Why are all of my Yelp Reviews Hidden?

You have been very gracious. You and your staff have been absolutely on point. Any questions or issues your customer has/had, you have answered and you have provided customer service that is well beyond the call of duty. Your customer looks you dead in the eye and says “I am going to recommend you to all of my friends, this was an absolutely fantastic experience.” In that moment you are dealt an ethical dilemma. Do you ask this customer for a Yelp review, even though it is against Yelp’s guidelines? Or do you thank the customer and let them walk out? You are an ethical person, so you decide to let the customer walk out and hope that the customer goes online to leave a Yelp review.

Later that day, you get a notification from Yelp. “Jacob A, has just left you a 5 Star Review.” Without hesitation you jump on to Yelp to thank him for taking the time to write you a glowing review. You feel like $1 million bucks because not only did someone leave you a review, but you followed the “rules” and didn’t ask for one. You go to bed and dream about eating a 5 Star Yelp Review Sundae.

The next day, you come into work feeling good, still riding the high from the Yelp Review you received last night. Within minutes, your mood changes when you look online only to see your glowing 5 Star Review is nowhere to be seen. Your review has fallen victim to Yelp’s Review Filter algorithm. Normally, you would just shrug it off, but this is the 5th time that this has happened in the last month. You slowly start to lose your mind and your grip on reality. Welcome to every business owner in America’s daily Yelp nightmare.

So where do my reviews go?

Your review is no longer on the front page of Yelp, but it has not been deleted. It has simply been hidden from your page. When a review is hidden, the review does not affect your overall review count or your yelp rating. The somewhat good news is that when a review is hidden from Yelp, it does not go away entirely, it just goes on the back page but to get there you have to pass through a labyrinth of easy to miss links.

At the bottom of your Yelp page there is a grey link that says, “# other reviews that are not currently recommended.” Usually the two most recent negative and the most recent positive review can be found here. Right below that is another grey link that says “continue reading other reviews that are not currently recommended.” This takes you to a whole new page where you can scroll through and view all of the reviews that Yelp has ever hidden.

So pretty much, any review that is hidden, will probably never be read by anyone and will have no affect on your business. We feel your pain.

To learn more about why and how Yelp determines what reviews stick and which ones get hidden, read our blog series titled The Review Filter Revealed. Or if you would like to enroll in our Yelp Rating Accelerator Program where we use our proven methods to help you improve your Yelp rating you can click here to book an appointment with us now.