*** UPDATE 3 ***
A documentary on Yelp called “Billion Dollar Bully” by Kaylie Milliken of Prost Films was just released (currently on Amazon Video, iTunes, and DVD). I was honored to be interviewed to provide my analysis and assessment of Yelp’s paid advertising program for business owners. I am sure you can guess my recommendation…
*** UPDATE 2 ***
It’s hilarious (and by hilarious I mean sad), to see that 7 of our legitimate reviews are hidden. Some of them were from the get-go but others just magically disappeared into the “not currently recommended” section despite having been allowed to show up on our profile for over a year… Since the last update when we had 3 hidden, we are up by four to now seven that are hidden. *tsk tsk*
And yet, the one bogus scathing review from a “Mindy” whom we never spoke with remains…
P.S. We did not sign up for their Yelp paid advertising non-sense (see previous update below). Hmm, interesting eh?
*** UPDATE ***
So my Growth Hacking agency currently have an unpaid Yelp listing so we can help control the online information about us – we’ve had it for some time and recently, an Yelp representative reached out to us via email.
As you can see… it reeked of carrot-dangling vague generalities salesmanship. For example, “$1200 of Extra Free Yelp Ads” which is meaningless because we have no idea what that $1200 actually does and what those Ads are (reading the Main Post below you can see how misleading this is).
And before that he weakly attempted to build rapport by saying that he “previously gone to school and lived in Los Angeles” and as such… knows the “business climate like the back of [his] hand.”
I personally have no idea how going to school and LIVING in Los Angeles would have any bearing on how well you know the business climate. I mean, by that logic, any elementary schooler in the L.A. area would also know the business climate!
And he ended his email with the “assume the sale” tactic by giving me an option between tomorrow or Wednesday (taking away the option to say “NO”).
My response was terse.
“Hi, What is this about? We already have a Yelp listing.“
And you can see below in his response… he just intensified his salesmanship.
He again blew a lot of smoke about a bunch of nothing… “lot of opportunity,” “promotion of $1200 of Extra Free Yelp Ads” (which still explains nothing), “gain exposure,” etc.
Blah blah blah.
And he tried the same “assume the sale” close at the end to get me locked down for a call.
I think he was hoping I’d get swayed by the $1200… little did he know that I knew exactly how absolutely meaningless that $1200 meant in this context.
So I told him straight up,
“Go ahead and send me some info so I can decide if it’s something worth us hopping on a call, I’d hate to waste your time or mine.“
And several days later, he came back like a dog on a bone…
So the dance continued.
I mirrored his email style and shot back the following response (see if you can pick up the similarities between our two emails)…
And this is about the time he called quits because a few days later, he responds with “I will no longer be your point of contact over here at Yelp. You will receive a new rep soon. In the meantime, you can call 877-767-9357 if you have questions. Have a great night.”
In the same email, he sends over some nonsense generic Yelp Ads Video and Yelp Advertising information which are nonsense fluff not geared lacking transparency – I want to know the CPC, where my ads will show, how much (quality) impression I can expect, who will be viewing my ads, demographics, etc. But nope… none of that. And unfortunately, this sales rep wasn’t able to help.
With that said… it’s been almost a month and no one else at Yelp has contacted us so maybe they gave up? *shrugs*
All I wanted was to get something in writing so I can hold them accountable but they shied away from accountability.
On a separate note… we had three 5-star reviews removed from our listing.
Now… I can understand Yelp removing the top two reviews – they are from no-face reviewers whose sole review are the ones left for us. But removing Bree G. (3rd review) when there’s a legitimate image, location, 114 friends, AND 6 reviews?? That made no sense.
And of course trust Yelp to leave a 1-star review on our listing by a angry resentful person who was NEVER a customer and even resorted to name calling in his review.
*sigh*
Way to go Yelp.
*** MAIN POST ***
Maybe you know and maybe you don’t… but Yelp (a local search and reviews online service) offers paid advertising for businesses called the “Yelp Sponsorship Program“.
To sum it up, according to the page advertising this opportunity, this Yelp Sponsorship program allows you to:
- Put up a slideshow of the images of your business.
