Yelp decides which reviews
count toward your stars.
Software sorts every review into recommended and not recommended, and only the recommended ones move the number under your name. A review Yelp suspects you asked for is one of the reasons it names for leaving a review out. For a restaurant that is a strategy, not a technicality.
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What Yelp sorts, and what it publishes about a kitchen
Five things Yelp documents about a restaurant page. The first three decide which reviews count toward your stars. The last two are parts of the page that fill themselves in whether you take part or not, and they exist only on food pages.
Reviews the software does not recommend stay readable behind a link at the bottom of the page, but they do not count toward the star rating or the review count.
Your visible star rating is built from a subset of your reviews. Before panicking about a bad one, check which side of that line it is on.
Yelp names reviews it suspects an owner or an employee asked for as a category the software looks for and does not recommend.
The table tent that works on Google is working against you here. On Yelp the recommended reviews are the ones nobody prompted, which you cannot manufacture.
No Yelp employee can override what the software decided. Yelp says that is deliberate, so nobody at the company can be leaned on.
There is no escalation path and no account manager who can help. It also means an advertiser cannot buy a better sort than you get, which cuts both ways.
Popular Dishes runs on restaurant, food and nightlife pages only. Yelp assembles it automatically out of review and photo content, needs at least three dishes before it appears, and shows up to ten.
Your menu gets a highlights reel you did not pick and cannot reorder. The one lever Yelp documents is captioning your own photos with the dish name, so they can be matched to the reviews that mention it.
Yelp publishes health inspection information on restaurant pages, taken from local health departments through partnerships and third party data partners, whether or not the business has claimed the page or bought anything from Yelp.
It is the one line on a food page that no reply moves and no advertising buys off. What a reply can do is say what changed since, next to the review that brought it up.
A dining room review, answered publicly
Yelp reviewers write long and they write specifically, which means a generic reply stands out badly next to them. The public comment is read by everybody scrolling the page, so it is worth treating as copy rather than as customer service.
A reply that reads as a form letter
Thank you for your feedback. We are sorry that your visit did not meet expectations. We strive to provide excellent service to every guest and we hope you will give us another chance.
A reply written by somebody who was there
Forty minutes for a table you booked is too long and I am sorry. We had two people out and I over accepted on the book, which is on me. We have cut Friday covers by a dozen until the new hire is up to speed.
The second reply admits a specific number, gives the reason, and names the change. Yelp readers are unusually good at spotting the difference, and the reply is permanently attached to a review that may well outrank your own website.
Yelp is one column of the spreadsheet
A busy kitchen is usually being reviewed on the search listing, on two review sites and on whichever delivery apps it uses. Connecting them turns the morning check into one list.
- Yelp
- TripAdvisor
- DoorDash
- Trustpilot
- Etsy
- Square
What restaurant owners ask about Yelp
The first two come up every single time.
Our best reviews are in the not recommended section. Why?
Yelp's software sorts them, and the reasons it publishes include reviews it suspects were requested and reviewers it does not know enough about yet. Those reviews stay readable behind the link at the bottom of your page, but they do not move your star rating or your review count.
So should we stop asking customers for Yelp reviews?
Yelp names suspected solicitation as a reason its software does not recommend a review, so the ones you ask for are the ones least likely to count. That is Yelp telling you where the effort is wasted. Spend it on the reply and on the room instead, and put your review requests where they are welcome.
Can we get a bad review looked at by a person?
Not the sorting decision. Yelp says no employee can override what the software decides, and that this is deliberate. Content that breaks Yelp's guidelines can be reported, which is a different process from asking for a review to be recommended or not.
Can we pick which dishes show up in Popular Dishes?
No. Yelp says the dishes are selected automatically from review and photo content and cannot be ordered or added manually, and that the section needs at least three before it shows at all. What you can do is upload your own photos captioned with the dish name, which is how Yelp says a photo gets matched to the reviews that mention that dish. A reply that names the dish feeds the same pool.
Public comment or direct message?
Both, in that order. Yelp gives you a public comment under the review and a direct message no other user can see. The public comment is what everybody scrolling your page reads, so it is doing the marketing. The direct message is where you sort out a specific problem with a specific person.
Does GetSetReply post to Yelp for us?
No. We draft, you post. Every draft is written against the review and handed over for you to send, so nothing lands on your page that you have not read.
For restaurants
Public replies that sound like somebody who was there
One draft per review, in your voice, waiting for you to read and post.