviews to post because I don’t advertise with them and a 3 to 16 review posting is unheard of
Hi Adryenn,
We would like help in deleting negative comments from a yelp site about our business. PH
Customers are using Yelp to take advantage and get services and or products for free .
One clearly told me that if I give the money back she will remove the review –
Yelp is creating the new trend of manipulation like a mafia allowing all this !
Justice must be done !
In general our clients have made up. We are a small business and have the most complete floor covering show room in the Ssn Fernando Valley maybe Lox Angeles. A family business that still cares. All of our business is word of mouth with many high profile happy customers. Yelp has allowed an occasional Person to Be hurtful. My suggestion is for the young to go to important websites like the Contractors licence board and the better business bureau. Everyone done be so quick to judgement with out knowing both sides of a story
yelp should get sued it is blackmail they dont post good comments unless you advertise with them
A review site is for people to review businesses, to help other potential customers. It's not for businesses to finagle for their own purposes. Get a grip people. And btw, I hate yelp too.
I am a small business owner in Texas, business is great and all my reviews are great on Facebook, I have had several 5 star reviews and one one star review from a competitor, yelp took them all off except the 1 star review when I refused to advertise with them. This should be illegal but word of mouth is my best advertisements and will always be, I sleep great at night, run a “honest business”. Wish consumers knew the truth about yelp and the mafia style antics they rely on. Like I said, word of mouth is your best, or worst advertisement, and I tell everyone I know how they are.
When we refused to pay Yelp for advertising, which would have cost us close to $500 per month, they removed all the positive reviews that kind consumers had over time placed on their site. I'd guess that since we don't have negative reviews, they made our business unavailable (they have a strong bias to negative reviews to force businesses to advertise (1000 positive review wiped leaving 1 negative review would make a big negative impact on any business). If we had a negative review, I don't believe they would have removed us from the index – they apparently don't want to provide us any advertising benefit, even a bare-bones listing without positive or negative reviews. We noticed that competitors in the same general area and business field also had their positive reviews wiped around the same time as ours was, which also removed their detailed business information. If a consumer wants to find some of the best businesses out there or a complete list of businesses (not just the one's that will pay Yelp's protection money; aka advertising) they should search on a consumer focused search engine like google. Consumers should waste their time putting positive reviews on Yelp, they'll just remove them at some point going forward or bury them as being unrecommended.
How can we fix this. I too own a small business and Yelp is a huge problem for us. 1 star reviews posted by Yelpers with no other reviews. Blatant lies and obvious when one starts a yelp to write 1 false review. We as business owners need to find a way to get this changed. Yelp needs to go away.
Would you mind lettting us no the name of your business, because I find it hard to believe that they removed 999 of your reviews. Truthfully I find it hard to believe that anyone with 1000 reviews would actually be complaining because they would know the benefit of Yelp.
Yelp is similar to a mugshot extortion site. Google managed to penalize mugshot site rankings and they should do the same with Yelp. Contact google and place a request for an investigation.
I declined advertising with Yelp,they leave up 1 star reviews from people I haven't ever seen or spoken to,they have never been to my business,they bad mouthed me on Yelp and they said we'll take it down,then left it up.I had another long time customer put a 5 start review up and it was taken down within 10 minutes…why ???
I've come to the conclusion Yelp don't care how they damage your reputation,even with proof they don't care who posts bad reviews real or not
Yelp don't care if your reputation or business suffer due to bad /fake reviews,I have 1 star that is fake they leave that up,I have 5 start review taken down in 10 mins of putting it up…..and I have proof the 1 star is bogus,they don't care….
Yelp are the worst
Yelp did not publish any of my many good reviews only the few bad ones giving me a one star rating. Even when I informed yelp of one of the reviews was violating their bilaws by Advertising one my competitors they temporarily suppressed it and then unsuppressed it later.
Under stand you problem, same here , yelp takes down the good ones and leaves the competitors bad review.
I wish there was an easy answer , yelp a bunch of criminals I hope some one with deep pockets puts them out of business and in jail where they belong . Any one that works there should be lock up for what they do to small business they have no moral values and do not care.
sign be up class action suit.