How To Remove A Yelp Restaurant Review
It’s happened to all of us.
The phone dings.
Or maybe you see an email pop up.
“NEW YELP REVIEW”
Oh no.
Your stomach drops.
The nervousness hits.
Is this the typical five-star review you get from one of your happy customers or…
A troll or competitor or disgruntled former employee or just some random person causing trouble by leaving you an UNDESERVED one-star review?
What can you do to remove a Yelp restaurant review?
Yelp Reviews Have Power
Whether we like it or not Yelp wields a lot of power. It has been waning over recent years, but Yelp still boasts over 31 million active app users and MILLIONS of more visitors every month.
Research shows that the average Yelp user visits a restaurant within 7 days of visiting the platform. Yelp users are actively looking for restaurants to try.
What will a Yelp user see when they find your restaurant on Yelp?
- The great reviews that your customers leave your restaurant?
- Or fake reviews from trolls and others just trying to cause trouble?
One of the main complaints against Yelp is they filter out positive reviews while always sharing negative reviews. We’ve previously covered how restaurants can ensure that positive reviews show up on Yelp’s platform.
Learning how to remove a Yelp restaurant review is important so in this blog, we review how to remove a negative review from your restaurant’s Yelp listing.
How Can You Remove a Yelp Restaurant Review
Yes, removing a negative Yelp review from your restaurant is possible.
It’s not easy, but it is possible.
We’ve learned a process across countless calls with various Yelp representatives and tons of trial and error for removing negative Yelp reviews.
It takes some effort and a little bit of understanding of how the Yelp platform works.
If you’d like to understand how we developed this process, why it works and whether or not it applies to your negative review, read on. If you’d just like to skip to the step by step process, click here.
Why You Might Be Able To Remove a Yelp Restaurant Review
Right off the bat, let’s make this clear.
You will not be able to remove a Yelp restaurant review just because it is negative.
If a review is an honest and fair assessment of your restaurant by an actual customer chances are you will not be able to have it removed from Yelp just by asking Yelp.
If a negative review is a legitimate complaint from an actual customer we suggest that you contact the customer directly and attempt to resolve the issue with them. If the issue is resolved to their satisfaction they will often remove the review or even change it to a positive review.
Most customers who leave a negative review just want to be heard.
Why You Should Try to Remove Negative Restaurant Reviews
Online reviews are incredibly important for restaurants because reviews have a serious impact on the choices of your potential customers.
- Over 90% of customers say they consult online reviews before trying a new restaurant.
- Over 75% of customers say they trust online restaurant reviews MORE than personal restaurant recommendations from someone they know.
- Customers who read positive restaurant reviews are 31% more likely to check out the restaurant’s website, 17% more likely to visit the restaurant, and 12% more likely to call the restaurant.
- On the other hand, customers who read negative restaurant reviews are 92% less likely to try a restaurant.
Generating positive reviews and eliminating negative reviews is incredibly important for your restaurant. In this blog, we are focusing on how to remove a Yelp restaurant review.
Getting Rid of Negative Yelp Restaurant Reviews
Believe it or not fake reviews are a thriving business.
What?
Seriously, according to the Harvard Business Review, the business of buying and selling both positive and negative reviews is a multi-million dollar industry. Online reviews influence says and are a HUGE part of Google’s search algorithm so it’s only natural that a business would arise to fill that market need.
Unfortunately, the business of buying fake negative reviews to hurt your competitors has grown as fast or faster than the business of purchasing positive reviews for your business.
To counter this trend, platforms like Yelp and Google utilize their algorithm to filter out reviews they deem to be fake or potentially fake. The pandemic exasperated this issue as staff shortages put the manual review of reviews that the algorithm flagged as potentially fake months behind.
Additionally, platforms flag many more positive reviews as being potentially fake than they flag negative reviews for being potentially fake.
All of this works to the business’s disadvantage. The restaurant industry is hit particularly hard by this process.
