HOW TO BEAT YELP’S FILTER & GET MORE POSITIVE REVIEWS: 111+ INDUSTRY EXPERTS WEIGH IN
ANDREW LOWEN
January 1, 2020
Local retail and service-based businesses have always relied on word of mouth to gain new clients. In this online world, the premise for more word-of-mouth business is simple. You need online reviews!
But if you’re reading this article, you’ve probably experienced the difficulties of getting your best clients to follow through and write you a review. Getting those reviews to remain unfiltered by Yelp often proves difficult on its own, and serves as one of the most common complains we hear from our SEO Marketing clients.
So we’re going to tell you exactly how to beat yelp’s review filter!
But instead of just sharing our typical advice in this post, we wanted to do something more. So we gathered one hundred and eleven (Seriously, 111) online marketing industry experts and asked them to give their best advice.
We received some amazing answers from our experts. Still, we are aware that this is a huge post and you will need some time to read it completely. That’s why we made a summary with our top 10 tips on how to get great reviews that won’t get filtered by Yelp or Google:
1
Follow the guidelines of each platform. Yelp doesn’t allow to ask people for reviews. You can ask for reviews on Google, but in both cases don’t “bribe” people with discounts (this is a black hat trick that may get all reviews flagged).
2
Over-deliver, offer great customer support and make your clients happy. They will feel the need to make a nice gesture for you. It’s enough to tell them how important and useful is for your business to get reviews on sites like Yelp and Google.
3
Offer your customers the possibility to choose any platform they use: Facebook, Yelp or Google. Don’t ask them to sign up to a new site just to leave a review for you. Reviews from new users will almost always be filtered out.
4
Display Yelp and Google icons in prominent locations to notify and/or remind customers of your listings.
5
Recommend people to use a mobile device when they leave a review.
6
Advise your clients to include photos and share details about your products or services using a normal language. Too many praises or details that are too specific will seem suspicious and get you flagged.
7
Connect Facebook to your Yelp profile, and tell clients to do the same. A user’s reviews will have a much higher chance of being approved if that person has filled all the info required: profile photo, age, email address, phone number, friends added etc. Mention that to your clients.
8
Don’t ask all your clients to add a review from a laptop or computer in your office. Reviews that come from the same IP address for the same firm, will be considered fake, even if they are from different accounts (See #5!).
9
Sign up for Google’s Verified reviews (if you have an online store)!
10
Understand that there is no easy way to game the system and violating any guidelines can have very negative long-term consequences for your business.
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Businesses may have more complicated advertising strategies than 20 years ago, but the principles are the same. Recommendations from happy customers will increase your sales and your brand exposure. That is why Google and Yelp reviews should play a significant role in a small business marketing strategy.
Things aren’t as simple as they seem, though. It’s difficult to get your clients to review your business and even if they do it, often times, their reviews will be filtered out. You need to understand how these sites work to overcome the dreaded “review filter.”
To help you attract more meaningful reviews, we reached out to one hundred and eleven (Seriously, 111) internet marketing experts and successful business owners for an answer to this question:
WHAT IS YOUR #1 TIP TO GET A REVIEW TO PASS YELP & GOOGLE’S REVIEW FILTERS?
Lukasz Zelezny Zelzny
Google and Yelp are only looking for objective third party reviews, and believe it or not, they will be able to tell if you have ‘fake’ or ‘paid’ reviews listed.
This includes paying them, offering them a discount off a future order, or entering reviewers into a prize draw. Likewise, you also shouldn’t review your own business.
There are a number of ways that Google and Yelp look out for paid reviews, with one of the key being someone creating an account, leaving one business review, and then never logging in again. If you have a lot of reviews like these, you’ll struggle to get many accepted.
Mark Verkhovski American Webmasters Association
Yelp and Google reviews are very important for a local business such as a dentist, restaurant or even a funeral home.
Ask them if they would be willing to share the experience of working with you on sites like Google, Yelp or Facebook. It won’t do you any good if they sign up to Yelp just to leave you a positive review. Reviews from first-time users are filtered most of the time.
