Here’s the issue with Yelp and how they could be better. They cater and try to be beneficial to “Yelpers” - people who post reviews of establishments BUT the businesses/advertisers are the ones who they try to sell products to. Cater to the businesses more and offer better opportunities/perks at better prices and you’ll see your revenue stream go up. As it is, many business owners dislike Yelp for several reasons and refuse to advertise or buy any of their products because of this. I have a love/hate relationship with their filter myself and also refuse to do business with Yelp. Their filter for whatever reason in my 15 year career spanning over 31 restaurants I’ve owned/operated, filters 12 times as many 4-5 star reviews as it does 1-2 star reviews. And furthermore, rarely does a 3 star review get filtered. 31 restaurants in 15 years and this is fact, not my opinion.
Yelp must start doing better practices with the business side, especially the small businesses, in order to help themselves. Otherwise, they’re a one dimensional review site that’s only going to diminish more so than grow. You offer Yelp Elite status to these people that review all these places each year (for free mind you) and offer them perks for doing so. Start doing things like this for the businesses and I’ll gladly invest money in advertising for my restaurants and future restaurants. And you need to enchance your Filter you’re ever-so-proud of but in reality, it might as well not be a filter at all. I’d be better off without the Filter, like many but understand the idea behind it. Just needs to be improved, if they’re going to use it.
***Now, I ask each and every one of you to go to your Yelp page of each restaurant you own/operate (if you haven’t done this before, I’ve included how to do so) and scroll down near the bottom of your Yelp home page where it says " x reviews that are not currently recommended". What’s worse, is they try to hide this by putting this at the bottom of the page where no one goes and in light gray small font! Click on that and it’ll show all of your reviews that have been “filtered” for one reason or another supposedly. Now, tally up the reviews based on stars and post on this thread how many of each stars you have and we’ll do our own research study right here, right now on PMQ Think Tank. Ready. Set. GO!
