How to stop false Yelp reviews

[FIREBOSS]

Someone is posting some fake 1-star reviews on my Yelp page. We never did business with those people basically they are lying. How do I stop or remove those false reviews ??

 

[Stavro]

Flag the review and it should get removed.

https://www.yelp-support.com/article/How-do-I-report-a-review?l=en_US

For the longer term, try finding ways to encourage your happy customers to leave reviews. Once you have enough 5-star reviews, a handful of fake 1-star reviews won't affect your rating at all.

 

[lightningblitz]

Their is a reason I tried to stop doing local SEO and shy away from ORM.

A lot of people like @BHopkins will have a better answer.

But me?

Two things worked for me.

1. Contact user who left review and politely ask what happened and what I can do to make it better.

I keep all correspondence in case they say no. Once we get to the nitty gritty, the fake review person (if they reply, which is 50 50) they either ignore, remove complaint, or try to extort the business.

Then I move to two.

2. Contact Yelp

Yelp doesnt care much. Unless you violate there TOS or the other party is blatabtly lying, Yelp wasnt helpful in my experience.

So if I get dirt from my direct contact I tend to be good to go. Or, I need to find a way the other person is breaking the TOS.

Yelp isn't easy.

 

[Topiano]

Buy "MORE" positive reviews...

 

[Zwielicht]

Thread Moved​

 

[FIREBOSS]

Buy "MORE" positive reviews...

Flag the review and it should get removed.

https://www.yelp-support.com/article/How-do-I-report-a-review?l=en_US

For the longer term, try finding ways to encourage your happy customers to leave reviews. Once you have enough 5-star reviews, a handful of fake 1-star reviews won't affect your rating at all.

Their is a reason I tried to stop doing local SEO and shy away from ORM.

A lot of people like @BHopkins will have a better answer.

But me?

Two things worked for me.

1. Contact user who left review and politely ask what happened and what I can do to make it better.

I keep all correspondence in case they say no. Once we get to the nitty gritty, the fake review person (if they reply, which is 50 50) they either ignore, remove complaint, or try to extort the business.

Then I move to two.

2. Contact Yelp

Yelp doesnt care much. Unless you violate there TOS or the other party is blatabtly lying, Yelp wasnt helpful in my experience.

So if I get dirt from my direct contact I tend to be good to go. Or, I need to find a way the other person is breaking the TOS.

Yelp isn't easy.

Thanks for the reply guys. I was thinking create some accounts and leave good feedbacks.. is that will be ok?

 

[lightningblitz]

You can just get more reviews to improve your average.

But remember, as long as those bad reviews are up, people will read them.

 

[BHopkins]

Yelp is a hot mess. They have a strong algorithm that artificially keeps negative reviews from non-advertising businesses. I don't have a suggestion for you, just wanted to express my frustration and condolences.

 

[FIREBOSS]

Yelp is a hot mess. They have a strong algorithm that artificially keeps negative reviews from non-advertising businesses. I don't have a suggestion for you, just wanted to express my frustration and condolences.

I think its better if we remove yelp page and continue with Google/Facebook review?

 

[Kaapo Jed]

You can not stop reviews but to report them.
Three things you can do-
1. Ask Yelp team to remove these fake reviews. (But as my experience says, Yelp is not that easy and will consider your mail to be ignored)
2. Ask the reviewer politely to remove the fake reviews.
3. Third and the most useful one is to keep asking your happy clients/customers to post nice & genuine reviews on your business listing page. It will downgrade the fake/bad reviews and will help your business listing to stay balanced.

 

[lauraalles]

Yah yelp won’t remove a review for the reason of it being”fake”. It has to clearly violate tos / content guidelines.

“Does not reflect an actual consumer experience”

I guess that reason would be the one to dispute a fake review. But how the hell are you suppose to prove that? Upload your customer db to yelp? I’ve reported 100s of reviews and never had one removed by simply saying it was fake... just my02

 

[Stavro]

I guess that reason would be the one to dispute a fake review. But how the hell are you suppose to prove that? Upload your customer db to yelp? I’ve reported 100s of reviews and never had one removed by simply saying it was fake... just my02

If you explain that your business was closed for the season, undergoing multi-month renovations, etc, they'll take that as strong evidence of a fake review.

 

[Donniesnake]

Best way I have combat it is to report to yelp and try to post positive ones. Try to find people on here to post for you with aged acccounts.