- Highlight a user’s review that you like the most (as the business owner)
- Promote your business as a sponsored search result and on your competitors’ business pages. Target potential clients while they are making decisions about where to spend their money on a business like yours
It sounds all fancy spansy right? Sounds like you get even MORE control over your business listing which will help “put your best foot forward” and sneak attack your competitors, stealing all their would be clients.
But Stop the Music, Do These Yelp Advertising Features Actually Accomplish Anything? Or are They Just Fluff Designed to Lure You in so They can Zap You?
Suck Them in & Then ZAP Them!
Before we proceed, I’d like to first state that my experience and knowledge of this Yelp Sponsorship program comes from dealing with them on behalf of one of my clients. This client signed up with Yelp (despite my warnings – apparently Yelp’s salesman are SMOOOTH) and I got to learn all about this program.
Having said that, that’s only ONE experience which doesn’t make me an expert but it certainly makes me more knowledgeable of this Yelp marketing program than those who’s never experienced it.
Furthermore, in case you are not familiar with how Yelp works, anybody can post a business on Yelp, as long as it falls under one of their categories and is a “fit” per their policies. And the rightful owner can claim that Yelp page by jumping through some hoops and voila, you have a FREE listing about your business.
FREE Yelp Reviews Page
And for comparison’s sake, here’s an example of a PAID Yelp review page:
PAID Yelp Review Page
With that said… let’s examine feature #1.
The “Slide-Show”
Now, granted the larger images and the “slideshow” adds a bit more snazziness to the page but honestly, how big of a difference does it really make? If you wanted to see pictures, wouldn’t you be inclined to go visit the business’ actual website?
I’d love to see some split test on this…
Favorite Review
As far as feature #2, I suppose this is a good thing, like Yelp for Business Owners says, “put your best foot forward”. But then they go and shoot themselves in the foot by posting the “Rating Distribution” graph next to it. This graph, as you can see, shows all the reviews, INCLUDING the negative ones.
As humans, we are so inclined to ask “what’s wrong” that I reckon most wouldn’t take the “favorite reviews” at face value; they’d go and seek the worst reviews to find out why those folks gave bad reviews.
Yelp’s Business Owner’s Sponsorship Program feature #3 is my favorite.
Yelp Advertising… on Others’ Pages
So the idea here is similar to Google AdWords, when someone searches for a term related to your business, your listing shows up (as, “Sponsored Result”) with the hopes that your business gets clicked on.
Here’s the caveat though, Yelp is charging you per impression basis instead of per click basis. What this means is that whenever your listing shows up in this manner, it counts against your total allotted amount that you paid of (so you are paying “cost per impression”). If it were click based (cost per click) you would get charged ONLY if your ad gets clicked.
This brings into a few questions, the least of which are:
- So how much is it per impression?
- How many impressions can you expect to get (this is of course dependent on the search volume) – bear in mind that this is a LOCAL search and review online system. Which means that you are really throttling the number of impressions your ads will show up because the number of LOCAL folks doing searches related to you business within your area is a tiny tiny fraction of the searches done nationally combined.
- Are you able to test different the keywords with which your listing shows up (which is costing you money)?
- Are you able to TRACK the results you are getting on fine details? I.e. what keywords are converting, when is the best time to show your Yelp sponsored listing, etc. Basically, questions that any savvy AdWords expert would ask.
- How much control do you have over this campaign? After all, you ARE paying for it.
Before I Go On, Let’s Talk About Leakage
What is “leakage“? Well, in digital marketing term, it means actions taken by your website visitor that doesn’t contribute to your ultimate goal (such as capturing the lead, making the sale, etc.) This often includes having active links which serve as distractions that take the visitor ELSEWHERE.
Now… take a good look at just about any Yelp review page, do you see leakage? Do you see links everywhere? But more importantly (and relevantly from a marketing perspective), do you see the box that says, “People Who Viewed This Also Viewed…”? Do you see how these links tend to be links to direct competition to the business review page you are viewing?
Yelp.com Pay Per Impression is a Friggin’ Joke (& Rip Off You Can Argue)
Okay, so going back to the sample list of questions listed earlier on. Let’s dig deeper and find out exactly what sort of program Yelp is running (and charging you for).
