This interview was conducting with Dr. Justin Bazan of Park Slope Eye. Dr. Bazan’s reputation on Yelp holds strong at a shiny 4.5 stars with over 100 reviews. Dr. Bazan figured out how to get reviews stuck in Yelp’s filter out so they can be seen by the public.
Tell us a bit about your involvement in social media, and Yelp in particular.
I’ve been doing social media on a personal level for a long time, since the early platforms were around. In the last 2-3 years I used social media to start a new practice. I opened in the summer of 2008 and it’s been our primary form of marketing.
What were your initial thoughts when you first learned about Yelp’s review filter?
My initial thoughts were shock. Once I started to understand its purpose I got what Yelp was trying to do. The review filter itself helps Yelp keep its high level of credibility. It hides the review from a Yelper who hasn’t established a high level of credibility on the site. Credibility, in Yelp’s definition, evolves from the level of activity from the Yelper (ie. the level of engagement of the review, and a few other factors like how complete their profile is). Once I understood that, I could see that their goal was to make that person a better Yelper.
How did you previously deal with reviews stuck in the filter?
The first thing I did was send them an email saying the hard work they put into their review was being hidden by Yelp. I helped Yelpers complete their profiles, got them to add me as a friend, and so on, as a means of getting their review out of the filter.
Exactly how can one get around Yelp’s review filter?
To get reviews out of the filter I went into my filtered reviews and pulled up the reviewer’s individual review of Park Slope Eye. I began to engage that review and reviewer. I sent the reviewer a compliment, a message, and voted the review as useful, funny, or cool depending on the context. I did that for all of the reviews. Lastly, I added them as a friend, which you can do as a business owner. After doing all of this the review was taken out of the filter and is publicly accessible.
Do you think Yelp should have a review filter in place?
The review filter is there for a reason. The reason we can get these reviews out with a 100% success rate is because we’re trying to work within the premise of the filter. We’re making Yelpers more credible by helping them reengage with Yelp both passively and actively. There’s no reason why people should have reviews stuck in the filter. This can help both the businesses and Yelp itself in terms of getting their newer users to reengage with Yelp.
What do you think of Yelp’s review filter? Have you tried to get review stuck in the filter out? We want to hear your experiences!
Alexis works for Postling, a social media management tool for small businesses contractors, and freelancers. To read more about her click here.You can see her website here, follow her on Twitter, see her photography, and can contact her at alexis@postling.com Are you subscribing yet?
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I tried everything suggested here and it worked for a couple of weeks. some of my filtered reviews got unfiltered. Then, a sales person from yelp called me trying to sell adds again and I declined. Within a week from that, my profile went back to where I started. YELP IS A SCAM!!! BTW after I wrote my first comment in this blog, another YELP guy called me insisting that YELP’s advertising services had nothing to do with their filtering system, as if they were constantly monitoring this blog…watch out…I know you are watching YELP! You better get real or you will be done! Yelp used to be second in people’s choice for reviewing businesses, after Google. Now it’s already third after Yahoo…slowly declining!
We are fighting the filter. Please follow us at http://www.twitter.com/fightyelpfilter
Look, I have a petition that I am sending to yelp. Please sign it. I think that their review filter is unfair for people who work really hard and do not get the kind of results they deserve. Here is a link to the petition http://tinyurl.com/73jr8sx
My Concern with Yelp…. I have an Established Clientele that have been very kind reviewing our service over the past 2-3 years! Now all our comments have gone to Yelps Filter…Several of which have long standing accounts with Yelp! I also am confused with Yelp’s Filters…I think we’ve(and our clients) done everything Yelp wants and still this trouble!
Same thing has happened to me, they keep filtering all of my reviews from actual real clients. There is no rhyme or reason as to why they keep doing this. Meanwhile my competitors who are advertising with them have their reviews (less than my filtered ones) up and running. It seems to me like the filter chooses to filter reviews for people who refuse to give them money. I guess it is the age of cyber-extorsion.
I want to take a moment to talk openly and candidly about what I love. Making people smile and happy by serving good food, and helping people forget about the bad day they may have had, by giving guests a place to have a great cocktail and relax. I was especially touched recently by a father who was so excited he was able to bring his family in because of the Groupon offer. It brought tears to my eyes that I was able to make his night special, and it’s for reasons like that that I love this business.
Like every business we have our ups and downs, we’re humans that’s how it works. But I can promise that I always try my hardest. I think of everyone that steps through the door of one of my restaurants as a friend and family. So with that in mind I’d like to mention Yelp. I personally read all online reviews from sites like Open Table and Yelp and try to learn and improve from what I read. What strikes me about Yelp though, is that good reviews seem to disappear because of their “Filter system” while bad ones remain. Even if they’re incorrect or misleading. On Open Table and Google we retain a 4 out of 5 star rating while our Yelp is just 2 ½. Reviews are a great tool for feedback, and I learn allot from them. But I ask that people remember what’s one persons trash may be another mans treasure. Try things yourself before making a decision. I’m truly proud of my staff and love my guests. Thank you
People why does anyone bother with Yelp??
I get 9000/month hits via google organic, 6000ppc have 3000 FB fans and get 16 Yelp page views a month.
Yelp isn`t even second tier. Short their stock as soon as they go public and don`t worry about them. Yelp is another Myspace good idea, but missed the execution. Focus on FB and yahoo and you`re all set. Don`t wast your time on Yelp, they`ll be gone in 2 years anyway. Look at Groupon, Myspace…..
