Changes are coming to Yelp. In a previous blog post, I discussed the problems that Yelp was encountering with small businesses. There were accusations that Yelp employees where basically extorting local businesses into advertising in order to get better reviews or eliminate bad reviews.
Over at the Duct Tape Marketing Blog, John Jantsch recently had a chance to speak with the business outreach manager at Yelp. The most significant changes were that Yelp will now allow small business owners to see filtered reviews. Yelp has an algorithm to fight “review spam” – and it will automatically not show reviews of a small business that appear to be either positive review spam or negative review spam. In the past, reviews would just disappear from a small business listing. Now small business owners have the ability to see the reviews that have been filtered out.
Another change is that small business owners can no longer move their “favorite reviews” (best reviews) to the top of their small business listing on Yelp.
For the complete list of changes at Yelp – check out this blog post from the Yelp Official Blog.
How Does This Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?
If you’re looking to market your Denver Small business, you really need to get as much exposure on as many directories as possible. This includes the local search areas for Bing, Google, and Yahoo – along with small business listing sites like Yelp.com and CitySearch.com. The recent accusations of extortion of Yelp can only help to ensure that the website owners are more transparent with their advertising and filtering processes.
If you do get your Denver small business listed on these sites, you need to pay very close attention to your reviews. Make sure that the reviews are truthful and reasonable. Follow up with the website if it appears a competitor or someone with an ax to grind is deliberately trying to damage the reputation of your Denver small business.