If you’re a Yelper and write a review for a businesses you patronized, you expect that your comments are going to show up on the business’ page and affect the star-ratings.  Maybe they will, but maybe they won’t.

While I was researching the Yelp filtering of reviews for an auto repair shop I started looking at the profiles of people whose positive comments were not appearing on the business’ page.  The list of reviews and the count of reviews on the people’s profile pages showed the filtered reviews.  There was no indication when looking at the person’s page that Yelp distrusted their comments.

In some cases, the profile pages showed that the person had written several reviews, and they looked like a valued Yelper.  But, when you clicked on any of the person’s reviews to the business’ page, the reviews were not there.  Yelp had filtered all of that person’s comments.

If you were the Yelper, you’d have no clue that whatever you were writing on Yelp was not being seen by the community.  Your profile page shows that you’ve posted 9 or 35 Yelps.

The only way you can check to see if Yelp is displaying your carefully crafted reviews is if you click through on each review on your profile page to see if it is also showing up on the business’ page.  That’s time consuming, and there’s nothing you can do about being filtered anyway.

Yelp Profile Information

Yelp Profile Information for GalenW

My own Yelp profile shows that I have 29 Yelp friends and have written 133 reviews. But, at least one of those reviews doesn’t show up for the business. I rated a real experience I’d had, but somehow the review isn’t showing up. I don’t know why, and there seems to be no way for me to tell Yelp that their filtering system screwed up.

That’s the point in my earlier post, too.  Yelp’s filtering system has flaws, and it doesn’t allow feedback.  There’s no mechanism for the Yelp programmers to learn from their mistakes or for reviewers to learn what Yelp thinks they are doing wrong.

Yelp, please open up your filtering process, let us communicate with the Goddess of Reviews, and let legitimate Yelpers participate in improving the site.