First of all, here’s the cost for Yelp’s advertising program:
$300/mo – promotes you to 1,500 people in your area looking for a business like yours.
$500/mo – promotes you to 4,000 people in your area looking for a business like yours.
$1000/mo – promotes you to 10,000 people in your area looking for a business like yours.
So you are looking at $100 CPM (cost per thousand impressions) to $200 CPM to advertise on their network. In the AdWords world, this is ridiculously high for paying CPM unless you are in some highly competitive and profitable business like real estate and 401k portfolios (oh wait… given the crash of the economy, DOH!). Even then you are pushing it a bit. Folks who are paying high CPM on the pay per click networks have thoroughly tested their campaigns, have tracked EVERY single detail, and have all the control in the world.
But on Yelp? Hellllll no! You don’t know what your “campaign” looks like let alone have any control over it. You are like a blind mouse and they are the big bad kitty toying with you. And yet, they are still charging you an arm and a leg. And one quick look around Yelp will tell you that most businesses are NOT high-price markets, they are mostly smaller markets like restaurants.
This brings me to my second point of frustration when dealing with these Yelp folks, where’s the proof of these impressions people paid for??? Where are my listings showing up? And what’s the conversion rate?? Again, they tell you nothing and keep you blind.
YUCK.
Sales Team Who Doesn’t Know Jack and Preys on Toy Mice
Okay, so I had the opportunity to speak to a Yelp representative on the phone on my client’s behalf. Armed with my knowledge of AdWords, marketing, the works… I came prepared. Sadly for the person on the other line, that’s more than I can say for her.
I asked about all the things I mentioned before (about click through rates versus impressions, how I can track my campaign, how much control I have, etc.) and she was STUMPED. She couldn’t understand why we would care about such matters. As a matter of fact, I’d venture so far as to say she didn’t know JACK about marketing, and yet, she’s representing a team that’s suppose to help us market.
But what REALLY got to me was when I asked her about a 24 hour backout clause, which means that within 24 hours of the start of the campaign, if I am not satisfied with the results I am seeing, I can cancel. Nope she said… and the reason is because it takes time for the program to ramp up for me to really start seeing results.
EHHH? It’s the internet we are talking about here right? I can track clicks fairly easily right? Hmmm… okay.
So then I went on and asked what is the minimum sign up period, to which she replied, “6 months”.
OMGWTFBBQ, 6 month minimum at $325 a month where you have NO IDEA what’s going on? Thanks but no thanks.
The Proof is in the Pudding – Proof that Yelp Sucked
Against my better judgment, my client went for it anyway, and looking at the chain o
f emails he received from Yelp along with how their program is setup, I can sympathize why.
See, Yelp is banking on folks NOT knowing the difference between “impressions” and “clicks”. They are banking on the fact that businesses will confuse “impressions” with “visitors” – as in, “For $300 a month I can get 1,500 NEW customers every month? SWEET, sign me up!” They are banking on folks not knowing how to track their progress and not caring to either. They are banking on being able to just sweet talk their would be victim on the phone and dazzle them with fluff.
And worse yet, without the clients being able to track the campaign, Yelp is able to get folks to resign, again and again, by giving out meaningless stats.
To give you a perspective of just how much SUCKINESS is in this program, with the aid of Google Analytics and my idea of adding a page that leads people to a printable in-store coupon, we were able to see how the program performed. Here are the stats, in 2 months time, Yelp drove 64 unique visitors to this special landing page (which again helps us track the comers from our Yelp advertising campaign) and of those 64 visitors, we got 9 customers that we can tell.
This meant 32/1,500 = 2% conversion from visitor to Yelp to the website and 0.3% from impression to actual customer. Put it another way, my client paid $72.22 for each of those clients – clients who are just diners to his restaurant.
NOTE: We are not even sure if these visits and visitors are a direct result of my client PAYING for this Yelp advertising program, read below to see what I mean.
Ouch.
