Having a business web page on an online review site is a double-edged sword. You want one with the purpose to generate reviews & be discovered by clients. But by doing so, you leave yourself vulnerable to a potentially damaging review. And once you have a bad review on Yelp or other sites how do you go about Yelp review removal?
Sadly, there’s always going to be an unhappy customer that can’t wait to leave a negative Yelp review for your business.
For one, most of your good Yelp reviews won’t even be shown on your Yelp web page as only the reviews from seasoned Yelpers will move through Yelp’s algorithm. And, as you can think about, seasoned Yelpers are probably the most important reviewers of all of them.
However, there are a couple of ways you’ll be able to remove bad Yelp reviews. However, they have to be against company content guidelines. And even then, there’s no guarantee that Yelp will really take away the review as they rely on an algorithm to filter through nearly all of the requests.
If you’ve been the victim of a fake or defamatory Yelp review, there are steps you can take to get it removed and protect your business reputation. We suggest the next steps on how to remove unwanted Yelp reviews:
- If you already know the client and consider you’ll be able to resolve the problem with stellar customer support, contact them by telephone to try to resolve the problem. Don’t reply to the review online straight.
- Decide whether the review violates Yelp’s Terms of Service and Content Guidelines. If there’s a violation, you’ll be able to flag and report the content material to Yelp through your business Yelp account, and request that they remove the review.
- If appropriate, pursue more aggressive legal methods to remove the Yelp review, including, but not limited to, sending a settlement demand, sending a cease and desist letter, or initiating litigation to obtain a court order to take away the bad content material.
The rest of this article explains the right way to remove Yelp reviews.
Negative Reviews: What NOT To Do?
The first thing you should not do is get angry and threaten the person who wrote the negative review. This will only make the situation worse. It will also have no effect on Yelp to remove negative Yelp reviews because they are a huge company that has a massive legal department. If you sue them, you will lose more than money: you will lose your reputation as well.
Do not try to “get back” at someone who posted a bad review about your business by posting some bad reviews about their business online (this is called “revenge reviews”). This may seem like a good idea at the time, but it will only make you look unprofessional and unreasonable and could drive them to seek out more places to post bad reviews about your business.
How Do I Flag Yelp Reviews?
There are many reasons to wish to bring attention to a review on Yelp. Fake clients, disgruntled ex-employees, or opponents are only a few of the problems you would possibly run into when you create a Yelp page.
Yelp prides itself on being a neutral supply for quality reviews, however, for many business owners, it’s tough to recover from negative feedback left on their profiles. With no strategy to question these negative reviews, small companies can have their reputation tarnished for months or years.
Luckily, Yelp does allow its customers to flag any questionable reviews.
Listed here are the simple steps you’ll be able to take to flag a Yelp review.
- Create a Yelp profile using an e-mail address. If you already have an account you’ll be able to skip this step and simply log in to your Yelp profile.
- Discover your business page by looking at your business name and city on Yelp.
- Scroll down to search out the review and click on the flag icon next to the Useful, Funny, and Cool buttons.
- Write in your complaint concerning the review you’re flagging. It’s necessary to know Yelp’s Content Guidelines in order that your complaint will match up with one of the accepted categories.
- Yelp moderators will receive your complaint and assess the review in query. You’ll get an e-mail within the upcoming days letting whether the review violates Yelp terms or not.
Yelp provides the next reasons for flagging a review:
- It contains false info
- It was posted by somebody affiliated with the business
- It was posted by a competitor or ex-employee
- It contains threats, lewdness, or hate speech
- It doesn’t describe a personal client experience
- It violates Yelp’s privacy standards
- It contains promotional materials
- It’s for the wrong business
Remember that when you choose “It contains false info”, you’ll receive the next response:
“Sorry, but we don’t take sides in factual disputes. If a review appears to reflect a user’s personal experiences and opinions, it’s our policy to let the consumer stand behind their review.
There’s always more than one side to a story, as a business owner you’ll be able to address misunderstandings by posting a public comment or sending a direct message to the reviewer.”