One 10 month study of restaurant reviews found the Yelp filters out over 16% of reviews for “being fake.” The majority of the reviews that were filtered were positive.
The Step By Step Process to Remove Yelp Restaurant Review
1. Respond To Every Negative Review
We get it. Your first instinct when your restaurant gets a bad review is to fire off a vehement defense of your restaurant, your team and yourself.
Don’t do it.
Slow down.
Take a breath.
A response to a negative review written in the heat of the moment can have terrible reprocussions.
The average restaurant review is viewed 40 times per month.
The average restaurant review with a response is viewed 80 times per month.
Think about the message you want not just the customer who left the review to see, but the message you want 80 other potential customers to see.
Imagine your response written in the heat of the moment goes viral… Will that be good for your restaurant or bad for your restaurant?
Take your time and deal with the negative review in a professional manner.
- If possible attempt to connect with the customer via a more private platform such as email, text, Facebook messenger, or even by phone. Don’t carry out a back and forth in public.
- If you don’t have the customer’s contact information, leave a polite and courteous reply to the review. Thank them for their feedback. Assure them that you are addressing their concern. Ask them to reach out and connect with you through email or by phone so you can resolve the situation.
If the negative review is the result of genuine concern and negative experience with your restaurant, make sure the customer understands that you are truly committed to making things right and view this as the opportunity that is. A chance to improve your restaurant for all your customers and potential customers.
We previously talked about how to handle negative reviews no matter how you get them.
You can read that blog here.
2. Removing Fake Yelp Reviews
Okay, this is the part you’ve been waiting for and the part most of you probably skipped to.
Before we proceed let me impress upon you, DO NOT ABUSE THIS PROCESS. If a negative review is a legitimate negative review from a genuine customer, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REMOVE IT WITH THIS PROCESS.
Yelp is not going to favor restaurants that “cry wolf” about genuine reviews being fake.
Yelp has guidelines for addressing fake reviews. You can read them here. Do not abuse them on genuine reviews or it will be MUCH MORE DIFFICULT for you to review actual fake reviews in the future.
Yelp specifies that reviews:
- Should not be exchanged for payment or reward
- Should be based on the user’s personal first-hand experience
- Should be factually correct
- Should not be based on previous interactions with a brand
- Should not be used to promote other brands or products
- Should not contain inappropriate material such as threats, hate speech or harrassment
- Should not be a conflict of interest (ie: a positive review for a family member’s restaurant or a negative review for a competitor’s restaurant)
When contesting a fake review, it is best to start with the most obvious example of a violation of Yelp’s guidelines.
"Should Not Be A Conflict of Interest"
Proving that a review is a conflict of interest in that it was left by a competitor is often the easiest way to have a negative Yelp review removed.
Gather as much evidence as possible that the review is a conflict of interest. If you can prove the review was left by a disgruntled former employee, the owner of a competing restaurant or an employee of a competing restaurant then you have a good chance of having that review removed when you submit your information to Yelp.
"Should Be Factually Correct"
The second-best chance for having a negative restaurant review removed from Yelp is by proving the review is fake or fraudulent.
Collect as much information as you can to show that the reviewer was not a customer.
Document your attempts to contact them to resolve the situation and address the issue.
Illustrate that you treated the review as if the customer’s concern was legitimate. If the customer does not respond in kind that will help you get Yelp to remove the review.
"Contains Inappropriate Material"
This one is a little more of a long-shot as most fake negative reviews do not contain objectionable material, but if they do it is the easiest method for getting a review removed.
Simply, document the inappropriate material in the review and submit it to Yelp. If it is truly inappropriate and contains threats, hate speech, harassment, or vulgar language, Yelp will generally remove it quickly.
If you attempted to contact the review and they responded with inappropriate content, document that as well as it will strengthen your case.
3. Removing a Negative Restaurant Review from Yelp Step By Step
Just to reiterate, do not abuse this process for legitimate negative reviews or contest a negative review without supporting evidence. Getting rid of fake negative reviews is very important for your restaurant so take the process seriously.
