Anyone who works to try to promote their local business, knows of the importance and quality leads that yelp sends to websites. (thumbs up for yelp.com)

There is a growing issue with yelp and it is their review filters.

Happy customers come to yelp and try to review local businesses but especially in the last year or so, we have seen a growing number of reviews getting thrown in the filter section and less and less reviews are visible which hurts local business credit and maybe their yelp rankings???

We tried to experiment with yelp filters and found a few tips in order to get filter back into the light:

Tip #1 – Confirm Business Account (biz.yelp.com)

Make sure you have all business and personal information filled out as well as your own personal profile picture, not a business logo.

Tip #2 – Become Friends with your customers

Online and offline, you want to connect with your customers and try to establish long term relationships online and offline.

Tip #3 – Give Compliments

Both on users profiles and specific reviews, you can give compliments.

* please don’t abuse this. Compliment a review ONLY to the best ones.

Tip #4 – Send Thanks Messages to your reviewers

On your biz login account, click on reviews and respond to your reviews/customers and say thanks by using the “message” section under your reviews.

Tip #5 – Add public Comments

Add public comments in order to enhance a specific review. (don’t do it to say thanks but to give additional detail)

Tip #6 – Setup Entire Profile

Make sure you have filled out your entire profile information including a personal photo, not a logo.

This goes for any customer reviews. If for any chance, the customer reviewer doesn’t have a profile image and/or additional detail, if you can recommend them to add it. We always trust non-anonymous much more.

Tip #7 – Follow Interesting Customers

Go to their profiles and follow interesting ones. You may learn about new places in your area.

Tip #8 – Follow Yelp Guidelines

– DON’T SPAM

– Should I ask customers to write reviews for my business?
Probably not. It’s a slippery slope between the customer who is so delighted by her experience that she takes it upon herself to write a glowing review and the customer who is “encouraged” to write a favorable review in exchange for a special discount. And let’s be candid: most business owners are only going to solicit reviews from their happy customers, not the unhappy ones. Over time, these self-selected reviews create intrinsic bias in the business listing — a bias that savvy consumers can smell from a mile away. Don’t be surprised, then, if your solicited reviews get filtered by Yelp’s automated review filter.

– What if someone posted something false? Will Yelp remove it?
We don’t arbitrate disputes, so your best bet is to contact the reviewer or post a public response in order to clear up any misunderstandings. Please bring the review to our attention if, on its face, it violates our Content Guidelines (e.g., the reviewer admittedly describes a second-hand experience or uses a racial slur). Please include your business name, city and state and the name of the reviewer in question when contacting us about a review.

– Promotional content
Unless you’re using your Business Owners Account to add content to your business’s profile page, we generally frown upon promotional content. Let’s keep the site useful for consumers and not overrun with commercial noise from every user.

Tip #9 – Read more on yelp

https://biz.yelp.com/support/common_questions
https://biz.yelp.com/support/responding_to_reviews
http://www.yelp.com/faq
http://www.yelp.com/faq#what_is_the_filter