Due to this fact, you won’t be capable to request the removal of reviews on the grounds that the review contains false info. The first reason for this is that it creates a “he said, she said” scenario between Yelp, its customers & business clients.
Yelp, like any other review site, tends to protect customers in conditions like these. However, this turns into extremely detrimental to companies when nearly all of your positive reviews don’t even pass Yelp’s review filter.
Nonetheless, the review should be against Yelp’s content material guidelines in order for the review to be eligible for removal.
How Many Flags Need Fake Post to Take to Remove a Yelp Review?
There’s definitely strength in numbers. If a review is flagged and reported multiple times, it may possibly warrant a stronger case to finally get the online reviews removed.
However, there isn’t a benchmark figure on the number of flags a false review requires for removing. As long as you’ve got a legitimate case for requesting the removal, then even one flag will do.
The moderator team will assess the review against Yelp’s Content Guidelines and make a decision.
How Long Does it Take to Remove a Review After it’s Flagged?
It’s natural to be anxious to hear from the Yelp staff and see that negative Yelp review get taken down, however, the process can take up to several days.
When you’ve flagged the review, sit back and wait to hear from the Yelp staff. When you’re waiting, you also have the option to check in on the standing of the flagging at any time. To do that, hover your cursor over the flag icon that will appear next to the review.
The status will appear right here, showing one of two options; whether the team:
- Is currently in the process of reviewing your report
- Have decided not to remove the review
No matter this status, as soon as the moderators have accomplished their evaluation, they are going to contact you on the Yelp platform and thru e-mail to inform you of their last decision.
Don’t be disheartened if they decide to not take it down. Usually, Yelp’s automation system positions the more useful and good reviews first, allowing potential clients to see authentic reviews and people with probably the most traction on the platform.
Can a Review on Yelp be Removed?
The quick answer: Yes. Yelp will remove fake, libelous, and defamatory reviews, as well as Yelp blackmail can be removed. However, sometimes doing it isn’t always as simple as that. While Yelp guarantees to remove false or defamatory reviews, its removal policies are rife with certain caveats and situations.
In an effort to finest identify and formulate a removal takedown request, it is very important to understand the 4 major reasons why Yelp will remove a review.
- The reviewer has an evident battle of interest or bias: Reviews that exhibit an obvious battle of interest include reviews by former opponents and workers, individuals affiliated with the business, and reviewers who’re clearly receiving financial compensation or different incentives for posting the review.
- The review fails to focus on a reviewer’s personal consumer experience: If a review is about another person’s experience, disputing another Yelper’s review, is concerning the wrong business, or seems to be plagiarized, it’s going to probably be removed by Yelp.
- The review contains inappropriate and offensive content material: Inappropriate and offensive content material contains hate speech, threatening language, lewd commentary, and personal details about employers, workers, and even patrons.
- The review contains demonstrably false info: Statements that are assertions of fact and materially false, wrong business page, excluding opinion, will likely be removed for violating Yelp’s content guidelines.
Though Yelp makes it very clear in its FAQ that they’ll remove certain reviews, they state they “[don’t] typically take sides in factual disputes and usually allow Yelpers to stand behind their reviews posted on their review website.
This language is vague and overbroad, permitting Yelp to keep away from responsibility and proactivity towards removing egregiously defamatory reviews and content material.
However, the site does provide a closing channel of recourse should the review fail to be removed by moderators. Injured and defamed parties could send a closing adjudication from “a court of competent jurisdiction indicating that the review is defamatory.” Thus, you do have the power to remove defamatory Yelp reviews, however, it can probably require a court order.
When bringing a takedown removal request to Yelp or a court, it’s important you compile as a lot proof as possible to help the removal. Though some cases for takedown could seem self-evident, offering thorough proof may also help increase your odds of removal, clarifying any ambiguities a court of Yelp may need when approaching the content material or review.
In different cases, you might need to provide proof of a reviewer’s identity.
