Yelp reviews | Dangerous Common Sense

Should You Advertise on Yelp?

Click to see Ozdachs on Yelp

The social media business review website Yelp reported that its revenue grew by 67% last quarter as it aggressively pushes its advertising and co-branding strategies.

Many of my clients are getting emails and phone calls from Yelp suggesting that they jump on board the Yelp advertising bandwagon. The come-ons suggest both straight-forward advertising campaigns and they suggest that the businesses offer special Yelp deals for customers that check-in at the business using a mobile device.

“Should I advertise with Yelp?” is a frequent question I get asked.

It depends. On one hand:

Yelp is read by a lot of people searching for restaurants and services.
One of my professional services clients gets at least a phone call a week from a prospective client who says that they found them on Yelp.

On the other hand:

Yelp is expensive. Its monthly packages run from $300 to $1000 or more.
Advertising on Yelp drives people to your page on Yelp and not directly to your website. Your Yelp page will include negative reviews of your business, and they may be prominently displayed, depending upon Yelp’s mysterious algorithms. Being a Yelp advertiser gives you no additional ability to focus clients on your positive reviews or to respond to or remove untrue negative comments. So you could wind up paying for ads that drive potential customers to the worst comments of your worst clients. (Every business will, sooner or later, get a scathing review. This is true whether you deserve it or not.)

Here’s what I tell my clients wondering about advertising on Yelp

Since Yelp ads drive people to your business’ Yelp page, it makes sense to advertise only if you already have a good number of positive reviews. There is no point in sending people to your Yelp page if there are no glowing reports of what you do.

Moreover, most of my clients offer professional services which do not lead to social media tie ins. So, I recommend that my clients buy the traditional Yelp ads and steer clear of the Yelp deals and other specials that are designed to grab attention in smart phone apps. I struggle to think of what a CPA firm can offer to snag impulse buyers looking at their phones as they walk by the firm’s office. Similarly, I cannot suggest a special that a criminal defense attorney can offer someone who checks in at their office on a iPhone.

Yes, Yelp is a good, aggressive business. If your customers love you and have already Yelped their happiness, drawing attention to your happy clients will attract new ones.

Should you advertise with Yelp? Look at your current Yelp page. What’s there will tell you if a Yelp advertising campaign makes sense.

Are Your Yelps Muzzled?

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 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.