One Yelp Review Could End Up Representing Your Company for Years

Mobley’s Shoes’ whole business concept depends on its customer service.

…That’s why the owners of the Raleigh shop are concerned about the filtering of online reviews on Yelp, a website that allows customers to rate and review businesses. The site has a practice of filtering reviews and showcasing ones that have been chosen by data processing software. 

Mobley’s Yelp site shows that the shoe store has one review with a three-star rating from 2008. [Emphasis added.] The filtering system, said Clifton Mobley, who runs the store with his father and his brother, is frustrating because it makes hard for others to see those positive reviews.

Also, one review can end up representing the company for years. 

Can you imagine being punished by a single review that’s six years old?

Unfortunately, Yelp is never going to change. It stands behind its review filter and its policy of making life hard even for honest business owners. The review filters tend to assume that almost any good review is probably fake, an unfortunate turn of events for those who have worked, and worked hard, in an attempt to fill the site with positive reviews. 

So what’s the solution?

Stop messing with Yelp altogether. Make Yelp as irrelevant as possible. Send customers to your own website to fill out a feedback form. There’s an easy widget called Feedbackify. You can use it to take control of all of your reviews. 

At that point, you and your business become the review filter. You can choose to display neutral and positive reviews while choosing to respond to negative reviews privately.

You also need to create a virtual firewall, or have a reputation management company create one for you.

A single 3-star review on the first page of the Google SERPs for your business name is devastating. The same review has virtually zero effect all the way on page 19. Most potential customers go to Google, not to Yelp, and most don’t click on any search result that’s any deeper than three pages. Some won’t go beyond the very first page, simply assuming that anything that isn’t on the first page isn’t important.

You can adopt the strategy for any third-party review site that seems to be taking business away from you. There’s no reason to allow Yelp to hold your business hostage. Not for six years. Not even for six days. The solutions are out there, if you’re willing to grasp them.