Uncovering a user’s identity could be a difficult and complex process, requiring important legal due diligence and work. You might even have to subpoena Yelp and the reviewer’s ISP addresses. Working with an internet defamation removal lawyer will considerably increase your possibilities of successfully removing such defamatory info and prevent time to uncover a reviewer’s identity.
When to Remove a Yelp Review
If your business receives a negative Yelp review, it’s crucial that you just act quickly. The longer you wait to answer the situation, the more harm the online review may cause. However, it is very important to know that how you respond is every bit as vital as when you respond.
Below, we take a better look at your options for responding and what the finest practices are to remove negative reviews from Yelp.
Some Other Reasons You May Want To Report A Yelp Review
Yelp gives the next main reasons as to why you could want to report a review to Yelp. However, remember that “reporting it doesn’t assure it is going to be removed”. However, you’ll be able to look at the next reasons as pointers as to whether or not you’ve got a legitimate reason to report the Yelp review in question.
The reviewer has an obvious conflict of interest
- They look like a competitor or former worker
- They look like affiliated with the business
- They’re receiving payment for the review
- They’re promoting their own business or a competitor
The review doesn’t focus on the reviewer’s personal consumer experience
- It’s about another person’s consumer experience
- It’s a response to a present event in the news
- It’s primarily disputing another Yelper’s review
- It’s about a completely different business
- It seems to be plagiarized from another source
The review contains inappropriate material
- It contains hate speech, lewd commentary, or threatening language
- It contains personal details about employees or patrons
How do You Remove a Bad Review on Yelp?
Before taking any steps towards removing a damaging or fake Yelp review, you have to preserve proof of the review. We suggest taking several clear screenshots that present all pertinent details of the review (the username, date of the review, and the review itself).
If you must take legal action, it is extremely important that you’ve got proof of the original negative or fake review.
Once you have preserved proof, you’ll be able to review Yelp’s Terms of Service to see if the review violates any of their content material guidelines. If the review clearly violates any of Yelp’s rules, you’ll be able to report the review.
To report and remove a negative or fake Yelp review, you’ll need to:
- Claim your business page at biz.yelp.com;
- Find the review you needed to be removed in the “Reviews” part of your Yelp business account; and
- Choose the three dots (the “More Options” button) and click on “Report Review.”
Additionally, don’t reply directly to the review on the platform. Not only does this lower your possibilities of removing the review, but it could additionally draw more attention to the undesirable review.
1. Claim Your Yelp Business Page
To report a false or negative Yelp review, you will need to first “Claim your business” on Yelp.
Claiming a Yelp business page and profile allows you to (1) reply to Yelp reviews by way of a direct message or public comment, (2) monitor user views and custom leads that Yelp generates for your business, and (3) add images and a link to your business’s website, and (4) update essential business info (ex. Business hours and telephone number).
To claim your Yelp business profile:
- Navigate to biz.yelp.com
- Click on the red button ‘Claim your business’,
- Then click on ‘Manage my free listing’,
- Enter your business’s name and zip code,
- Enter your e-mail address and a secure password to create an account on Yelp.
- Confirm your Yelp business page by entering your verification code.
After claiming your business Yelp page and profile, it’s then time to find the negative or defamatory review that you simply wish to be removed.
2. Find the Review You Wish to be Removed
Click on ‘Reviews’ to navigate to the left-hand side of your Yelp business page dashboard.
You’ll be able to then sort through all previous business reviews on your page to find the unwanted review.
3. Report the Unwanted Review
After finding the unwanted Yelp review, click on the three dots to the direct right of the review and choose ‘Report Review’.
Yelp moderators will evaluate the online review to find out if it violates their ‘Content Guidelines’. This will likely take several days.
To maintain track of the review and its evaluation standing, simply hover your mouse cursor over the flag icon that is shown to the direct right of the review.
After you have reported the bad Yelp review through your business page, you might have to contact Yelp for additional help if you don’t receive a response. In the section under, I’ll talk about how long Yelp normally takes to answer a review, on average. In case you have waited longer than average to receive a response, it could be worth reaching out.
