Yelp Review Monitoring

Since Yelp is made up of a global community of locals who share their opinions of local businesses, it is used as a guide to find everything from good restaurants, to good mechanics etc.

What makes matters worse for businesses, is that over the past decade, sites such as, Yelp and Google have made it easier for people to leave reviews that have an impact on other people’s purchasing decision, without having to come into contact with others. While this can prove to be good for a business that receives positive reviews, getting negative reviews, on the other hand, it can be the cause of much worry for businesses. 

It is getting harder for businesses to suppress bad Yelp reviews, and while it is sometimes possible to get those bad reviews removed from a site, it usually takes months for sites such as Yelp or Google+ to remove a negative review of a business. 

Rather than trying to remove a negative review, businesses should try to respond to those negative reviews by providing an answer to a disgruntled customers. Responding to the reviews that are left by customers is one of the best ways of reducing the risk of creating a negative first impression on all those who are going to read the reviews. The answer here is not on getting negative reviews removed from Yelp, but on getting more positive reviews from your customers by providing them with top quality products and services. 

While it is okay to address a review on a bad employee in the review section so that all your customers can read it, in cases where slanderous or false reviews have been left by customers they should be removed immediately. However, if the reviews misrepresent the facts, review sites such as Yelp will be more keen on taking them down. But, more importantly, use online tools and resources to keep track of the negative or fake reviews when they pop up so that you can get a handle on the issue before a fake review ends up spoiling your business. 

Given the growing importance of review sites such as Yelp, it is crucial to stay on top of what your customers are saying about your business, and the only way of doing that is by constantly monitoring the reviews that are left on review sites such as Yelp. While a marketing manager or social media specialist can follow the flow of information online, businesses will need to bring in the expertise of reputation management services to determine the state of your reputation and maintain the positive reputation of your business online. Besides the sophisticated services provided by hiring reputation managers, there are some things that you can do from within the walls of your restaurant. 

If you feel monitoring online reviews on sites such as Yelp have become time consuming, it may be time to hire a professional to do the job for you. This is often the case for restaurant owners who have restaurants in multiple locations. In such a scenario, it can be difficult to read through every customer review, since restaurant managers normally have to spend a great amount of time on the floor, greeting customers and answering their queries, and not in front of a computer. This is where hiring of reputation management services can come in handy. But, if you are thinking of doing so, it is important that you do your homework before hiring an online reputation management service to ensure you find one that meets your needs.