How to Remove
Yelp Reviews.
8 Step Guide
To Remove Yelp Reviews
Yelp reviews can either help or hurt your business in a major way. The good news is that you can build brand awareness and prove that your customers are happy with your product or services through the reviews they leave. The bad news, however, is that unhappy customers usually put more effort into letting the world know about their frustration than customers seeking to express their satisfaction. It is for this reason, we want to teach you how to get a yelp review removed from your business page.
Fun Facts: Removing Yelp Reviews
Even one negative review can damage your business’s reputation to the extent that potential customers will remove your product or service offering from their early consideration upon seeing the review. The most difficult aspect of Yelp is the lack of mitigation on the truth and accuracy of reviews. A customer—or someone just trying to take a jab at your business—can say anything they want about your product or service. This can be dangerous; do not underestimate the power of an angry customer with time on their hands. Nevertheless, let’s take a look at how to remove bad Yelp reviews.
Do your Best to Avoid Bad Yelp Reviews Altogether
Provide unparalleled customer service to everyone your business comes in to contact with. This is both obvious and easier said than done. The most effective method for removing negative Yelp reviews is to simply bury them. Accumulating good reviews on a regular basis from happy customers is the driving force behind success using this tactic.
- Step 1: Claim your business on Yelp. By doing this, you will be able to respond to positive reviews by saying thanks and apologize to negative reviews while offering how you can help to fix the problem. If your business is not claimed, it makes you seem far less credible.
- Step 2: Reach out to your top satisfied customers through email asking for a review. Refrain from offering incentives, as Yelp will remove content if connections to incentives are mentioned in a review. Create a spreadsheet of customers to email, and a canned base email message that you can alter for each customer. Make sure to specifically target customers that you know are happy with your service—this is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to generate positive reviews.
- Step 3: Create handouts asking for Yelp reviews. Next time a loyal, satisfied customer comes in, hand them something as simple as a business card with your Yelp business URL. Again, carefully pick and choose which customers you hand these out to. If it seems important enough that you spent time and money to create handouts, customers are more likely to try to help you on something that they feel is critical to your business.
- Step 4: Invest in a Yelp sticker you can post on your window. Internally advertise the fact that your business appreciates Yelp reviews, and make sure every customer that enters your establishment knows it. Don’t be afraid to do everything you can to spotlight your positive rating and talk about how important it is to you.
- Step 5: Yelp’s Terms of Service can actually be quite helpful when trying to remove reviews. If a review personally attacks a person who is employed at your business, you can request that Yelp remove it. If there is even a hint of a personal criticism, they won’t hesitate to censor the review immediately.
- Step 6: Yelp’s T.O.S. also frown upon vile language within reviews. Take a look at your negative reviews. Is there any profanity? If yes, you can contact Yelp to have them remove the entire review. Yelp removes many of these obscene reviews automatically, but they also miss quite a few. Take advantage of this lesser-known policy.
- Step 7: You can mark reviews as “not helpful,” which can move them to the “not recommended” section of your Yelp business page. If you have a negatively untruthful review that you need to be buried, enlist people you know to mark it as unhelpful—just be sure to space out how you do this. Yelp can detect if numerous people mark it in the same time frame or from the same location.
- Step 8: Even if you do manage to drown out bad reviews with a high number of good reviews, that doesn’t mean the bad ones go away. The best thing you can do is to respond to bad reviews (even if they are unjust) in a professional manner, state your reasoning, and move on. Remember, people will also see your response to a negative post. So, if they can see that you are the reasonable one and that the reviewer does not have realistic expectations, they may quickly overlook that complaint.
Contact us to help you Remove A yelp review
We hope this guide to removing bad Yelp reviews helped. While disgruntled ex-employees and unreasonable customers can cause immense damage to businesses—especially small ones—through Yelp, it is important to understand your options in combating these negative online comments.
As Dan Hinckley, of Moz asks, “Have four or more negative articles about your company or product appearing in Google search results? You’re likely to lose 70% of potential customers.” This is based on research they performed through Google Consumer Surveys in a controlled group of 1,000 consumers. So, please get ahead of any potentially debilitating reviews before they turn potential customers away.
Review management can be vital in maintaining strong online credibility in your industry. SEO firms typically offer management services of Google, Facebook, and Yelp reviews. Please feel free to contact us with any questions you have regarding online reviews and your company’s digital online presence. We here to help!
Ivan Reed, CEO
Ivan Reed is the CEO of SunCity Advising. His client portfolio includes successful partnerships with startups, small businesses, medium-sized firms & large corporations. SunCity Advising specializes in developing high performing websites, including services in SEO, paid media advertising, social media, email marketing and other digital marketing solutions.