If they reply saying that they have used Yelp before then advise them to complete their profile and include links to their social profiles and a photo. Also, mention it’s better to post the review from their mobile phone and include an image of the product they bought from you. Before and after images are extremely valuable for hair stylists, fitness coaches, or plastic surgeons. Ask your clients if they could include such images in their review. Also, always ask them for permission before using their photos on your site or anywhere else.
Don’t be disappointed if your customer chooses to write a few words about you on your Facebook page. Although Facebook reviews don’t help you rank better, they will help attract new clients. More often, lately, I see people asking for recommendations on Facebook before buying or choosing a service.
Yelp’s secret algorithm also seems to err on the side of the consumer.
So if a first-time Yelper posts a bad review it might be published. If someone uses Yelp for the first time and reviews a business with a five star review, there’s no guarantee it will be published right away. However, Yelp clearly states in their policies that these sequestered reviews can be activated in the future as that Yelper continues using the platform to post other credible reviews.
So what’s a business owner to do? First, a business owner needs to claim their Yelp page so that they can respond to reviews, post proper pictures and logo from their business along with other important facts like hours of operation. Yelp publishes a blog dedicated to business owners. Read it! Learn from it.
One option to get reviews is to research Yelp for local Yelpers who have an established history of posting reviews and have earned some credibility (e.g., compliments, bookmarks and review votes are some of the measurements Yelp tracks for each reviewer). Invite Yelpers to your establishment to try your service and write an honest review. Do not incentivize them in any way (no freebies!) as this will compromise the integrity of the system. And for what it’s worth, Yelp is smarter than you so don’t bother trying to game their system.
Google reviews are a little easier to manage but there are some important behaviors that business owners must follow. First, do not have a computer set-up in your place of business where customers are invited to write reviews. Google tracks the IP address of every device that delivers a review.
If they see multiple reviews submitted from the same IP address, expect those reviews to be suppressed. Second, Google does not allow reviews that contain self-promotional information. If your customer brags about their own business (or even mentions its name) in the review about your business, the risk of the review being blocked by Google is greatly increased.
Marcus Miller Bowler Hat
There is one clear strategy for reviews that is suitable for every business and every platform – honesty. You want honest reviews from real customers. If this is the case then there is no reason why reviews would be filtered. That said, in ideal world businesses want to generate reviews from happy customers. To do this a simple strategy is to use reviews as a follow up to your customer service process.
As an example:
When you receive negative feedback use that to improve your product or services (invaluable input).
This is high level but this real input from customers is not only invaluable for improving your business processes but you can then ask customers who have talked about you in positive terms for a review. If you want to get more advanced you can seed reviews to Google, Yelp or any other relevant platforms to ensure you have a far-reaching set of positive reviews. There can be a few more moving parts here but we cover this in far more detail over and talk about a review strategy to improve SEO and lead generation on the Bowler Hat blog.
Ian Spencer ISDigitalMarketing.co.uk
Trying to get automated reviews, or to bypass any flagging systems is just completely worthless, as not only are you wasting time, but put simply, your customers should be leaving these reviews, and if they are honest and accurate there is no reason why they would get flagged or filtered.
Tell your customers how to leave you a review and ask them to reflect the experience, without being to exaggerative or emotional, but, just let them review your company, product or service as they would as if they were speaking to someone.
Reviews only get filtered out if they are fake, contain certain keywords or are obviously company led, so let your customers do the talking, just show them where to go to do it.
Albert Mora Seolution
We all know that Yelp &Google are very strict on what reviews they consider legitimate. Take into account the following: these engines filter reviews which are likely to be fake. For example:
- Are from someone who has only written few reviews.
- The reviews are very short, with generic comments and lacking details
- From someone with poor profile info.
Or even better than that, let’s see how for example Yelp itself explain the review filter:
Here are 5 important things to understand about the review filter:
- Reviews that reflect perfectly legitimate experiences are sometimes filtered out by the review filter’s algorithmic processes.
- Reviews are never “deleted” by the review filter; they are always shown on users’ profile pages. The review filter simply syndicates established users’ reviews from their user pages onto business pages.
