Digital marketers work in a high-paced and uncertain environment. Most of the time, their workload is scheduled according to the needs and specifications of clients with few vacant slots to deal with any “mayday” situations. For a layman, it may be hard to think of a serious emergency or crisis in the online marketing work, […]
Digital marketers work in a high-paced and uncertain environment. Most of the time, their workload is scheduled according to the needs and specifications of clients with few vacant slots to deal with any “mayday” situations.
For a layman, it may be hard to think of a serious emergency or crisis in the online marketing work, but there are scenarios where prompt actions are required to revive a marketing campaign from a grave assault.
These assaults come in many forms, shapes, and sizes, but some of the most brutal ones are often related to negative online feedback. To stay on top of these developments, professionals use comprehensive suites to monitor and analyze issues in real-time.
Let’s be clear, just like not all positive feedback is born equal, the same goes true for the negative ones. Apart from the negative review itself, it depends on which platform received. If that platform is Yelp, this is where the bells start to toll!
Yelp, along with Google Reviews and Facebook Reviews, is one of the most important and influential review sites in the world. It has over a hundred million users monthly. These users flock around Yelp to search and research small businesses and local enterprises before making a visit or a purchase.
Since the pandemic, the online shopping and service-hiring trends are going up, so Yelp can be effective in getting up or running down the sales of a business.
The reviews website has sections for business profiles where companies can put all the necessary information for customers and prospects. Yelp also has an interactive section where customers leave feedback in the form of reviews and comments.
So, this is potentially a goldmine for companies, especially small businesses, and local enterprises, to capitalize on that. This is because these entities often struggle with meeting the sales figures and building credibility in the business world.
According to Yelp’s in-house research, 9 out of 10 visitors purchase within seven days of visiting the site. For companies who are getting the brunt of post-pandemic uncertainty, this reason is enough to get on to the Yelp bandwagon.
But there is more to that!
Being one of the world’s largest and most trusted business directories, Yelp commands a great influence on modern consumers’ choices and preferences. Studies have shown that over 92% of users today go through reviews and comments before making a decision.
This is a classic “word of mouth” marketing with an added twist of taking place online. Instead of taking the word of sellers for their products and services, consumers look to other customers and prospects and rely on their version.
This is where Yelp leaps to the fore. In terms of consumer trust and volume of visitors, Yelp beats its closest competitor by over 30%.
Still, it is hard to put a number of it. But what is crystal clear from the evidence is that Yelp is extremely important for businesses to create and maintain their brand’s online reputation.
In the previous section, it has become clear that positive traffic emanating from Yelp can make businesses. Since many users rely on other users’ feedback before making the ultimate decision. Also, everything is ultimately connected with the internet and making it all a sustaining whole.
Businesses can’t and shouldn’t ignore reviews, especially the negative ones. Research has shown that no matter the quality of a review, it is necessary to react to it in the most appropriate manner – a professional manner.
Connecting with both satisfied and unsatisfied customers is equally important, but the urgency of the latter asks for a prompt response.
Apart from connecting with the customer to weed out the bone of contention, the following are some scenarios that led businesses to get a Yelp review deleted:
Now, let us go through each of these categories to make a sound case before moving on to the crucial part – deleting a Yelp Review.
The idea of generating sales and camping credibility based on reviews led to the creation of fake review factories. There are companies around the globe that offer these “services” to businesses by filling their Yelp profiles with positive feedback, including 5-star reviews. This phenomenon directly influences not on the sales for that platform alone but also improves online search rankings through improved visibility.
According to Yelp’s research, the in-house algorithm discards over 16% of reviews as fake. Experts contend that the real magnitude of fake reviews on this reviews mogul will be higher than that.
In its Terms and Conditions section, Yelp has clearly stated that it is a community-driven platform that respects and sustains data from all parties. Even in factual disputes, Yelp aims to take a neutral stance.
As for businesses, it is not always clear whether a review is genuinely fake or not, it is best to advance with caution in the cases of poor or potentially fake reviews.
As evidenced from the above discussion, Yelp, as a company, does what it could to deal with fake reviews, but there are blind spots that people can abuse against businesses and leave a bad word with no real backing for it.
In this section, we will go through some of the requisites for case-building to get a review deleted.
By this time, it is clear that businesses are not in control of the reviews they receive on the platform. What they can do is gather evidence for what they think a review(s) is and present it to the moderators at Yelp. After that, they can hope that all will be well.
Those businesses that understand the gravity of a fake review are often tempted to go into a “virtual” war with users. To be professional, it is best to let the feeling of fight and flight go and take a back seat to understanding the problem.
There are two approaches to getting to the bottom of a bad Yelp review:
Although it cannot solve the problem per se, it is bound to invoke positive sentiments once he or she will see that the company is truly invested in providing all the consumers a great experience.
Most of the time, users either edit or update the original review after having their grievances addressed or delete the original one and write a new one with a more balanced approach.
All it takes is to handle the situation professionally and never let it become confrontational.
Yelp has a stringent policy against reviews that users leave with malicious intent. There are many ways that these kinds of reviews end up in the interactive sections.
According to Yelp’s guidelines, any review that is;
Is considered to be malicious and in direct violation of the community’s terms and conditions. Businesses must gather all the information, articulated in previous sections, and submit it to the Yelp moderators to get them removed.
Before we move on to the section where we will detail how a business gets a Yelp review deleted, here is a guide for users who may want to remove a review.
Here is a step by step guide:
Here is a rundown of the guide to removing Yelp reviews from a smartphone:
After going through all the likely scenarios concerning different types of reviews, it is time to get to the brass tacks and see how a business can get a Yelp review deleted.
Here is a rundown of the step involved in the process:
The first step in getting a malicious review removed is by claiming the business. To do that, people in the company with credentials can head to the link – Yelp for Business and follow the guide to claim the business.
To delete the review, Yelp must verify the identity of the business before moving forward.
After claiming the business, it is time to log into the account and find the reviews. This is pretty straightforward as Yelp offers sellers dashboards where they can easily navigate to different sections.
Typically, businesses can find the “Reviews” section at the right of the computer screen and scroll to the relevant review.
Just right to the stars of each review, three dots indicate the presence of a menu. Clicking on it will draw one and managers should select “Report Review” from the lot.
To get the review deleted, Yelp will forward a request form. The managers should fill it with utmost care as it will make or break the case for them.
In the “specific details” section, shed ample light on the case and leave links to the pieces of evidence businesses collected during the investigation. When all the fields are filled correctly, select the “Report” button to finish this step.
For many businesses, this is the most difficult step. Due to the large volume of requests, the typical resolution time for requests is around 7 days. During this time, the Yelp moderators will go through the case and will inform the concerned parties if they decide to remove the flagged review.
If a business does not hear anything, even after a week, it is best to connect with Yelp and provide the company with the case number to get any updates.
Can a business remove a Yelp review? No. But it can present a case to Yelp to get it removed.
There are many cases in which Yelp does not acknowledge businesses’ requests to remove a review. It could be an eyesore for companies to have bad publicity right in front of their eyes, but there is still a silver lining to it – with two possible courses of action.
First, businesses can become proactive in asking satisfied customers to put in a good word on Yelp. The success of this campaign will be enough to outweigh the negative effects of that malicious review.
Second, companies should try to connect with the author of the review and try to solve the problem outside the Yelp realm. For what it is worth, it has the potential to resolve the issue amicably.
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