I think that I have 32 great reviews, all from legitimate clients that use our services on a regular basis.Every single one of them is filtered! I really don’t have the time or energy to do what is suggested so i guess we don’t get any stars even though we were voted best in our city 4 years in a row!
I think the key problem is the misconception that yelp is a neutral online review service. It is not.
It is a specific group of reviewers that yelp. What the above interviewer did was make her clients into yelp reviewers. My clients don’t necessarily want to become yelp reviewers simply to give me a review esp when other services like Google are available. And so I won’t be using the service.
I have to agree with all of the above. Yelp is biased, end of discussion! They should just post all the reviews and let the readers make decisions for themselves. I am disappointed that this level of censorship is allowed on a web site that so many believe is an honest resource for reviews, it is far from that. I think we should all boycott yelp and go back to good old word of mouth recommendations.
It does seem unfair that Yelp takes away our positive reviews.
YELP squelched my review. The only reason I got on was to leave a review for a business that really astonished me with their good work. I think that the average person in general wants to review places to either let people know that A) It’s super good or B) it’s super bad. So for the average person who doesn’t dedicate an hour a day to YELP, their review won’t be heard. Thanks but no thanks, not trying to waste more time than Facebook already steals from me! They need a real verification process, instead they are just trying to boost their numbers for their own personal gain… oops that’s obvious.
Codi
We have 5 filtered reviews on Yelp. I followed your steps to reach out to the folks, recommend their reviews and friend them. It’d be nice to have at least 1 Yelp review so we’d stand out in the crowd.
Thanks for these tips.
This is seriously some great information. We have struggled trying to help clients get their good reviews unfiltered, especially when their rating is getting dragged down by the few bad reviews that are showing. This sounds like a bit of work but could definitely pay off! Thanks for sharing this!
Yelp is WRONG slandering an owner’s reputation by not posting the great reviews. They only post the bad and untrue reviews!!! How can they get away with this????. My clients have told me they have written nice reviews as a “thank you” to me and believe the average person has no idea how misleading Yelp is.
I am a business owner whose being effected by Yelp. Out of 20 reviews, only 3 reviews are showing, which are bad reviews. Of the 2 negative reviews, one is not even a client. I am disgusted by Yelp. I am now having my clients do a review after using my service to see how many of their reviews are actually published.
It all comes down to mostly good honest small businesses being effected adversely
by the filtering process at yelp, we also have numerous positive reviews that are ALWAYS eventually filtered and only one negative review that always REMAINS.
hummm? strange, right? Oh well, we are a 35 year family owned Honda/Acura shop that will just continue to do what we do best, service our customers in an honest, freindly accomidating maner (why do you think we have been sucessfull all these years), all of our energies will be spent pracicing good business. However, we are in the service industry and are not nearly as effected, I see how yelp effects the food service industry, and having been apart of that 25 years ago, I truly feel for those who work so hard, to have in many cases yelp destroy their livelyhood.
The logical, responsible consumer will eventually see through the sketchy business practices of yelp and then what goes around will come around to the almighty yelp!
I will be one of the first to cheer!!!!
Why did I even think for a moment that this was “free speech”. Big mistake – huge! Bye, bye.
We are seeing only one negative review remain while all the other reviews are geeing filtered. This is a definite biased system to get their sales team calling for ad and to get the filters removed. I have been a yelper for almost 1 year now and looking at that they have been doing I will stop writing reviews fro yelp. This is a real let down from Yelp.
We are seeing only one negative review remain while all the other reviews are getting filtered. This is a definitely a biased system to get their sales team calling for ad. In order to get the filters removed they will then remove the filters. I have been a yelper for almost 1 year now and looking at what they have been doing I will stop writing reviews fro yelp. This is a real let down from Yelp.
Free speech requires all speech–whether it should be filtered or not. Yelp! is seriously hurting businesses by filtering legitimate positive reviews. It can be demonstrated in a court of law that Yelp! is a form of community reputation that can dramatically effect the success of a business. They are therefore acting in bad faith and should be class-action sued by all local businesses for loss of revenue.
It should be up to the users in a community to decided if a review or referral is biased or paid advertizing. This explains why the business recommendations I have been getting off of Yelp! the last 2 years have become increasingly untrustworthy. No more, Yelp! My account is deleted, thanks.
I have removed all 48 of my reviews from YELP.COM and de-activated my account because they are practicing what amounts to censorship on an arbitrary basis and I do not care to support that practice.
YELP does no one any favors (except maybe themselves) when they filter user input for ANY reason. If you cannot see ALL the user feedback then you are, by definition, getting a “slanted” subset of feedback based on criteria known only to YELP and, in my opinion, “slanted” feedback is more misleading than none at all.
I spent a lot of time writing a review for a restaurant I love, and it got filtered. It’s really disheartening, and I feel disrespected because they wasted my time. I’m not going to use yelp anymore now that I know their filter is unreliable.
We need to stop yelp !!!!!!!!!
Yelp is terrible. My business has 11 reviews and the 8 good ones are all in the filter while the three bad reviews are the only visible ones giving us ONE star. It was showing 4 reviews before, so we atleast had 2 1/2 stars then they removed the good one. Oh, also. Two of the three bad reviews, the person who left the review have no other reviews and no friends while 6/8 of the good reviewers have friends and multiple reviews. Something is very wrong with Yelp’s “algorithm” for finding fake reviews, because I am pretty sure that 2 of the one star reviews are from the same costumer (based on the manner of speaking and the way she keeps referencing the other customer). I am thinking of deleteing our yelp account because that external link is hurting more than it’s helping because of Yelp’s terrible system. I give Yelp 1 star.
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