I do have more than three reviews and all the others beside this one are positive reviews and those have never been removed. How fast do they take down reviews of people who only have 1 or 2? How do you accumulate reviews if they remove them?

My step daughter owns one of the longer running and more successful restaurants in our town. YELP is a scam, she deals with it all the time. Luckily for her, her core customer base doesn't pay attention to that crap. If you were newer in business or had a smaller customer base it would suck!

Yelp sux. Google does as well for that matter. At least for a business. If you pay for top positions in searches you have to pay for "clicks". This is where the scam comes in. There is no way to tell if the click hits are real. Its like printing money for the search engines. Google Analytics has a stat that shows the source location of clicks. One month showed 95% of clicks coming from Estonia. No problem, except this was for a small retail shop in Louisville, KY. Its a scam. But you absolutely must be on Google search.

I bumped into a friend of mine I had not seen in a while. He told me about some side money he said was easy money. Some company would send him a email with a lot of links. All he had to do was click on each one and scroll to a second page. He was paid enough to make it worth his time. It took a few minutes a day to do. He said it was all to generate hits on a advertisement. That was 10 years ago. Most likely they have bots to do that now.

About 12 years ago we lost a positive review because the poster only had the one review. It seemed really quick, like in a few weeks. Now I can't say, but I think it takes a few months.

I suppose you could accumulate reviews if you make reviews for other businesses, but that doesn't seem to be why your one review comes down. My guess is the business you keep trying to give a bad review to has an account and is convincing Yelp that you're review is a personal grudge or something.

Most negative reviewers cannot write a succinct coherent review, I make an attempt to read but generally discount it.

It can be amusing reading.

I may still check it out for information on a place, and if it is all glowing roses I might avoid for some place else. NO business dealing with the walk in public around here can have a 100% satisfaction rate.

There are people that go around in life looking to be offended.

This guy from Seattle said it best several years ago:
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/guest-what-is-yelp-an-impartial-review-site-or-an-aggressive-ad-company/


He's a genius.

So, is there an alternative?

Word of mouth and common sense


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Well, that's easy to say but not very helpful. Sometimes one has to find a business of a nature that they have not done that type of business before. In my case I took the referral of another contractor (whom I didn't hire in the long run) and then took to Yelp to expose the guy. I'm sure he pays the ransom.

In another case, I hired a painter for a customer job and he did only OK. But his Yelp is 100%. He told me that he pays not only for the rating but for being suggested at the top of the list for a return call within an hour.

That's all well and good, you want a referral service you pay. But if you suck, that should show up.

ask for references. call them. do the homework you used to have to do. if you want it easy you're gonna get yelp and other extortion scams. the very idea of a referral service should make people sick.

I don't think that about Angie's List. Although there is some gaming there as well.

This is a good read:

https://thehustle.co/botto-bistro-1-star-yelp/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I love this idea from the link in maxnine11's post! ^

https://www.facebook.com/groups/848796005457291/?ref=bookmarks

They tried that extortion stuff on me and I told them pound sand. One or two fabricated bad reviews, but the rest are legit.

Sounds a lot like Congress...Seriously, I've never placed much faith in online reviews.

Threads here that ask for opinions on various tools, appliances, etc. I have much more faith in. In a way, proof the old word of mouth still works.

how about we all post negative reviews of yelp on yelp?

or use Google maps for the HQ of yelp...

Since I got royally ripped off by an HVAC contractor, posted my account of events and complaints, and had the whole thing disappear, I have made a solid acquaintance with another contractor in a different trade. He has solid top to bottom 5-star reviews. He pretty much deserves them but he protects them by paying $500/month to Yelp. As a result he is able to charge more to cover the expense. He's a small operation.

I just revisited his Yelp page and it has been updated removing most of the older reviews making it short and sweet and 5-star all the way (to the bank).

better business bureau
buy good rating

i have a man-crush on my electricain and plumber.

i met both of them thru that app.."next door" (something like that). all we did was send out a question to the hood,, "anyone know a good plumber?"

boom..everyone gets chatty about their experiences. two guys stood head and shoulders above the rest..we chose one.

this same event happened when my water line from the meter to house sprung a leak when a mysterious digging bar shaped dent formed in the copper pipe. the landscaper? "wasnt me"..hahhaha.. cost me $80, and was worth the guilty facial expression on the landscaper guy. from that point forward, he did everything i asked. he moved plants around for me. :)