How Much BS Is On Yelp?
Yelp is a website and mobile app that provides user-generated reviews and ratings of local businesses such as car dealerships, bars, restaurants, repair shops, salons, and more. It allows users to search for businesses in their area and read reviews from other customers who have visited those businesses. Yelp also provides information on business hours, contact details, menus, pricing, and other helpful details. Users can also leave their own reviews and ratings of businesses they have visited, which can help others make informed decisions about where to go and what to expect.
Ask business owners about Yelp and you likely will not get such a response from them, likely a curse word laced response. Rightfully so YELP affects businesses quite a bit and a legit argument can be made that reviews are skewed towards the negative which can hurt day to day store traffic. On top of that, customers often use the platform to toss personal attacks on individuals and families whom they do not get along with that own these businesses or work at them. YELP is a thorn in most small businesses side. Even the dealerships and restaurants that have 4+ stars will have a story or two about a bad YELP experience from the business side.
Below is a graphic from YELP to business owners highlight just how much they have fought themselves against this behavior. These numbers look good at first glance but does not paint the entire picture.
Image From YELP Email Campaign To Business Owners
YELP like many big web platforms have worked in a lot of automation and are under staffed in infrastructure positions but over staffed in the sales team who calls businesses constantly about their listings. Their processes to stop all of this mentioned above are not 100% and this is for the entire year (2022). That means that they are not honest reviews as much as they are personal attacks and a bit of digital extortion in the form of ‘If you don’t do ____ then I will leave a bad YELP review’ Below are a few pieces of simple data highlighting their on going issues:
1 account every 8 minutes is removed from YELP for deceptive or abusive behavior. Many accounts don’t get closed right away with some lingering for most of the year before repeated offenses getting it knocked off the platform.
72 reviews per day are removed for threats, lewdness, and hate speech. These are not simple “I had a bad time getting my oil changed” reviews for a business.
This abuse overwhelmingly effects small businesses in America. According to the most recent data, 78% of Yelp reviews aren’t related to any specific brand. (Source: https://www.enterpriseappstoday.com/stats/yelp-statistics.html)
Screenshot from Fiverr searching for reviews
Another flow of BS for YELP comes in the form of paid for reviews. Fake reviews can be purchased fairly easily through services like Fiverr.com with over 285 different accounts offering some type of service (see image above). These accounts produce fake 5 star reviews for businesses and also can produce 1 star reviews for competing businesses depending on how desperately the Fiverr worker needs income. As long as the money comes through the work is performed. Anyone with 30 dollars can add to the BS of YELP reviews.
Source: https://techjury.net/blog/yelp-statistics/#gref
When you shift through the fake reviews, the personal attacks, the simple miscommunications and of course the actual bad service it is hard to tell what is what for the average consumer. That is starting to be reflected in their dip in active users and their plead to business owners to continue to ask customers for reviews to lend credibility to their service via email campaigns.
As they have long passed the point of no return YELP is headed to down Better Business Bureau lane, another organization that let money get in the way of honesty. To put it lightly there is a wastewater treatment plant full of BS at YELP.