Look, You Don’t Need to Pay for Yelp, Nor Do You Want To
Don’t get me wrong, Yelp.com is awesome, I use it all the time to get the low down on new restaurants, find a plumber, etc. But you don’t need to pay to use it! Business owners can get free Yelp review pages and those rank (from a search engine optimization perspective) just as well as the paid for pages.
This means you’ll get traffic regardless!
Hope this was enlightening for you. Like I said earlier on, I’ve had only one experience with Yelp and boy was it a horrible one. I’d love to hear some success stories and some proof that it worked.
Until then, don’t pay Yelp a dime to join in on their “Yelp for Business Owners” program, especially if you are a restaurant owner.
Raymond Fong
If you are looking for real trackable result, I’d like to recommend you take a look at our gowth hacking agency. We help businesses (both startups and traditional businesses) gain more exposure, get more leads, obtain more customers, and ultimately add to their bottom line leveraging the internet.
P.S. You might be interested in this post I wrote as well, “Yelp Strikes Again…“
P.P.S. You might enjoy my book on growth hacking, “Growth Hacking: Silicon Valley’s Best Kept Secret”, because it’ll help you grow your business.
Same story here. As a copywriter, I should’ve known better, but was sucked in by a charming Yelp rep during a time of greatest distraction during the winter holiday season. Not only did they charge me for an ad that didn’t run, they charged over $350 for the initial 1 month period, then another $150 the next month. The rep gave me a $150 credit. I put my ad spend to $5 per month, limit $150, in an 11 mile radius. It has netted one customer who paid $80 for a resume critique and revamp, plus an hour of my “free” advice, not including invoicing and reminder. Got another $150 charge mid-month. And a bunch of competitors show up under my paid listing, to boot. Plus a recent 5-star rating from my best customer doesn’t show. You should start a class-action suit against them for ripping off small businesses…
Yelp is a major rip-off! I was lied to by one of their reps, Magdalena Montenegro. I didn’t even want to sign up with them but she assured me that I wouldn’t be charged until I wanted to increase my exposure. I asked again to make sure… “So this won’t cost me a dime until I’m ready?” She again said no. With that being said, I never even bothered to complete my profile. The next thing I know I was charged $124 two months ago that I didn’t catch and just now got a bill for $510 that lucky enough didn’t go through. I spoke with their billing dept and they basically told me to kiss their asses and it will go to collections.
I’m not sure if there is a way to fight this but at the very least I will post this experience on every website I can as well as make a youtube video calling these people out. I was misled and conned into signing up and now at their mercy. Legal action on my part is still a possibility.
These robbers from Yelp are mean and aggressive, doing things without noticing the customers, calling me and pushing their ad program. I received from a printing company a $300 gift for Yelp ads and at the end of the month Yelp charged me $410, they basically removed the gift and decided to charge me instead. Good job idiots. I will leave an honest review about greedy yelp on every possible website. Beside that, they also remove from the business page the precious reviews left by honest customers and making them as not recommended, hiding them.
I work in a small business place as a front desk. The owner paid for yelp advertisement when he first opened the business, But soon he realized it was a scam. He monitors how many viewers are there, and the numbers of viewer always plummet suddenly when it’s time to pay yelp again… Then there were times when customers came to me (because I’m a receptionist) and told me that they want to cooperate with us by posting numbers of good reviews each month, and in exchange for money or free services. Of course the owner refused. But I starts to question all the other stores that has way many 5 star reviews than what I experienced. Then we started to notice some one star review that clearly wasn’t left by our customers But the yelp didn’t take them down, instead there were some legitimate 5 star reviews taken down as not recommended…. This is becoming as bullying!!! It’s making small businesses harder!!
Personally I love yelp because I can search up restaurants wherever I go, but if this costs some small businesses, I rather not support the app or the company!!!
I had 40-something 5-star reviews I accumulated over a couple of years. Was suckered into paying for yelp ads. When I didn’t see ANY results for my 6 months at $330 per month I quit using them. SUDDENLY, within two weeks, I was down to 11 reviews. I called to ask about it and was informed it’s “all from the algorithm” and that “it sometimes reassesses pages” and that’s probably why I lost thirty legitimate reviews all of a sudden after two years. I’m now at 54 legitimate 5-star reviews, with only 12 showing up for me. The people behind this scam are awful.