When you attempt to have a fake negative review removed, be sure to gather all your evidence so you can present a compelling case to Yelp.
- Go through all of your communications with the customer and your records in your CRM, POS and any other records you have of your interactions with the customer. If you can verify that the review is NOT from a real customer that is a violation of Yelp’s guidelines and ground for the review to be removed.
- Review the customer’s other reviews. What other businesses has the customer left reviews for? What is their general sentiment? You can learn a lot from this. If they have only left a review for your restaurant, that’s a strong indicator of a fake account. If they have never posted a photo, that’s a strong indicator of a fake account. If they have only posted negative reviews, that’s a strong indicator of a fake account. If they have only posted positive reviews for a competitor, that’s a strong indicator of a conflict of interest.
- Check the language, tone, and tenor of the review. Is similar language used in other reviews? That’s a strong indicator of a fake review account.
- Check to see if you have series of bad reviews left for your restaurant in a small window of time from different users, but with a similar tone. This is a strong indicator of a strategy used by spammers who will either ask for payment to remove the negative reviews or who were paid by a competitor to leave negative reviews.
Spend the time to collect as much evidence as you can BEFORE you bring your case to Yelp.
Asking Yelp To Remove A Negative Restaurant Review
We’re finally here, the actual step-by-step process of removing a negative Yelp review. Remember, the more evidence that you have gathered to present to Yelp, the better your chances of getting the review removed.
1. Claim Your Yelp Business Profile
Claiming your Yelp business profile will not only help you get negative reviews removed, it will also help you with your Search Engine results. Yelp is one of the sources Google and other search engines crawl when looking for results.
If you claim your Yelp business listing you can ensure your business information is up-to-date and correct.
Claiming a Yelp Business Listing is simple. Just go to Yelp For Business and follow their step-by-step guide.
2. Find the Negative Review
Log in to your Yelp For Business account. Then click on “Reviews” on the left-hand side. Scroll down until you find the fake review that you want removed.
3. Click On The "Report Review" Button
On the upper right-hand side of the review, you’ll see three dots. Click on the three dots. Then from the drop-down menu that appears, click on “Report Review”
4. Fill Out The "Report Review" Form
First, select the reason you are requesting that Yelp remove the review from the drop-down menu.
Fill in as much information as you can and include as much documentation as you can.
When you are done, click on the “Report” button.
5. Wait
“WHAT! I JUST WAIT!”
Yeah, unfortunately, that’s all you can do.
Yelp moderators are going to manually review your request. They will do their own investigation into your claim.
That takes time.
There’s nothing you can do to speed up the process.
You just wait until Yelp informs you of their decision.
If the review is removed, Yelp will notify you and the author of the review.
The process typically takes a week, but we’ve seen the process take as long as a month to be resolved.
If you haven’t gotten an update after 2 weeks, contact Yelp and ask for an update.
"I DID ALL THAT AND YELP STILL DIDN'T REMOVE THE FAKE RESTAURANT REVIEW!"
That’s a possibility. There is no guarantee that Yelp will remove a negative review. Even if you present all your documentation that a review goes against Yelp’s guidelines, Yelp might still decide to leave the review up.
At that point, what can you do?
Unfortunately, not much.
We suggest moving to trying to mitigate the negative review by generating enough positive reviews from happy customers to overwhelm it.
We’ve shared a number of techniques for generating 5-Star Restaurant Reviews on our blog. You can check them out here.
In the meantime, a good course of action is to learn from this experience and work to make future reviews more positive. We shared some techniques for that here.
Finally, we have a complete guide for generating 5-Star Restaurant Reviews that dives deep into all the ways we’ve helped our restaurant clients generate hundreds of 5-star reviews. You can get yourself a copy here.
If you have any questions about removing negative Yelp reviews or would like our help generating more 5-Star Reviews for your restaurant feel free to reach out and Contact Us.
