Yelp Hates 'Review Solicitations', And It's Getting Aggressive In Cracking Them Down

Stars are like the currency of popularity. As reviews have become more important both businesses and their potential consumers, multiple companies are trying to help those businesses to get more stars than they deserve.

And Yelp is trying to stop many of those efforts.

Yelp is one of a number of online directories and search sites that feature consumer reviews. Many others also encourage and publish consumer reviews. Yelp, however, has the strongest policies against what it calls "review solicitation."

In short, Yelp really hates businesses asking others for reviews, in any form.

For example, Google's policy said that:

"Reviews are most valuable when they are honest and unbiased. If you own or work at a place, please don’t review your own business or employer. Don’t offer or accept money, products, or services to write reviews for a business or to write negative reviews about a competitor. If you’re a business owner, don’t set up review stations or kiosks at your place of business just to ask for reviews written at your place of business."

Google’s Local Guides program “incentivizes” its members to provide reviews and other content with points and prizes. This is how Google encouraging participation and engagements of consumers, but not the individual business owners.

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However, Yelp has a more expansive "don't ask for reviews" policy:

  • Don’t ask customers, mailing list subscribers, friends, family, or anyone else to review your business.
  • Don’t ask your staff to compete to collect reviews.
  • Don’t run surveys that ask for reviews from customers reporting positive experiences.
  • Don’t offer freebies, discounts, or payment in exchange for reviews.

With Yelp's "don’t ask” phrases, it's more strict and goes further than any others. The company wants to stop the practice of asking for customer reviews on its website, and third-party sites as well.

It also advises business owners not to work with third-party review solicitation vendors.

And to make sure that businesses won't be doing what Yelp is hoping they won't do, Yelp has also sought to prevent partners and those using its API from soliciting reviews on sites other than Yelp. The company will try to persuade the partner to stop, but if unsuccessful, will potentially discontinue API access or the relationship.

While some of the companies seeking to help business owners obtain reviews, many people see this as unethical. The most accepted solution to the problem, and the only way to continue to have stars, is to discontinue any practice that looks at all like asking for reviews.

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