We had the same experience for my company scatterscape.com. Yelp promised us the moon and conveniently forgot to mention it would cost us $590 a month. I noticed that our ‘leads’ go up right before the billing period ends which to me says they have a farm of people (or bots) that make sure all accounts are getting ‘optimized’ each month (i.e., getting bogus ‘hits’ or directed traffic) so that they can keep their numbers up. Their investors should be concerned. They also promised to ‘merge’ the duplicate accounts for our business but of course this never happened and I’m sure an investigation would show that the salesperson never made any attempt to do so (or probably there is no way for them to do so). My experience with Google hasn’t been much better, sadly.
It’s a racket business. You promise to bring ‘traffic’ to the small business owner and he (or she) in their mind fills in the blank that more traffic = more sales. It doesn’t when the traffic is bogus.
This is another sleeperware/ vaporware business that wants to drink blood from your checking account quietly in the background while you are busy doing other things.
Stay away.
If you’re using Google Ads, you have to know what you’re doing. The Google reps really just push features and don’t delve in to understand your business. You need a Google Ads expert for that. Also, Google has been and continues to take away control from advertisers. For example, an exact match keyword (like: matterscape 3d service) used to only show your ads when people search those exact words only. Now it includes “close variants” that could be irrelevant. So if you’re using Google Ads, you need to actively manage search terms and add negative keywords regularly.
To whom it may concern
For me and my business Yelp is a SCAM. Lies,lies, lies and money out the window !!!! Stay away or PAY.
Never give them the time of day to talk to you regarding how it works…it doesn’t! Just the exchange of them ripping you off from your hard earned money. Their scale of pay per clicks versus money stolen from me (by them) is a complete fabrication. There is no way to take your credit card information off their site. When I called it was a disaster reaching someone, and when you do they are of no help either. Yelp representative stated no money would be charged. I went over this with him several times during our conversation and he assured me NO CHAREGES. Next thing I see is a charge for close to $500 on my credit card . Needless to say there has been no money refunded to my account even after talking to Yelp rep (Dominic).
STAY CLEAR
I was contacted by a Yelp rep and offered their Special Offer – Enjoy up to $300 in free Yelp Ads. My business is seasonal and very niche specific. I was told the rep would set up my page with some pictures and description of my business. Once it was set up, I would be able to approve it before it went live. Since it was at the end of my season, and I am always very conscious of any money going in or out this time of year I was hesitant. I specifically asked “what is this going to cost me, my business is seasonal and ends in a couple of weeks, I don’t want to be paying for advertising when I don’t have services to offer this time of year.” The rep said no problem, we will get it up and running and you can use the $300 free yelp ads credit for now and you won’t have to pay anything, once your business starts back up, we will have some other offers too we can give you to help you get started.” The rep set up my page, I never saw or approved it, I soon learned that It did not target my niche business clientele as I started to get people looking for services I did not provide.
I was charged $261.14 on November 1. I called to discuss the charges shortly after and was told they would review the call. I canceled all ads at this time. I specifically asked the rep to call me after the call was reviewed to let me know if they would refund me as this was not what I had agreed to on the phone. They never called me.
Then on Dec 1st I was charged another $496.14.
I called to discuss my account on Dec 3rd and asked for a refund as this was NOT what I had agreed to. I received an email saying they would not refund any money I was charged. I called and spoke to the individual that emailed me. She was of no help. I need to speak to someone who will help me in the matter because technically, without my agreeing to any terms, you have stolen from me. I DID NOT give permission for my card to be charged in this way.
To sum it up, I was charged an obscene amount of money for a business listing with pictures and a description I did not approve, targeted for customers I do not service.
