Why are certain Yelp reviews not recommended?
By Zyff
Short answer
Yelp runs every review through automated recommendation software, and a review is left out when the software doubts it is reliable or useful — because it knows too little about the reviewer, suspects the business asked for the review, sees a possible conflict of interest, or judges the review unhelpful. By Yelp's own figures about three quarters of reviews are recommended.
A review that is not recommended is not deleted. It sits behind a 'reviews that are not currently recommended' link at the bottom of the business page, but it does not count toward the business's star rating or its review count.
What the software weighs
Yelp describes four considerations, and each one explains a different kind of missing review.
- Reliability — reviews from people who have written little on Yelp, because the software does not yet know enough about them to trust their opinion. A genuine first review can land here simply because it is a first review.
- Solicitation — reviews the software suspects the business or its staff asked for. Yelp's reasoning is that reviews written on request tend to be biased compared with ones people choose to write.
- Conflicts of interest — reviews that may come from competitors, disgruntled employees, or the owner's friends and family.
- Usefulness — reviews that are an unhelpful rant or rave, or that are about something other than the business.
Why a review you were told about is missing
The usual story: a customer says they left you a review, and it is nowhere on your page. Look under the not-recommended link first. If the reviewer has written little else on Yelp, or if you asked them to write it, that is the likeliest place to find it.
If it is not there either, the reviewer may have deleted it, or Yelp may have removed it for breaking its content guidelines. In both cases it is out of the business's hands.
What a business can and cannot do
It cannot override the software. Yelp says no employee can change the software's decisions, and that reviews of advertisers and non-advertisers are treated exactly the same — buying Yelp ads does not change which reviews count.
What can make things worse is asking for reviews. Solicited reviews are one of the four things the software looks for, and in the US a business found offering cash or other incentives for reviews can have a Compensated Activity Alert displayed over the reviews on its Yelp page. The only lever Yelp endorses is the slow one: give people an experience they want to write about, without asking them to.
What it means for Yelp reviews on your own website
Yelp's own Embed review tool works only for recommended reviews, and the rating and review count on your Yelp page already leave the rest out. A widget that shows Yelp's published rating therefore shows the same number a visitor would find on Yelp; one that calculates its own average from whatever reviews it collected is showing a number Yelp never published.
Zyff's Yelp widget takes the first approach. Its header shows the rating and the review count exactly as Yelp publishes them, never recalculated, and every review card names its author and links back to it on Yelp, so a reader can check it. If you filter which reviews appear on your site, the widget says so beneath them, because a selection shown as the whole picture misleads whoever reads it.
Yelp Reviews Widget
Show your Yelp rating and reviews as a feed, a badge or a sticker.
Also asked
- Why is my Yelp review not showing up?
- Why are my Yelp reviews missing?
All of these have the same answer, so they share this page rather than each getting a near-identical one of their own.