Before contacting Yelp, you’ll need your case number from your original flag submission so they are going to know the online review you’re referencing.
Here’s a link to their support form. We don’t suggest submitting this without the assistance of a professional except if you’re extremely confident. You normally only get one shot at this.
Yelp doesn’t have a support line for everyday Yelp customers. They do have a telephone number for business support (877-767-9357), but this department doesn’t make any decision concerning removing reviews. The appropriate customer support representative might know where to direct your request for removing assistance.
Reviewer Can Modify or Remove Negative Reviews on Yelp
If a negative review comes from a real customer, you can respond to it privately and offer an incentive for the customer to change or remove it.
It’s useful for local businesses to engage with their customers in a positive way on sites such as Yelp because customers can write reviews when they have bad experiences.
Making a generous offer for a full refund and another benefit such as a discounted future purchase can sometimes persuade a customer to modify or remove his or her bad review and negative comments.
However, many businesses end up with poor ratings on Yelp because of a few negative reviews. A customer who receives excellent customer service will usually accept an offer if given one. If a reviewer does not respond to an appeal in private, then it is likely that their review is fake.
When there is no response to a private message, put the offer in your public comments such as “we would like to offer you a full refund and a discount coupon for your next purchase if you contact our customer service.
How to Remove a Yelp Review That I Posted?
In case you posted a customer review about a business and want to remove it by yourself, that may be a relatively easy process. Yelp’s support team gives a breakdown of the steps you’ll need to take:
- Go to the Reviews section of your account dashboard.
- Click on Remove Review (the trash can icon) under the review you wish to remove.
- Click on Confirm.
How Much Time to Wait Before the Yelp Review is Removed
When you report a review, Yelp usually takes anywhere from 24 hours to one week to review the request. If Yelp moderators determine the review needs to be removed, they’ll remove it instantly and notify the Yelp user that their review violated their guidelines. That is additionally sometimes the amount of time Yelp’s support crew takes to answer escalations.
What to Do if Yelp Does Not Remove the Review?
For starters, do NOT reply to the unwanted review found on Yelp. This could backfire, and lead to what is generally known as the ‘Streisand Effect’, where more undesirable attention is drawn to the negative review. This will in the end compromise your legal rights.
Before jumping into any litigation, it would be best to try to resolve the problem with excellent customer support If that fails, several legal remedies could also be preferable to a lawsuit.
Reach Out Privately to the Customer
You could possibly get the review removed by practicing stellar customer support. In case you call the customer, apologize, and offer to make amends they might be agreeable to removing the review.
Effective customer support tends to resolve many situations because most dissatisfied clients simply wish to feel acknowledged.
Think about Pursuing Legal Remedies
If in case you have reached out to the customer and Yelp to no avail, you still have choices. It can be irritating when your initial efforts show unsuccessful, but you’ve got some legal instruments at your disposal to get a negative Yelp review removed.
An experienced online defamation legal professional can send the Yelp reviewer a cease and desist letter or make a settlement demand. Even when this fails, you’ll be able to file a lawsuit to obtain a court order to remove negative content material from the web. However, submitting a lawsuit needs to be a final resort.
In case you don’t have a sound legal claim, you can trigger the Streisand Effect and draw more damaging attention to your business.
Why You Need Five-Star Rating on Yelp?
In a study performed before the pandemic, researchers found that one-half star improvement in a restaurant’s star rating increased business by an average of 19%. Before the pandemic, a negative reviews rating from customers on Yelp for a restaurant could put it out of business.
After the pandemic, however, things changed significantly. Now, a high star rating is no longer enough to guarantee success a business must also have a strong online presence and good relationships with customers.
Yelp users can post positive reviews and negative reviews about businesses. In addition to foot traffic and sales, higher Yelp ratings also help attract new customers who are looking for recommendations from their peers. These customers may not have heard about your business otherwise—but now they’re ready to try something new!
