Reputation Management and Yelp Webinar

Reputaion management webinar2
Our CEO Pierre Zarokian and attorney Aaron Minc from Dinn, Hochman & Potter, LLC will be doing a free online webinar about Yelp and Reputation Management on July 19, 2016 at 2:30pm EST.

Pierre Zarokian will discuss:

– The importance of Yelp
– How to increase your Yelp reviews
– How the Yelp filter works
– How to get negative reviews removed on Yelp
– Other review sites and how they work, including: Google+, Ripoff Report, BBB and others.
– How to proactively create positive content online
– What to do if you get negative reviews on other complaint sites

Aaron Minc will discuss:

– Basics os Online Reputation Management
– The Internet & Online Defamation Problem
– What is The Communications Decency Act, Section 230
– How to Legally Remove Online Content
– Court Ordered Search Engine Removal
– Online Reputation Management Myths
– Proactive Reputation Management

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How Negative Yelp Reviews can Ruin Your Business

yelpYou must do everything in your power to try and remove negative Yelp reviews and in this article we will explain why!  While there are other factors involved, a study out of Harvard’s School of Business points to a correlation between stars on a business Yelp page and revenue for that business. The study says that every star increased in a review leads to a 5-9% bump in revenue, potentially. Even when fake reviews are present, which a growing volume of articles suggests is the truth; users still view the Yelp rating of a business as extremely important to their decisions to use a service.

It should be clear that negative reviews have a potentially catastrophic effect on your business, but you can take steps to improve your potential revenue.

Revenue Losses

If your business is rated three stars by Yelp, you’re bound to get more people applying a scrutinous eye to the negative reviews on your page expecting to find something convincing. If they recognize a pattern of behavior, such as expensive menu items or terrible customer service, you’ll probably lose a potential customer.

The average rating system also fails to highlight what works about your business, so customers who don’t feel like sifting through reviews will use the star average system to make a snap judgment.

The difference comes for chain restaurants, which do a fairly decent job of standardizing the quality of their food/product/service. Independent businesses tend to be met with a more critical eye.

What to Do

Knowing that these losses equate to a dip in revenue, the simple answer is to ask customers to leave reviews on your Yelp page.  If you have existing negative Yelp reviews, then you must try to get them removed. Some reviews can be remove if they are against the terms of service of Yelp and this simply can be done by flagging and explaining your reasoning. Some others may require a legal letter to Yelp legal department with more evidence why you think the review is false. In our experience less than 10% of negative Yelp reviews have a chance of getting removed. If you need help with getting your negative Yelp reviews removed, contact us.

Another way to get a review removed would be to contact the original poster. However, be aware that Yelp is against offering incentives to your customers for removing the review. You may offer them a refund or an incentive, but do not make that a condition of the removal.

Finally, if all above fails, you should respond to the review from your business account and explain your side of the story or apologize publicly.

Final Thoughts

When you think about the average user searching for your business, it’s no wonder Yelp or Google reviews play a role. They are most likely searching on a mobile device, probably very close to your area at this moment. If they are hungry, or in the mood to buy, they want results delivered fast. The star rating provides a simple method to convey that information. If your stars aren’t looking bright, you might want to take steps to correct that.

 

 

How to Combat Negative Online Reviews

negative online reviewsNegative reviews have been shown to directly correlate with lost revenue for any business with less than 5 stars. The way users utilize reviews is a big part of the reasoning behind that correlation. Users, especially those on the go, tend to review the star ratings because those ratings provide a quick and easy reference point. Unfortunately for businesses with fewer than 5 stars, those pages don’t always display the kind of information one might want to show.

If your business is the victim of a negative review smear campaign, or you find your ratings slip and want to be proactive about improving them, then these tips will help you grow.

Address the Concern

Google will go to great lengths to present all information in a dispute, including your response. If you use your business Google account to publicly respond to negative press about your business, your response will be included. This is a double-edged sword. If your response is hastily written and doesn’t address the problem, record of it remains. Carefully word your responses and feel free to ask the user to take the conversation private (either by phone or email) to find a solution.

Own Search

If you own multiple properties, there are good odds that those properties will show when someone conducts a search for your name. Especially if you do some basic SEO and link building to those properties. The more properties you own, the better your odds of controlling the messaging around your business. This strategy is especially effective at helping businesses that wouldn’t normally get a ton of press from outside sources.