They are screwing me over too. Unfortunately, I was dumb enough to sign up for their free credit for advertising. I have started a local tour business a few months ago, and since I’m new I have a very limited budget and not much experience. I’ve been trying to get as much publicity at as little cost as possible. I have made a TripAdvisor account, and also facebook and instagram, which were all free of charge, just invested a few bucks on facebook promotions, but the cost was very low. Then I thought of yelp it is well known too. It was free, so I have made an account. Immediately, I was bombarded by emails and phone calls from them asking me to pay for ads and stuff. I have ignored it. Eventually they have offered me a $300 credit to use for ads, so I thought, what’s the harm? I’ll use the credit and get some publicity, see how it goes, and maybe, if I get some clients from it, I will invest some money into advertising with them. I didn’t get any publicity from it at all. I got lots of followers on facebook and instagram, and also got quiet a few people booking tours through the trip advisor which only took a percentage of what I have earned, but never asked for any money upfront. So I decided to cancel ads as soon as the credit will be used. Looking at my statements it seemed like I still had some credit left, so I didn’t bother canceling, but on November 1, they have attempted to charge my credit card for about $180. Fortunately, that credit card was maxed out at that time, and the payment didn’t go through. I have immediately canceled the ads, which was also a long and complicated process. Its not very straight forward, and I had to google how to do it and find through other people and websites. It looked like they were trying to charge me in advance for November ads, so I was thinking since I have canceled, I will not be charged, yet the moment I put some money on that credit card I was charged $180. I thought, that maybe I haven’t canceled on time, so they are still charging me, so I decided to let it go. I have double checked and made sure I have canceled the ads on November 1 and kind of forgot about them, went on vacation and came back yesterday. Checked my credit card and had less balance than I’m supposed to have. I have opened the statement and saw I was charged another $55 on december 1 by yelp. No explanation, nothing. Don’t know what its for at all. The ads were canceled, and I don’t owe them anything, yet they have my card on their record and keep charging me. Now I’m trying to figure out how to contact them, but it seems very difficult too, nothing is straight forward on their website. Just takes me to the support page and lets me search stuff, but no email contact or any easy way to reach them. Going to do more research now. If anyone has any advice on that, that’d be greatly appreciated.
I just got scammed by them too. There needs to be a class action lawsuit.
I got scammed exactly like these nice people did , ,I am all in on a class action lawsuit, , , tell me how I can help , , they promised me $ 300 in free advertising and slammed my credit card two months in a row , , I am disputing the charges with my bank right now , , I would never recommend anyone ever giving their credit card to YELP
Dispute the charges with your credit card company and get a new card so they cannot charge you again. Fortunately my card company flagged it as fraud and called me to confirm, I advised that I did not authorize the charge so they canceled that card and sent me a new one. Yelp will never be able to charge me again.
I’m sorry, not $10 per click, it was $3 per click .
Do you think Adwords via Google is worth it? I had a popular website that I sold because blogging was taking up my life.. literally.. anyhow, I charged $10CPM and $10CPC (that took a long time to be able to do demand) and I made great money but always wondering if it worked out for the advertiser.
Seems Yelp is now screwing over business that don’t pay for advertising. We have a construction business and would get some job requests in our inbox, I could respond and send details or request details, seems they now have a “Nearby Jobs” feature where you cannot respond to customers anymore unless you’re a paid advertiser, I will probably not get any more work from yelp as I refuse to pay them hundreds of dollars and that doesn’t even guarantee me any jobs. And looking at Yelp on the better business bureau and the many thousands of complaints they get each year made me make up my mind.
Have a look at all yelps complaints on the BBB and notice the yelp rep that responds is the same copy/paste message on almost every complaint. Unbelievable. And they also say they have no control over reviews staying up or not even if they’re legit because they use “automated software” to filter them, yeah… sure, maybe that automated software is broken and should stop using it.
Yelp was nice while it lasted, I might have got 1 job every few months from them on free advertising, but not much more than that. I think the only way I’ll get work from yelp is if the customer clicks to call my business instead of requesting a quote.
Yelp is very greedy and shady business. I’m glad I never paid or gave my credit card info, they say it’s almost impossible to get that credit card info off and when/if you do, any 5 star reviews you might have had will suddenly show up in the “Not recommended” section because of that “automated software”.
Sorry for the rant, not sure where else to post, been googling Yelps shady business practice after noticing this new change not being able to respond to customers unless I pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for advertising and it’s amazing they can get away with the things they do to businesses.
