Steve Wyer | The New Scarlet Letter – Yelp’s Consumer Alert
In this brief question and answer session, Third Coast Interactive’s Steve Wyer answers questions about Yelp and its ever-feared Consumer Alert banner.
Q: What is the Yelp Consumer Alert banner?
Steve Wyer: This is a banner which helps consumers identify businesses which have possibly posted their own reviews. It is an indication that the automated software has identified potentially biased information in favor of the listed business.
Q: So, as a business owner, I cannot write my own reviews?
Steve Wyer: Absolutely not! The whole purpose behind a review site, such as Yelp, is to allow consumers the freedom to choose a business based on the experiences of previous customers. Writing your own review is in violation of Yelp’s Terms of Service. And while there is no detailed information available as to how Yelp identifies these reviews, the banner indicates that a number of positive reviews originated from a unique IP address.
Q: Do Yelp users respond to the Consumer Alert?
Steve Wyer: Absolutely. Even if you don’t read the warning all the way through, it serves as a cloak of shame in a matter of speaking. It is designed to be an instant indication of potential deception and customers are definitely turned off by that.
Q: Does Yelp filter reviews by customers who have been given nonmonetary compensation for their time?
Steve Wyer: Recently Yelp began to crack down on reviews written as part of a customer reward program. There is a strong belief that these types of reviews create an unfair partiality toward the company and don’t necessarily reflect the reviewer’s actual experience. If a business is caught soliciting reviews from customers, they are tagged with a Business Alert which stays on their Yelp page for three months.