Star ratings are an important part of online marketing. They can be used to help customers decide whether or not they want to do business with a company, as well as to help businesses learn more about their customer base and improve their services.
While there have been studies done about star ratings before the pandemic, these studies did not take into account how much more important reviews have become after the pandemic (and how difficult it is now to get other reviews).
How Much Does it Cost to Remove a Bad Review on Yelp?
How much do you need to spend to delete yelp reviews? No matter the price, the costs of doing nothing could be a lot higher. Don’t panic about receiving extremely bad negative yelp reviews, especially if it appears dishonest or exaggerated. There are methods to take care of this problem using a professional online reputation management agency.
At the same time, don’t be cavalier about managing your online reputation with Yelp. Yelp’s influence stays important with the common consumer. The Yelp website receives about 200 million unique monthly visitors. There are over 90 million reviews of over two million businesses and companies. Yelp at present time is covering more than 20 countries.
When you have no idea the lifetime value of a brand new customer, calculate how much an average customer spends per visit, times what number of visits per 12 months, and times how many years they could stay as a customer.
Then, apply this amount times your conversion rate of the percentage of leads that turn into clients in comparison with the total advertising costs. This offers you the average customer acquisition cost.
Think about you might be losing 25 customers per 12 months through bad reviews on Yelp. Primarily based on the calculations above, these clients have a lifetime value of $1,000 every.
If an online reputation management program prices $10,000 and if you don’t handle this problem, you’re losing $15,000 every 12 months. That’s how to determine the answer to How much does it cost to remove a yelp review?
Don’t Let Negative Yelp Reviews Destroy Your Business’s Integrity
Fake reviews are on the rise, take it from the New York State Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, who, in 2013 busted 19 companies for “astroturfing,” dishing out over $350,000 in combined fines. However, this begs the question, what’s astroturfing, and in the way does it have an effect on my business?
Astroturfing
Astroturfing is the practice of masking reviewers or other sponsors of a business or organization that’s authentic and unique. In simple terms, astroturfing happens when companies pay for reviews and credibility, all while withholding the financial connection. However, where does the term “astroturfing” come from?
Funnily enough, the term originates from “AstroTurf,” the artificial carpeting used to resemble natural grass.
In the US, astroturfing is prohibited, allowing for the Federal Trade Commission to levy up to $16,000 in fines per day on companies who violate their endorsement and testimonials in advertising guidelines.
Not only does astroturfing result in the demise of businesses, but it surely also helps fulfill and perpetuate false business agendas, manipulates public opinion, and endangers scientific and statistical research.
Reports by several authorities have concluded that the biggest perpetrator of such reviews was direct competitors. Make sure to maintain a watchful eye on what your direct competitors are doing within the online review world to better prepare yourself for false and defamatory assaults online. Doing so will allow you to recognize early on something isn’t proper.
How Do You Spot Astroturfing?
- Search for hyperbole: A faux reviewer will often use hyperbolic and exaggerated language. Look out for extreme superlatives praising the product and exclamation points. Even an especially positive assessment from an actual customer isn’t expressed with such an extreme or exalting reward.
- Poor grammar and spelling: With many astroturfing critiques and posts outsourced to companies located in other countries where English is not the native language, watch out for basic spelling and grammar mistakes.
- Repetitive key phrases: If a reviewer is using the same keywords repeatedly, that is probably the result of an outsourced astroturfing bot or reviewer trying to use black hat SEO (web optimization) to negatively affect an enterprise’s Google and search engine rankings.
- It doesn’t make sense: It is often difficult to judge the quality of an assessment when it is badly written. Many times, poorly written ones are the product of astroturfing bots or reviewers who want to quickly pump out as many reviews as possible.
- Reviewers with few or no earlier reviews, or who have given only 5-star ratings to many different merchandises over a brief time period, should raise red flags. Additionally, if a reviewer has reviewed many items in a short time period, alarm bells should start going off.
Click here to contact us about more ways to erase your complaints on the web!