Request New Reviews

While you can pay Yelp to advertise on their site, it’s a better idea to just ask your existing customers to leave reviews on your page. It’s against the terms of service to offer some form of incentive, even a small discount, but you would be surprised at how many customers want to offer their point of view to help others out. You’ll need to collect the customer’s email address to get the best results, but many businesses will just ask the customer to leave a Yelp review on the receipt.

Final Thoughts

Businesses with a less than stellar Yelp review are literally leaving money on the table. Every star missing equates to a loss of revenue near 5-9%, according to a study published by the Harvard School of Business. If you’re a restaurant, and you’re not a chain, the losses could be even worse!

Yelp will try to hassle you for advertising, hinting (but never explicitly saying) that your negative image will vanish. This isn’t true. Yelp reviews must be sought actively. Paying for ad space on Yelp is the equivalent of paying AdWords fees. If you’re interested in improving your reputation, you need to engage with your customers.

How the Yelp Filter Works

yelp-logoThe Yelp review filter was a feature that was baked into Yelp since the beginning, but has only become more developed over the years. After a brief history of why the filter is needed, we’ll dive into an explanation of how it works and what your business can do to avoid having your positive reviews disappear.

The History of the Review

From the beginning, Yelp understood that its value would diminish rapidly if the site was unable to create a mechanism that identified fake reviews and disposed of them. In the beginning of the site’s lifespan, this filter was very rudimentary. Those rules weren’t very advanced and caught a lot of false positives, filtering real reviews as fakes.

Over time, Yelp devoted more resources to strengthening this tool.

SEOs and marketing managers have also developed a basic understanding of how it works. At the least, there are some hard and fast rules to follow if you don’t want your business’ reviews to get caught in the filter:

  • Users who review should have more than one review to their name.
  • Reviewers should have developed profiles that express the user’s interests, potentially show a photo and have a realistic-looking bio for that user. Check-ins help with verification of a user’s locale, ensuring that location-based reviews are filtered accordingly.
  • Reviews should refrain from slanting too far one way or another. No one has the most incredible service they’ve ever had outside of a handful of examples. This rule is perhaps the hardest to quantify.

User Behavior

Yelp understands how its users think, which plays a role in the kinds of reviews the site chooses to display. Yelp knows, for example, that users are more likely to leave a negative review than a positive one.

With that in mind, businesses should take a few distinct steps to improve the quality of reviews they receive. First, don’t be shy! Reach out to the reviewer. If the review is positive, consider becoming that user’s friend on Yelp. Vote the review useful, and encourage others to do the same.

If you’re reviewing, make sure your profile has a picture associated with it. You should also reach out to other users and make friends. If possible, vote their reviews funny or useful. Then begin writing your own reviews. With luck and time, your work will be accepted by Yelp as legitimate.

In Summary

The filter that Yelp employs to remove faked reviews has all the right intentions, but it still leads to false positives. If your business is seeing positive reviews disappear, take a look at the profiles for the users that left those reviews. Look for some of the “fake” attributes and encourage your authentic customers to leave reviews on your page.

Some businesses even look to reputation management firms to help with this outreach and engagement. You might contract these companies to help create an email list, or design a campaign to aggregate positive reviews and testimonials. If you can’t use them for Yelp, you can still list them on your website.

 

Is Yelp Advertising Worth It?

yelpIf you’re listed on Yelp, and your business has gotten any number of reviews, there is a good chance that someone at Yelp has tried to contact you for an advertising opportunity. In this article, we’ll look at what Yelp’s offering to you, your options for advertising, and ultimately provide some guidance as to whether Yelp advertising is a good move for your business.

The Yelp Ad Model

Yelp’s basic ad model functions a lot like Google’s ad model because it’s based on some of the same principles. The user goes to Yelp, performs a search query and finds results listed on a page. Yelp ads insert a particular restaurant into a query for a certain item, say “tacos”. Ads can be tailored too, looking for certain characteristics of a user’s profile or showing only for users within a certain distance of the place of business.

Yelp ads are also pricey, at least as much or a bit more than the average cost per click across ad services.