- The best word of mouth is organic and unsolicited.
- We’re purposely not elaborate about all the variables that go into defining an “established” user.
- Both positive and negative reviews can be affected.
Taking all this into account, my best advice would be:
For example:
- Place a Yelp badge on your website
- Add a link to your business listing in your email signature
- Add a link to your business listing in your social media profiles
- Share reviews on your social media
- Ask your customers…
Nate Shivar Shivar Web
People love to tell people about their favorite stuff, and they will happily leave honest, glowing reviews that pass Yelp / Google filters. Your job as a business owner is to find the right moment to channel that eagerness into an online review instead of word of mouth or some other natural channel.
It sounds vague, but it really does depend on every business. It might be when leaving the final bill on the restaurant table. It might be on the third treatment visit. It might be when presenting a restored car. The key is to test & find your wow-ed customers when they are most excited and get them to leave that filter-proof review. Do it right and you’ll have an unassailable moat.
Matthew Capala Search Decoder
As moderated review websites, Yelp and Google behave as an editor of a news site would. People trust the news. This is why public relations campaigns are effective and expensive when something is mentioned in the news, it has credibility. Credibility is established on Yelp and Google because so many people, who are unpaid, are contributing.
Credible high rankings will help generate new business and revenue. In order to generate non-bias reviews, reach out to your database and offer incentives and a brief guideline to posting. Guideline posts should include the following, links to Yelp and Google submission pages, a few survey questions that can get them to write a sentence or two about you, and a personalized thank you and discount/incentive.
Your administrative staff, sales staff, and up to the CEO should request reviews as routinely as they ask for other referrals. Yelp and Google Plus business is similar to referrals and a very valuable free way to generate new business and should be utilized as much as possible
Sean Si SEO Hacker
Rather than proactively asking every single person to leave us a review, I’d prefer asking them what they really think and give them access to links where they can actually make a review. If your reviews don’t come naturally or come too fast, the filters will spoil even the good ones. The only thing worse with using bots or fake accounts when making a review is having to blindly ask people to make one.
If you have a way to directly ask people who experienced your product/service, believe me, go for it. These are the people who really matter and can make solid honest reviews for your business.
Besides, there’s no need to ask people for positive feedback if you give them a good experience, right?
David Krauter Websites That Sell
No.1 Tip To Pass Yelp & Google review Filters:
The idea behind my tip is exactly the same however execution will differ based on business model.
The concept behind passing reviews 100% Every Time is to have your clients do it themselves. No IP problems, fake account problems or too many reviews in one go.
Now the execution will differ based on the business model so here are the 2 scenarios to handle the different situations:
The business owner servicing clients face to face: This one is easy, ask for the review right there and then and then help the client step by step to fill out the review on their phone while you’re there.
Do not use your own phone otherwise, all reviews will come from the same IP address, use the actual customer’s phone, laptop or tablet and their internet connection – however, show them step by step how to fill out the review and submit it for your listing.
It’s simple and will pass EVERY filter Google & Yelp have in place to fight fake reviews.
The business owner servicing clients remotely: When servicing clients remotely obviously you can’t hand-hold them through the process face to face but you can get to it as close as possible.
We use software such as Camtasia walking the client through the actual review process, we then on top give them a link to our Places or Yelp page where they can leave the review.
So it’s like you’re there by their side helping them fill out the review.
– – –
The first option will always be better as you’re getting the review there and then, however, the second option where you have no other choice but to get creative is the closest we have gotten to get maximum reviews and stick rate on Google Local & Yelp.
Successful reviews are honest reviews. Both when it comes to getting the review approved and when it is read by a user, an honest tone is getting the best results. A review praising a company to the clouds is far less believable than a mostly positive “pros and cons”-list.
Real, organic reviews come in a steady stream. If you get your reviews in huge chunks, it seems suspicious. Large, short-term campaigns to get reviews, therefore, are not the best way to go – an ongoing effort to make customers review your company yields higher credibility and better results in visibility.
