Yelp reviews and other online crowdsourcing have become the new version of a company having a website. As consumers, we use information we get there to make decisions about where to eat, where to stay and whether to work with a business.
Now, collecting the consumer data has become a business all to itself. Angie’s List has essentially come and gone as Yelp came on the scene. Competition continues with the likes of Google, Zillow and Facebook.
As a small business, we rely on these review outlets to give our customers a voice, whether the customer is 5-star-thrilled or 1-star-dissatisfied (of course we prefer the former). We then, have an opportunity to share our side of the truth. The future costumer benefits as they can read both experiences and make their own decision about the home inspection experience they want to have.
But Yelp is not giving all of our customers a voice. Through their algorithm, many experiences are “not recommended” for reasons they don’t explain. That algorithm is increasingly silencing our customers. Here are the numbers:
So far in 2020, Yelp has published 1 of 9 customer reviews they received. In fact, one was published 5/29 and removed by 6/1.
In the past year:
- 100% of the 1 star reviews have been published
- 14 reviews have been received but not published
- Yelp left a 1-star review as “most recent” for 7 months, during which time 9 5-star reviews went unpublished.
We choose to give the unpublished reviews voice and let our readers make their own decisions about which ones are helpful and which ones are not.
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It can take as little as 2 minutes to leave a business a review and make a big difference. We recommend you do that on Facebook or Google. See what other customers are saying here.