What Are People Saying about Yelp Ads?yelp FB ad dislikes

Majority of Yelp advertisers do not seem to be happy with the results. In fact, we do not know of a single company who has done Yelp ads and has gotten good conversion. All the clients that we speak to who have done Yelp before either have cancelled it or are not going to renew when their contract runs out. A few clients we spoke to feel that by advertising with Yelp more of their positive reviews will show, hence that is the only reason they advertise with Yelp. However, we feel this is not true. Advertising with Yelp has no effect on positive or negative reviews getting filtered or now. In fact, many people have tried to sue Yelp for this reason, but have not been able to prove that.

Yelp recently ran some Facebook ads to try to get more advertisers and many people were posting negative comments about Yelp Advertising. We grabbed a screenshot of some of the comments, which you can see to the right.

Who Needs Ads?

Yelp’s ad model is best for businesses that have customers who will spend a great deal of money over the course of their lifetime. For most small businesses, that’s a costly gamble. Established businesses should be able to capitalize on some of Yelp’s ads, but most likely see a great deal of traffic already provided through other means.

What drives the cost of a Yelp ad is the value of that user. If someone is searching for a product on Yelp, they’re rarely comparison shopping. Yelp uses that value to drive the cost of its ads.

Are the ads worth the price? That depends on your options, of which there are many:

  • You can hire a branding or reputation management firm, where the average cost per year is significantly less than Yelp ads, plus you will most likely see a bump in organic traffic to your website in the process.
  • You can monitor the reviews yourself and respond to them, even friending users who leave reviews on your page. This boost in reviews and engagement may help organically improve your listing in Yelp.
  • You can solicit reviews from your place of business through a variety of means. You might ask directly on the customer’s receipt or create an email list.
  • You could pay for other advertising through Facebook, Twitter or Google. This might lessen the cost per click/engagement.

Final Thoughts

Yelp ads aren’t the best solution for every business, but they can be beneficial to some. They don’t affect reviews, nor do they help more positive reviews avoid the review filter. At least not definitively. Overall, Yelp’s ads should be viewed by most small businesses with a skeptic eye.

 

 

Why Legitimate Positive Reviews Get Filtered by Yelp

Every business owner with a Yelp listing has had to face this frustration at some point in their career: bad Yelp reviews. No one likes to hear others complain about them, especially if those reviews are false. Yelp has a system to filter those reviews and ensure an honest review system. Unfortunately, the system frequently catches positive reviews that look fairly legitimate.

If this is happening to you now, don’t pull out all your hair just yet. We’ll look at why this happens and what you can do about it.yelp-door

How the Filter Works

The filter runs on a complicated algorithm that is designed to catch fraudulent reviewers by establishing a series of “rules” that help Yelp’s systems identify a user. Yelp might look for a user’s profile picture, the number of reviews she has left, or inspect the text of the review itself to determine whether the viewpoint is slanted too far one way or the other.

The filter is designed to look at factors such as these to determine whether a review, or the reviewer, is faked.

How You Can Help

You might feel helpless, but there are a great deal of things you can do to help your positive reviews avoid the filter. First and foremost: prepare to get social! You’ll need to maintain a strong presence on Yelp. That means writing to reviewers who leave both negative and positive reviews, and somehow avoiding conflict while you do this.

Try to be fair and approach every complaint as legitimate. Offer a clear solution to resolution and offer to take the conversation private to close the deal. Once the customer leaves, hopefully satisfied, ask for his or her opinion on Yelp. Even if they update the review with an edit, it still makes your business look better.

Engage your customers in store as well. If you find that your page is seeing a lot of filtered positive reviews, provide instructions on how customers can complete their Yelp profile and make themselves into legitimate reviewers. You might have a “Did You Know” type sign in your business, or include this information as part of sales brochures or menus.

Do Not Dos

One thing that you should definitely not do is solicit positive reviews. Yelp has actually become quite sophisticated when it comes to finding businesses who engage in this practice. They conducted a sting operation recently to catch people in the act of paying for fake Yelp reviews. The sting resulted in several businesses receiving a visible banner that ratted them out for having paid for Yelp reviews.

Even if you attempt to game the system by thoroughly learning and testing these rules, odds are that you’re throwing money and effort at the wrong problem. The few positive reviews you’ll get will be offset by the effort it took to get them.

Final Thoughts

If you feel the need to improve your reviews, one of your best courses of action is to hire some kind of reputation management or branding firm. They can help you control your presence in the search engine, improve your standing and address negative reviews.