A short, easy to type link (and even QR-code) that leads to a page on your website, with links to your preferred review sites makes it easy for your customers to review (and for you to get the review on the right channel).
Howard Barker Status Marketing Group
The review filters that both Google and Yelp have set up favor mobile devices posting them. One way to make this easy is to print a postcard with a review link and have them in office. Encourage customers to post a review on the site.
For service businesses, send an email when the job is complete or have a service person encourage on the spot again, to post a review while providing a link to do so. Also, remember that it’s ok to occasionally not get a 5-star review. 5-star reviews undergo more scrutiny than 4-star reviews. Allow some 4 and 4.5-star reviews to get posted on your profiles and chances are they will be accepted.
Also, reply to them and take advantage of the opportunity to carry your brand messaging further. With almost all of our clients, we set up a basic review acquisition system to encourage capturing more reviews from new and existing customers. Just asking goes a long way to getting positive responses.
Andrew Scherer Marketers Center
If the review is from a legitimate customer it shouldn’t have any trouble getting posted.
One thing we do to build more reviews is through a funnel.
After the sale is made and the information is collected, we point traffic to a review page URL that asks them how their experience was and redirects to the Yelp or Google listing to leave a review. You can do this easily via SMS and/or e-mail and we’re even experimenting with what I call “review cards” which are printed cards with the review page URL.
Gareth Ellis Yorkshire Designs
Also having a simple guide or easy link on a business card, to help the customer leave a review avoids confusion and makes it easy for them. An example was a kitchen fitter, who delivered marble and granite worktops to customers.
I convinced him to make them delighted, by using offcuts, to provide a matching cutting board and coaster with the same material, along with flowers and chocolate. Of course with this was a thank you card asking for that review. Of course, customers left reviews. And this might sound a bit much, but an additional £50 on top of a £20k order is small in the scope of things and made the customer absolutely delighted. I think how I can employ a similar model for all my customers.
Zac Johnson ZacJohnson.com
One of the best ways to get a review from real customers and audiences that will actually get approved is to simply ask. However, in most cases, you can’t actually ‘ask for a positive’ review, as this is against the rules of sites like Yelp and Google.What you can do, is follow up through emails, give a reminder after purchase and also provide a paper, postcard or flyer to ask for a review as well.
During this whole process, keep in mind that it’s much easier for someone with a bad experience to leave a negative review than a positive one. So try and make sure your site, brand or business is always the best as possible and makes it easy for your customers to get what they need.
Lilach Bullock LilachBullock.com
One of the best ways to get your customers to leave a review after using your business is to simply ask them to do it. In fact, unless they had an amazing experience that really blew them away or a horrible one that they feel like they need to share with the world, you’re most likely not going to get many reviews. That’s why you need to ask.
Once someone uses your business, shoot them an email asking them to leave a review; ask for their honest opinion and most importantly, make things as easy as possible for them, so that they actually take the time to write the review.
Encourage them to speak freely and give away their honest opinion; this way, all reviews will ring true and, plus, it will show you are interested in hearing their real opinions, and not just trying to get reviews.
I also wouldn’t recommend leaving a review for your own business, especially if you’re going to log into your business page account. The service will know the review is not real and will most likely not show it.
Alicia Hughes One Stop Web Services
Businesses that have Yelp and Google reviews are more likely to rank in the local search results and are also more likely to attract new customers due to the inherent trust factor. While nobody truly knows every metric that goes into the search engines’ algorithm, Google has recently announced that by 2020, the SERPs will be determined predominantly by user behavior. Thus, it logically follows suit that customer reviews will become exponentially relevant for organic ranking and growth.
Customer participation rates in the review process vary tremendously by niche. While most customers would be naturally inclined to rave about the fantastic dinner they just had at a local restaurant, they’re far less likely to think about reviewing the mechanic who changed their oil, or the landscape company that mowed their lawn. Most businesses are getting disproportionately few reviews, primarily because the customers just don’t think about leaving one, or they don’t know that the business has a Google or Yelp listing.
By making the review process as intuitive and simplified as possible, your business can expect to see a much greater participation rate from your customers.
