Every day, our company gets inquiries from business owners asking how they can get bad reviews on Yelp removed or fixed.  Yelp.com has proven they will not work with business owners to remove false and misleading reviews unless they violate Yelp’s TOS. Finding negative reviews online about your business is a frustrating and devastating experience.

Yelp.com was designed as a listing site to give consumers “honest” reviews of different businesses.  The site has quickly become a popular hangout spot and social networking tool used by consumers.  From restaurants to doctors’ offices, Yelp collects information on millions of different businesses and redisplays this information on their website.  Yelp gets its business information from third-party data sources like Dun and Bradstreet and from members who list businesses on the website.  Once your business is listed on Yelp there is no chance of getting the listing removed from Yelp itself.

Yelp promotes its website as a place for business owners to advertise their listings and drive customers to their establishment.  The problem that many business owners have found with Yelp is they use a unique algorithm to filter reviews they believe are false.  The end result for many business owners is positive reviews are filtered out leaving negative reviews prominently displaying on the site and in Google and the other search engines.  Consumers are relying on online reviews now more than ever. A channeladvisor study done in 2011 showed that 83 percent of consumers now rely on online reviews for making purchase decisions.  The end result for businesses with poor reviews online is a huge decline in business.  We have heard countless stories from different business owners about huge losses in revenue to going out of business because of their online reviews.

We have reviewed thousands of Yelp profiles and worked with hundreds of business owners to develop a comprehensive and strategic approach to fighting negative Yelp reviews and removing the listing from appearing Google.

How To Remove Yelp Reviews

There are a number of misconceptions about removing Yelp reviews, getting Yelp reviews deleted, and paying Yelp to remove bad reviews.  Most of this information is false.  Yelp is protected by the 1st Amendment and the CDA Act; they don’t and typically won’t remove reviews. Yelp has won several large lawsuits relating to online review removal and has proven they are protected by the current laws.  Yelp does not remove reviews for its advertisers, advertising on Yelp will not allow you to monitor or remove reviews.
The Internet has become the number one source consumers are turning to for information on businesses.  If you are not taking a positive action to control and eliminate these harmful review profiles from appearing prominently in the search engines, you are losing control of your business and losing revenue.

The idea behind removing Yelp reviews from the Internet is very simple. First, we need to find out where people are finding these reviews and then we must eliminate this profile from the source all together.  It is not possible to prevent bad reviews, but it is possible to prevent people from finding them.  Our researched approach to fighting Yelp is simple: take Yelp out of the picture all together.  Our review management packages offer full scale solutions to dealing with online reviews.

1)    The first step in fixing Yelp reviews is to understand where customers are finding these reviews.  Countless studies and research shows that consumers are using Google, Yahoo and Bing to find online reviews.  People are not going directly to Yelp to find your business; they find it through a Google search.

2)    Once we have targeted where customers are finding these harmful reviews, we put a plan into action to remove the Yelp.com business listing from appearing all together.

3)    We use a researched and tested model to remove Yelp profiles from appearing in the search engines all together.  As a business owner, you shouldn’t allow for websites like Yelp to control your business; having a high ranking listing that allows for anonymous posters to say anything they want is extremely dangerous.
The end result of our campaigns is a clean Internet presence with no negative reviews appearing on Yelp or any other sites.  The idea is take control of your “Google real estate” and by doing so, take control of how customers view your business.  It took years for you to build your reputation, so don’t let one person ruin it.

Yelp Review Problem Case Studies

Questions and Answers

1)    “Can I just get one review removed from Yelp?”

Answer: You CAN’T remove reviews from Yelp based on the fact that they are false, misleading, or untrue.  It is important to understand that Yelp is not responsible for the reviews posted on their site and will not remove them unless it specifically violates their TOS and even in those circumstances it is still difficult.  Getting negative reviews online is unavoidable.  A jealous competitor or an angry ex-employee can ruin your reputation in minutes.  You are bound to end up with negative reviews online now or in the future.  The only long term effective solution is to take these review websites out of the picture.

2)    “Can I sue Yelp for negative reviews?”

Answer: Yelp is protected by the current laws and legal action will not result in Yelp removing reviews.

3)    “What if the person who left the review is not a customer of mine?”

Answer: Yelp does not require proof of purchase to leave a review.  Yelp allows anyone to leave reviews on businesses.

4)    “How long does your program take to fix my review problem?”

Answer: Our average campaign will get your problem fixed in under 30 days.

5)    “I don’t have any reviews now, but want protection, can you help?”

Answer: Yes, we offer protection programs and highly recommend them.  Allowing these review sites to prominently rank on the search engines is playing with fire.  We also offer review monitoring that allows you to easily control and monitor what is being said about you online.

6)    “How much does it cost?” 

Answer: Each campaign is custom tailored for the business.  The cost varies based on how many results there are for your business and how many negative reviews there are on the profiles.  We offer a free analysis to evaluate the situation.

7)    Why are my reviews being filtered on Yelp?
Answer: The Yelp review system is an algorithm designed by Yelp to filter our reviews they classify as spam.  It seems that a majority of the reviews that end up in the Yelp review filter are the positive reviews.  Yelp.com states they believe their review filter is used to leave the most relevant reviews for users of the website.  Yelp does not publicly disclose what triggers a review to be filtered, but our research has shown there are a number of factors that can be attributed to a review ending up in the filter.
These are triggers that can cause reviews to end up in the Yelp filter.

• Geographic – A user’s location can trigger a Yelp review filter. If a business is located in Houston, Texas and receiving reviews from California it is likely Yelp will filter this review.
• Timing – If a business recently received a negative review and all of the sudden starts receiving positive reviews immediately after the negative review, it is likely these reviews will be filtered.
• Frequency – Business that receive small amounts of reviews and then see a sudden increase in positive reviews will most likely trigger the filter.
• Yelp Status – One of the biggest reasons a review will end up being filtered is if the review is a new Yelp user and doesn’t have an established account with numerous other reviews.  Yelps algorithm is based very strongly on the reviewer’s account.

Call us today and we can discuss helping you – (800) 758-9012