Both my account and the business owners account were linked through Facebook, which we are friends on….boom…filtered.

So how the did Yelp know that I know them personally and filter the review, Facebook.

The one I wrote for a family friends business that I frequent. All of my reviews have stuck on Yelp, except one. The third area that the research didn’t address is the relationship of the reviewer to the business owner. If I were to write a review for a random business in Seattle, but I’ve never searched for a business while actually being in the state of Washington, it would most likely be filtered because there hasn’t been any USER ACTIVITY from an IP ADDRESS with in the Seattle area. For example Yelp knows where my user activity is coming from. IP address is everything, especially when you claim that most of these reviews are coming from overseas. The second flaw in their study is “A limitation of our work is that we cannot control for filtering biases in attributes that we do not observe, such as the IP address of a reviewer”, which is probably has the 2nd most weight in the review filter. Which makes perfect sense because someone who frequents the site would understand the value of the reviews. The research paper points out “For example, longer reviews, or reviews by users with a larger review count are less likely to be filtered.” Which is partly correct, but from what I know (they never let us know much about the filter when I worked there) USER ACTIVITY is the #1 factor that goes into the review filter, not the frequency of reviews. Most of my reviews would stick because my USER ACTIVITY was frequent on their site and consistently used the site and mobile app to find businesses. While working at Yelp, I was unable to write reviews for obvious conflict of interest reasons, but wrote many before and after my employment with them. First off, Yelp’s review filter is smarter than they think, I don’t know how it exactly works, but it just f***ing works. User Activity is a Big FactorĮx-employees of Yelp have commented on Reddit before that user activity is the #1 factor in determining whether a user review is going to stick.Īs a former employee of Yelp, I was very intrigued by this posting and read through the entire study and while there was some truth to the research they missed some major factors that go into the review filter. While the exact calculations it makes are a mystery, certain patterns do emerge. Yelp has stated on several occasions that their recommendation algorithm is their most valuable asset. Namely, what behavior looks legitimate and what behavior looks suspicious. To see why Yelp filters reviews, we have to look at consumer behavior the way Yelp does. Making sure that any positive reviews are included in your shop’s recommended reviews is vital. A difference of one star rating can impact a business’ revenue from 5 to 9%. While this eliminates many inaccurate reviews, some businesses have had their positive reviews hidden by the recommendation algorithm. In order to combat spam and fake reviews, Yelp uses an algorithm to “recommend” certain reviews and hide others in the overall ranking. So maintaining a favorable rating is important. Your Yelp rating - how many reviews you have, and your cumulative score - is also a factor in local SEO. Search results for your business often include your Yelp listing. We’re often asked, why does Yelp filter reviews?, or why are some of my Yelp reviews not showing? Understanding how the Yelp review filter works is the first step towards getting more reviews to stick.įirst, let’s look at why this is so important. Website Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Instagram YouTube

Reviews on yelp