We are a small business, we can’t afford to pay what they ask. It shouldn’t be that much anyways.
Didn’t mean to respond to you Amy, just wanted my comment by itself but I guess I somehow replied to you, sorry.
Jesse, I had to respond to your post. Totally amazing that your story and mine are so similar. I’ve been on yelp’s site for about 15 years. I did try one of their 6-month programs only to figure out that they were totally BS. Raymond Fong is dead on about them. The sales group is highly incentivized to get you on their pay-to-play system where they play games and you pay to participate. And when I finally told the last rep that I didn’t need any additional leads in hopes of getting them to stop calling it appears that they do have a plan for businesses who don’t jump on their pay-to-play bandwagon. Yelp disabled my business from getting any organic leads. Prior to that I was getting organic leads each and every week and I did close some sales that came through yelp. Obviously, that is not what they are there to do. The success of my business is not important to the at all, it’s the success of their business that drives them to over promise and under deliver. So the bottom line is this. If you maintain a low profile on yelp enjoy the ride as long as you can. But when the yelp salesperson or their infamous algorithms finally catch up with you be prepared to see all of your organic leads disappear, just like the money you paid to be a yelp advertiser. And just like me you’ll be left scratching your head wondering WTF just happened? I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of you who shared your stories that helped to better understand yelps method of doing business. It’s just not for me and hope you all agree to boycott yelp from this point forward.
Yelp is over. They are going out of business.
Yelp is a joke removed over 50 of my reviews. It all started when I told them I don’t need them.
Yes Yelp has done the same to me with my business I have 87 reviews that are not showing up and not only that we waste all of our money relying on them to get our business more traffic more people and they screw us they burn our money so I think we should Sue yelp
I got scammed by them recently. The guy who called me NEVER EVER explained or said anything about I have to pay $600 PER MONTH for their stupid service. If he said that at the beginning I would not spend my 1 hour talking, listening to him, and following him thru the entire fucking website. I was stupid and thought ok maybe I could try it out for 1 month. They charged me $80ish AFTER the first initial convo at the end of August with the sale rep. I thought they would charge me first then whatever they offer would be for SEPTEMBER. HELL NO~!!! It was for a few freaking days after the first talk. I never got any bill until they withdrew $600 from my bank and it was for service of September. I called CS and the guy blatantly said to me I AGREED to this service, I CHOSE the package, I did this and that according to their recording of the first talk. NEVER EVER the first sale rep mentioned about $600 a month. And now they blamed me for EVERYTHING. I hope my bank helped me thru this but YELP INC sucks and they are a bunch of bs that try to get you in doing business with them and then just bill you whatever you were blind to do or follow. They are not professional and just come out here and try to scam you. Stay away! and Listen to this blog.
I have the same BAD experience regarding Yelp reviews, they hide good reviews and show up one star fake mysterious reviews instead, the fake reviews are with 0 friends and no other reviews history! while the good reviews are genuine and with good accounts history, the joke is that my business is in canada while all the fake reviews come from accounts at san francisco USA?!
this company is actually extorting businesses, yelp negative reviews attack is the biggest scam in the internet these days and we should do something about it.
My Recommendations:
1.start to expose them by putting a paragraph in all our websites to let people understand wts going on.
2.second we report our issues to google representatives so google start to take serious actions toward their rank and stop showing yelp higher in the search results.
I recommend sending this message to google.
Dear google,
as business owners all around the world we suffer from yelp bad experience, they give us fake reviews and hard time to push us go with their ad services, this have become well known, this company is actually extorting businesses, they are the biggest scam in the marketing world these days.
here are some examples of wt they do to us:
http://raymondfong.net/a-candid-yelp-advertising-review-is-yelp-ripping-people-off/
https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/san-francisco/profile/internet-service/yelpcom-1116-193927
https://www.amazon.com/Billion-Dollar-Bully-Davide-Cerretini/dp/B07QV5RQTZ
the problem is that they rank high above all other results and affect our reputation at google search results, we don’t want them to harm us through google.
we trust google as a big company with high ethics and reputation and want from you to take serious actions against their rank.
thank you