How to Deal with Negative Yelp Reviews
Zack Greenfield • December 8, 2021
Negative reviews on Yelp can be a serious issue for your business because Yelp is a leading business review site.
they have over 178 million visitors per month researching businesses they want to interact with. So it is likely your customers are there snooping around checking you out. Negative reviews on Yelp can quickly become your business’s headlines if not properly managed.
So how do you deal with negative reviews on Yelp and what can you do to have them removed?
I'm going to show you what you can and can't do. First do me solid and like this video and subscribe for more.
There is some good news and bad news on this with Yelp and most other review sites. the good news is there are many negative reviews you can get removed. The bad news is that some will stay no matter what you do.
The reviews you can get removed must meet certain criteria in order to be removed. The procedure to get them removed is actually simple. You just need to flag the review and then Yelp will verify if the review has broken the Yelp terms of service.
Find the review you want to report through the Reviews section in your Yelp account, click on the three dots located in the upper righthand corner of the review itself, and click “Report Review.”
How long will will it take to remove a review after it has been flagged?
You can check the status by hovering over the Flag icon on a review but figure it will take a few days to a week. YOu will also get a reply inside the platform.
You need to know that not all negative reviews are bad, and not all negative reviews have broken a rule. It is possible the customer wasn’t happy or had a bad experience.
If this is the case check out our other video about how to deal with negative reviews and turn them into positive marketing for your business. So what are the valid reasons you can have a review removed by flagging?
- Not from a customer on record
- Not covering a customer’s personal experience
- Plagiarized
- Disputing another review
- Posted on the wrong business page
- Revealing personal details of employees
- Discussing opinions on business policies
- Slander, or contains profanity/hate speech
Be mindful that you can’t do any of this if you haven’t claimed your business on Yelp to begin with. So make sure you have that done first.
The other way we handle negative comments and make sure they don’t become headlines is to make sure the business has a consistent review flow. If you keep the positive reviews flowing each week then an occasional outlier that is negative won’t last more than a few days up top anyways. We use Repup.io to drive massive review flow so negatives are basically washed down while we work them using the disputing techniques we just covered.
Go claim your business if you haven’t and follow these steps and if you want to really control the issue enroll your business at Repup.io
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