Did you know it’s illegal to buy Yelp reviews? And you could pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines if you’re caught.
But fortunately, you may not have to buy Yelp reviews to fix a bad Yelp rating.
This article gives you an alternative to buying Yelp reviews that is far less costly and far more effective.
To avoid other pitfalls that could land your business in hot water, check out our article on the other dangers of Yelp business reviews.
Resist the Thug Life: It’s Illegal to Buy Yelp Reviews
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has banned undisclosed paid endorsements. That means no business can pay for someone to endorse it unless the payment is disclosed to consumers. So…the only way to pay for Yelp reviews legally would be for each review to state, “By the way, the company paid me to write this glowing review…just sayin’.”
And this law doesn’t just apply to evil fake review mills in the third world. It applies to your real-life customers, too. The FTC considers it illegal for you to buy a Yelp review from your happy customers, no matter how much they sincerely love you…unless they openly tell the world that you paid them to write it.
So what happens if you live the thug life and buy Yelp reviews, then get caught? Well, the fines are typically in the five-figure range. So if you’re not ready to pay $50,000 in fines, you may want to give up the thug life and not buy Yelp reviews.
Go Straight: It Ain’t Easy, But It Pays in the End
Thankfully there are better (and legal) ways to fix bad Yelp reviews than buying them.
But first the bad news… Going straight takes more time and effort than living like a gangsta.
If you buy Yelp reviews, it might take a third-world review mill only a few days to generate lots of paid 5-star reviews. But when you go legit and refuse to buy Yelp reviews, it will almost certainly take a lot longer than that for you to generate the same number of legitimate reviews.
Snitch on Rival Thugs: Get Yelp to Do Your Dirty Work for You
Now that you’re giving up the thug life and going straight, let’s turn state’s evidence. Snitch on the bad reviewers and let the popo take ‘em out.
Get Yelp to remove any bad reviews that violate Yelp’s policies. The more bad reviews you get removed, the less you’ll be tempted to buy Yelp reviews.
Yelp removes reviews if the reviewer has a conflict of interest–such as a competitor, former employee, or someone affiliated with the business in some way. If your competitor is living the thug life and decided to buy Yelp reviews with 1-star ratings for your business, rat them out to Yelp.
Yelp also removes reviews from people who don’t know you directly. If a customer badmouths you to his mom, and his mom writes a scathing review, you can ask Yelp to remove the review. The customer has to be a big boy and write his own review. Under Yelp’s policies, his mom can’t write a review about a customer experience she didn’t have herself.
Yelp also removes reviews with private information about employees or customers.
And finally, Yelp removes extremely rude reviews–or more specifically, reviews with hate speech, lewd comments, or threatening language.
So if you have any bad reviews like these, report the Yelp review to get it removed.
It’s important to note that Yelp doesn’t remove reviews based on factual disputes. So if a customer lies through his teeth about how expensive your T-shirts are…but you don’t even sell T-shirts…Yelp won’t help you. You just have to drown out those lying bad reviews with lots of good reviews.
Break Your Homies Out of Jail: Free Good Reviews from Yelp’s Filter
Yelp doesn’t need DNA evidence to convict your customers’ reviews on charges of felony spamslaughter. In fact, Yelp has a “hang ‘em high and let God sort ‘em out” attitude towards potentially fake reviews.
So chances are you may have some perfectly innocent reviews from authentically happy customers sitting in “Yelp jail”–otherwise known as the “not currently recommended” filter.
Here’s what Yelp jail looks like…
It’s time to get out the crowbar and explosives and bust your homies out of jail.
Well…maybe it’s more like passing your homies a spoon so they can dig their own way out.
When Yelp filters out a review, Yelp is saying it doesn’t trust the reviewer. Yelp thinks the reviewer might be faking their love for your business because you tried to buy Yelp reviews.
To help your customers from the outside, “follow” and “friend” your customers on Yelp to show Yelp you vouch for them. Find reviews your customers wrote for other businesses–especially reviews that Yelp hasn’t filtered–and mark them as “useful” or “funny” or “cool.” Even “compliment” your customers and their reviews. This tells Yelp that not only are your customers real people, but the information in their reviews is valuable.
With a little luck, their reviews will break out of Yelp jail and join the rest of the free reviews that are visible to all and help your overall Yelp rating.
