Trouble with Yelp?

[Dave Weidlich]

I advertised my carpet cleaning business on Yelp a year ago. It gave me a boost in customers, but not enough to warrant the high cost so I quit after three months. Things went south for me on Yelp after that, especially lately. They're calling and emailing me daily and at the same time moving many of my reviews into the hidden "not currently recommended" section. Now 66% of my reviews - all legit customers writing unsolicited 5-Star reviews - have been filtered out. The Yelp salesman claims to have no idea how this happened ("the algorithm").

Curious, how has your experience been with Yelp?

Details on my personal website-link:
Yelp Gives and Yelp Takes Away

 

[Mac M]

I really am starting to think it has nothing to do with paying or not to yelp. I only have a small amount of help reviws and recently it went from 11 or so showing to now only 2 showing. I don’t pay yelp and they do call me probably twice a week...Well at about the same time I lost my review another company that I know ( different industry ) that pays yelp went from around 230 reviews down to about 160....I think yelp drops them purposely to try to get us to start soliciting to people to give more reviews. Just my thoughts...

 

[Odin]

have no only one review left on yep

they call every week I block the number

https://www.facebook.com/Yelpsuck/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/169681056440630/

 

[Kipp]

Yelp is pure evil

 

[VladCA]

During 2-3 weeks from 35 total 5* reviews I have today only 5 .....probably tomorow Ill lost all of them....
Even I'm paying them right now $300 per month for advertising ....
it stupid platform choosed worst pic to push me pay $50 per month extra just supposed to mix them.....
Yelp sucks .... no even peny more ....

 

[ACP]

We dropped from somewhere around 59/60 to 42. It happened to everyone...

 

[AZHome&Carpet]

Yup refuses to post more then three reviews for me, if I pay them, if I dont pay them, if I call and complain if they call me and complain. I’m not paying for their service when I bust butt, get a client to take time to write a review then they act like their time doesn’t matter at all.

 

[longkenn]

When Yelp calls I try to waste as much of their time as I possibly can so that they can not call other folks. I hate Yelp.

 

[the rugman]

Seems like Yelp is getting worse and worse! They also (at least around here) somehow call from a local number so it's hard to block! Concentrate on Google reviews and FB reviews.

 

[Dave Weidlich]

Thanks all. No Yelp fans here. I don't know how they stay in business by pissing off businesses.

 

[Chris Henry]

Just have a portion of your website designated to allowing customers to give a review of your business. Then have whoever manages your site to include AdWords that help pull up your reviews when they do a search.

 

[Johnson52]

Yelp should be renamed " Ouch ".

 

[royalservicesmd]

I dropped from 49 to 10 reviews

 

[mike$]

Paying 1200 month here. Dropped from 109 to 46. I'm dropping them. There sales people are super pushy also. Gonna roll it over to google.

 

[OxiFreshGuy]

Only true advantage to Yelp is it is tied into Yahoo - which is the default program for Apple products. Yahoo has a nearly equally following customer base as Google, though Google obviously gets more searches.

House Call Pro is nice because it can use the online booking feature through YELP, Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, YP, etc so it makes you stand out from the crowd.

That being said, the reason I don't like YELP is they let one of our competitors put up SEVENTEEN 17 locations. When I called to complain they said, "Well how do you know they aren't all separate businesses?" Well 1. I used to work there and they only have 1 physical location, 2. With SEVENTEEN no other carpet cleaner might as well use Yelp in our territory OR I should put up 17 of my own locations.

fudgeers.