By implementing these few simple tips, your business should start to see an increase in the quantity of reviews. However, the quality of reviews is equally important so as to avoid penalties.
Yelp and Google are user-centric platforms. Any information that their filters perceive to be fake or contrived will be penalized and/or removed in order to preserve the trust and integrity of the information served to its users. To this end, it is imperative to avoid any “Black-Hat” practices when pursuing customer reviews.
Dave Schneider Ninja Outreach
(Update – Dave no longer runs this website, but can be found at lesschurn.io and daveschneider.me)
Users just need to establish a footprint with the review services—that is, they need to have posted more than one review, have ongoing engagement such as friends, ratings, and such. Some red flags to watch out for are users who post reviews from locations irrelevant to the business (ex. Someone from India posts a review for a strictly UK-based business), ghost accounts, and obviously slanted reviews.
As a business owner, some common things you can do to help filtered reviews pass through include:
Asking your reviewers to complete their profile using a legitimate account (better if they connect to their Gmail address or Facebook account)
Add your reviewers as friends. It would also help if you have other team members with their own accounts who can add them. You guys can also add each other and post your own reviews so your own accounts aren’t empty.
The filters are not permanent anyway, so once the reviewers have more of that required engagement level, their reviews will eventually show up.
It sounds like a lot of work, but long term, I believe it’s worth it to just not game the system. The system eventually finds out some way to catch you one time or other, and once that happens, you’re back to square one.
Anthony Kirlew Infinion Marketing
My #1 tip for getting reviews through filters is to ask your customers to review you on sites where they are already active.
If someone signs up on a site and creates a profile just to write a review for you, not only is it their only review, but a lot of people miss the part of creating a complete profile, so they do not appear to be a true member of that community providing feedback for the community.
I find that these reviews (from users with incomplete profiles) get filtered at a higher rate.
Miriam Ellis Moz
Yelp’s policy forbids owners from asking for Yelp reviews. So, go ahead and ask a happy customer for a review, but don’t specify Yelp in your request.
If the customer is already an active Yelp user, hopefully, they will already have left enough reviews on that platform to avoid being filtered out as a newcomer, and their review of your business will stick because of this.
Google is far less stringent in their policy, but one-off reviews from brand new Google users can look somewhat suspicious. Google isn’t great at policing their corpus of reviews, but your Google reviews may be subject to less scrutiny if they come from users who are already active, having reviewed at least a few other businesses before they review yours.
Yelp and Google are quite different animals when it comes to review filters and policies, but earning reviews from active users on either platform is a smart move. That’s why it’s often best to let the buyer (your customer) do the choosing.
Heather Miracle Target Rocket
The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago, the second best time is today, and the best time to get ahead of bad reviews is right now. When it comes to online reviews – getting the good ones to squeak past algorithms and quality filters and getting the bad ones buried – I tell my clients that you’ve got to have a plan in place to consistently generate positive reviews week after week, month after month.
Make sure it’s setup to maintain a healthy influx of consistent, quality reviews across the “big four” service business review websites – Yelp, Google+, Angie’s List, and Facebook.
PS – think you’ve been hit with an illegitimate, negative review? If the reviewer’s profile is new and doesn’t feature many other reviews, get friends and family to flag the review as a conflict of interest. It may take some time, but it typically works in pushing fake reviews off review profiles.
Victoria Pavlova Star Light MG
If you are looking for more reviews for your business on Yelp and Google, it’s always a good idea to ask your friends, family, and clients to help you get started. Unfortunately, reviews often don’t pass strict filters that were imposed to keep those platforms safe from fake reviews. So if you are planning to ask your friends to write a positive review about your business, you need to follow these basic rules.
Short reviews are more likely get filtered. If your potential reviewers never used Yelp or Google business before, their first reviews may get filtered as well. It doesn’t mean that they have to start posting hundreds of reviews every day. They simply need to use the platforms prior writing a review. Google and Yelp track your IP address and they know whether you are a frequent user or not, whether you searched for the business in this area or not. And if you didn’t, your review will be definitely filtered.
