Opposite review rules on Google and Yelp

Mid-July is when owners finally look at their review counts. The summer is quieter in some categories and flat out in others, and either way somebody gets an hour to open the profile and ask why there are eleven reviews on Google this year, two on Yelp, and one that a patient swears she wrote and nobody can find.

The confusion nearly always comes from the same place. Reviews get treated as one job with one set of rules. It is two jobs with rules pointing in opposite directions, and running them the same way is how a business ends up with a warning banner on its own page.

Google wants the ask. Yelp does not.

Google’s position is simple. Asking customers for reviews is allowed and encouraged. Your Google Business Profile hands you a short review link for exactly that, and you can put it in a text, on a receipt or on a card at the desk. What Google prohibits is being selective about who you ask, and offering anything of value in exchange.

Yelp’s position is the reverse. Yelp asks businesses not to solicit reviews at all. Not by text, not by email, not with a sign at the register that says “review us on Yelp”. The reasoning is that reviews a business went out and collected are skewed toward the moments the business picked. You are allowed to tell people you are on Yelp, which is what the free “Find us on Yelp” window sticker is for. You are not allowed to ask for the review.

Run the Google playbook on Yelp and two things happen. The reviews you collected tend not to be recommended, so they never count. And a business that does it enthusiastically enough can end up with a consumer alert on its page, a banner sitting above the reviews it did earn, visible to everyone.

So the honest answer to “how do we get more Yelp reviews” is that you build the conditions for them instead of requesting them. Claim the page, fill it out properly, put real photos on it, answer messages quickly, put the sticker on the door, and reply to what arrives.

Myth: the review vanished, so somebody removed it

This is the call we take most often. Usually about Yelp, usually the day after a glowing review went up and then was not there.

Nobody removed it. Yelp sorts reviews with automated software into recommended and not recommended. The not recommended ones are still on the page, behind a link at the bottom, and they do not count toward the star rating. Nothing was deleted and no human decided anything.

What makes the software suspicious is rarely the review. It is the reviewer and the circumstances. In the accounts we run the pattern is consistent:

• Accounts created the same day, with no photo, no friends and exactly one review, land in not recommended more often than not.
• Reviews written inside the business, on the business wifi or on a tablet at the desk, get read as a group and sorted as one.
• A quiet page that suddenly takes five reviews in a week looks different from a page that takes one a fortnight.
• Reviewers who have used Yelp for years, on their own phone, on their own time, almost always stick.

Google runs its own automated systems and they behave similarly, with one difference. A filtered Google review usually just never appears, so there is nowhere to go and look at it. A delay of a few days is normal. A review that never lands is usually a brand new account, part of a burst, or written on a device the profile has already seen.

Very little of this is appealable. You can flag a review that breaks a published rule and some of those come off. You cannot ask for a not recommended review to be promoted, and no amount of emailing support changes the software’s mind.

Myth: the tablet at the front desk speeds things up

It does the opposite, and it is the most common cause of reviews that never appear.

A tablet at the desk gives every review the same device, the same network and nearly the same timestamp. That is precisely the pattern both platforms are built to spot. It also produces reviews written in thirty seconds while somebody waits for a receipt, and they read like it.

What works instead is boring:

1. Ask out loud, in person, at the moment the customer says thank you. That is the only ask with a real response rate.
2. Send one text the same day, from your own system, with the direct link. One text. A second is a nuisance, and nuisance earns you the wrong kind of review.
3. Let them write it later, on their own phone, at home. The slower review is the one that stays up.
4. Ask a question rather than asking for stars. “Would you mind mentioning what you came in for?” The words in a review are what work for you in search.
5. Put one person’s name against it. Reviews that belong to everyone belong to nobody.

For Yelp, none of the above. Sticker on the door, page filled out, replies fast.

Myth: advertising on Yelp moves your reviews

It does not, and Yelp is unusually blunt about saying so. The recommendation software and the star rating sit on one side of a wall and advertising sits on the other. A rep cannot promote a not recommended review and cannot bury a bad one. Owners who cancel ads and then watch their rating wobble are usually watching the ordinary churn of a page that was always moving.

What Yelp advertising actually buys is placement. Your business in the results, your business on competitors’ pages, a call to action, and competitors kept off yours. That is a real lead channel with a real cost per lead and it should be judged as one. It is not reputation management, and buying it to fix a rating is the most expensive way to not fix a rating.

What to do this month

• Write down which platform each request goes to, then confirm nobody on the team is texting or emailing anyone about Yelp.
• Retire the review tablet at the desk and move the ask to a same-day text with the direct link.
• Open your Yelp page and read the not recommended list. If most of your reviews sit in it, the way you asked is the problem, not the software.
• Reply to everything from June and July on both platforms. Two sentences, written for the next reader rather than the reviewer.
• Give reviews to one person with fifteen minutes a day, and check the number once a month rather than once a quarter.
• If you advertise on Yelp, judge it on calls and quote requests this quarter and leave the star rating out of the conversation.

None of this needs a budget. It needs one consistent ask on Google, a page worth finding on Yelp, and enough patience to let real customers write on their own time. That is how our reviews and reputation work runs, it is why we treat Yelp advertising as a lead channel rather than a reputation fix, and the review link you need is already sitting in the Google Business Profile you manage.