Remember, Yelp is looking for “reliability” as one of its criteria. Your Yelp Profile is Not VerifiableĮven if your account has a track record of reviews and friends, there are still some characteristics that could put a new review into the filter. In those cases, the filter is a useful tool for business owners. Conversely, we’ve also seen businesses helped by the filter when they’re victimized by negative or spammy reviews that come in a wave. Even if these reviewers are legitimate, we see Yelp filter out a large percentage of them. We’ve seen plenty of businesses who, in an effort to turnaround their Yelp scores, host an event or place more Yelp-approved calls to action (like signs, stickers, etc.) around the business. The evidence seems to support this theory, even if the correlation is not as strong as it is with other profile characteristics. Wouldn’t a sharp spike in the rate of new reviews cause some alarms to go off at Yelp?

It’s designed to filter out untrustworthy reviews. Think about the algorithm that Yelp has devised. It’s not just the characteristics of your profile that determine filter status, but also the timing of your reviews. You Submitted Your Review at the Same Time as Others But if you are a business on Yelp, the first review you receive is marked “First to Review” and it very rarely gets filtered out. Users are required to build up their Yelp presence before their reviews start to count. It’s a frustrating double-standard by Yelp. In our research, adding just one friend on the platform increases the odds that your review pops back out of the filter. In Yelp’s own video on filtering reviews, they compare an established profile to one that has no profile picture, zero friends, and just one review. The characteristics we see correlate most strongly with filter status are the number of friends and number of reviews on a given Yelp user profile.

You don’t have a realistic review distribution.

You submitted your review at the same time as others.

Here is what may cause your Yelp review to disappear or fall into the “Not Recommended” filter: Correlation is not causation, but when combined with Yelp’s own statements on the filter, we can put together some hypotheses. Here at Go Fish Digital, we’ve monitored thousands of Yelp reviews on behalf of our clients and tracked the correlation between filter status and certain qualities of a Yelp review or reviewer profile. Yelp also states they want “active members” to have their reviews featured, rather than “reviews written by users we don’t know much about.” Yelp says their algorithm mainly looks at review quality, reliability, and user activity when determining filter status. The algorithm Yelp uses to filter reviews is a closely-held secret, but Yelp has offered some hints in this video on the subject. Maybe you’ve experienced it yourself –– watching a review seemingly disappear only to find it buried at the bottom of the page where it does not contribute to the average star rating. The Yelp filter, also known as the “Not Recommended” section of reviews on a page, has been a frustration of business owners and reviewers for years.

Define yelp reviews