So if you want your customer reviews to be visible, ask them to search for a similar business to yours in that area first, open several listings (incl. the one they want to review), and post reviews after a few days. This is one of the most important rules when it comes to passing Yelp and Google’s filters.
And if you want to ask your colleagues to write a review about your business (or perhaps write it yourself), then you should avoid using same IP address for logging in as business and as a user. If Yelp sees you were logged in as a business, and then you switched to your user account for posting reviews about yourself, there is an almost 100% guarantee that your review will be filtered.
Trevor Cherewka Smashing Pixels
If customer reviews/testimonials are considered to be one of the highest effective content marketing tactics then it stands to reason that you need to have a customer review strategy.
Here is the strategy we use to get reviews and it works like a charm.
1 – Provide exceptional service. Customer will tell 2.5 times more people about a negative experience than a positive so your positive experience delivery needs to be at 250% before clients will consider providing a testimony.
2 – Ask for the review at the right time. Like Goldilocks, not too hot, not too cold, just right. You need to strike when the iron is hot. You need to ask at the right time, which is when the client is the happiest. Generally, right after the transaction happens.
3 – Make it easy. Don’t make your clients have to work to give you a review. Not everyone is on Yelp, or Google, or Facebook and surprise – they don’t want to sign up just to give you a review.
Tip – test the links before you send the emails. Now go out and get those reviews.
Justin L. Morgan The Dental Marketing Guy
I use a reverse testimonial I learned from Sean D’Souza (consumer psychology expert).
Here are the 6 questions you ask in order to get a reverse testimonial which passes Yelp and Google filters:
- What was the one (hold-up/thing/obstacle/objection) in your mind that would have prevented you from choosing (us/product/service)?
- What did you find as a result (of choosing us/buying this product/service)?
- What specific thing did you like most about (this product)?
- What would be two/three/four other benefits about (this product)?
- Would you recommend (this product)? If so, why?
- Is there anything else you’d like to add?
These 6 questions will not only help you get through Google and Yelp filters but also get through the filters of the readership. They’ll relate to your reviewer’s position because it’s a story that starts with the challenge.
Tali K. Gadish Miss Gadish
If there is a key to getting ratings and reviews on apps, I am still trying to find it. Even with the most amazing app experience, there is really no way to guarantee a person will take the time to write a rating or review. It’s hard enough getting people to download your app and try it for the first time – let alone getting them to take the time to rate it.
Having said that, like with everything else, the first few are always the hardest, and therefore it’s important you come out of your shell.
Tell them to use a code name if they don’t want to give you feedback to your face. It’s important that it be authentic as well.
Apple and Google have become smarter and are getting smarter-by-the-minute about seeding out the “fake ratings”. A person who just rates one app or just continues to rate every app “5-stars” does not hold the same amount of weight in the stores as someone who has rated a few apps and given them varied reviews and ratings.
And for us at The Library of Miss Gadish, every review is important and taken into account. It’s always wonderful to hear the great compliments and stories, but when there are bugs and issues that need to be improved, we need to hear and know these things as well in order to fix them!
Christopher Schwarz WebDesign499
These days, it is becoming harder and harder to get a legitimate review through to YELP or GOOGLE.
That means, add that reviewer as a friend, send that reviewer a quick message. In other words, set the precedent that the review is actually legitimate before they attempt to post it. Once the review is posted, make sure you respond to the review in due time.
Another great icing on the cake is to vote the review as “useful” or “funny” or both! If you follow this advice, you WILL get more legitimate reviews on the platforms.
Tom Clark Convert Digital
Connect your Facebook and Twitter to your Yelp account and add a profile picture – this makes you more ‘human’.
Then you need to get friends on Yelp and leaving some initial positive reviews for companies you actually had a good experience at. Next, go and search a popular restaurant in your area and then click the ‘sort by’ option at the top and pick ‘Elites’. Add these people as friends and you will come across as even more likely to be a legitimate user.
Make sure your reviews are in-depth and don’t have typos. You will now be well n your way to passing the filter!