Yelp: Businesses may publicly respond to reviews

Next week, Yelp is set to roll out a new feature that will allow business owners to respond to user reviews--both good and bad--of their establishments.

In an e-mail sent out to the service's "Elite users," one of Yelp's local community managers Don Bourassa said the service is being set up to give business owners a way to provide constructive feedback in a public forum, as the current system requires businesses to correspond with users through private messages.

"The goal is for all comments to be pleasant and useful," Bourassa said. "For example, if you wrote a glowing 5-star review some months ago about your favorite pub, in which you mention drinking Harp because they didn't carry Guinness...both you and other readers would probably be happy to see a new comment saying, 'Just got our Guinness tap last week. Hope to see you soon!'"

To help regulate the system, business owner comments are given an even more stringent policy than its guidelines for user comments. The company has put up a guide that clarifies what businesses should and should not do with the new system. Any owner-written comments that are deemed disparaging, attacking, or pandering with some sort of incentive will be removed by Yelp's staff.

Businesses that want to take part in the program must register with Yelp. This should give business owners a little more incentive to do so, since they'll be able to directly (and publicly) respond to any criticisms. Presumably, these comments will also show up in the service's mobile applications, of which the iPhone version is set to get an update.

More importantly, this program should help quell some business owners' biggest complaints about the social reviews site, which in the past has given businesses very few tools to respond to negative reviews or unfounded claims. A minute amount of editorial control is granted to businesses who pay for advertising on Yelp, however that's limited to selecting a specific user review to go on top of all the others on the page, and to show up as a suggestion on competitor's pages. Under the new program, registered businesses can simply respond to any comments--positive and negative, directly, and have all the other users see it.

See also: Yelp's credibility problem: Blame it on algorithm?

Update: Here's a screenshot of what it will look like, although a representative from Yelp says this is just a mock-up and may look different when the feature launches.

Business replies will appear under user comments if a business has made a reply, however users will need to expand it to see it alongside user reviews. Click on the image to see how it will look when it's nested.

(Credit: Yelp)

[lkrupp]

I never rely on anonymous user reviews on web sites for my purchasing decisions. Too much potential for false and malicious posts by competitors, or paid shills promoting some outfit. Bottom line you can't trust what you read from nameless, anonymous posters. Everybody has agendas and axes to grind these days.

[Josh.Lowensohn]

Sure, but with this system the business owner (who is not anonymous) can give feedback that everyone else sees to call someone out if there's a factual error. That's nice for drive-by ranting.

[Tracyls001]

I think this is a great thing. I use Yelp often, both to read what others think and to give thumbs up or thumbs down on a business. I also google reviews of products and services. I sometimes wonder if the establishment is posting anonymously to skew what I am reading but it's my responsibility to weigh the responses and purchase intelligently. If I am wrong, I'll post. If I'm right I'll post. By allowing businesses to respond openly, in my view, adds value when making a decision. The reviews are only tools. How I use them is my responsibility.

[reneeand]

It is a good idea for businesses to be able to respond. But, there is a deeper problem here. Yelp allows users to post reviews that violate their policies and they do not remove them, even when requested by other users and businesses. Responding to nasty reviews that should not be on their site in the first place still allows harrassment of businesses.

[rnveron12]

For a small business, giving money to Jeremy Stoppelman and Yelp is like handing a butcher knife to a serial killer.
Yelp needs to verify their reviews. Which is to say that the site needs to actually become trustworthy by being responsible, instead of simply calling themselves trustworthy and expecting people to believe them. They need to be diligent and REMOVE false reviews, either positive or negative, when those reviews are brought to their attention. They need to reinstate credible reviews by actual people, even if those people aren't doing what Yelp wants by spending all their free time on the site, filling it with free content. Short of this, there is no reason for Yelp to exist.

[Tracyls001]

Wow! We're getting into first amendment rights here, aren't we? I think your comment is ridiculous. Does that mean I should have the right to delete it because I don't believe it is true?

[rnveron12]

Someone who can't see the difference between Cnet and Yelp is not very smart. Or a Yelp employee.

[renGek]

How is this any different than amazon comments or any site that offers the public their input. The best way to deal with false negative reviews is for the target to respond so for yelp this is a good thing. I don't know that you can easily sort out the fake positive reviews beyond mind reading. I'm sure some you can like a glowing review by one person of a restaurant that he alleges he went to for the first time as a tourist but seems really familiar with the neighborhood. But a lot of this should be the reader's own intelligence in their personal judgment. i.e. don't believe everything you read.

[Tracyls001]

RNVeron12, I am really sorry you're you're so angry. Take some time, relax and enjoy the weekend. Maybe check out a highly rated tavern on Yelp.com. Perhaps it will help you overcome the pain that festers within.

[rnveron12]

You forgot to say which one you were.

[blogorama]

It took yelp six years to even consider giving small business owners a voice on their website, and only after a flurry of negative media attention threatened the viability of its own business. Yelp has never apologized to the small business community for its actions, nor did it bother to even announce this change to the business owner community. Instead, they send a message to their reviewers, which seems more like an apology for "giving in" to the demands of business owners. If yelp truly cared about the small business community, it would have included its needs in the original business plan, it would not have waited six years to respond to the needs of business owners, and it would not be apologizing for taking the first step toward creating an equitable site. Why on earth would any business owner advertise on a website that begrudgingly supports their needs? Yelp has offered up far too little, far too late, and it simply won't be enough to recover from their long term mistakes.

[rothsteinjewelry]

yelp.com is not a realistic review site. They believe that they have the power to delete reviews of our businesses. We business owners have to abide by their terms of service, but yelp.com isn't bound by any ethics at all. There is a FAQ about deleted reviews (by them): they virtually say "tough luck".
We are not allowed to ask them about it, and the feedback section does not allow this topic.(Hmmm...)
Our store had several positive reviews of our services, and one day most of them were gone.
When one customer wrote a negative review, I wrote to yelp, wondering why the positive reviews (except one) were missing. NO RESPONSE - except that now we have ZERO positive reviews!
yelp.com is the ONLY review site that deletes reviews. I don't believe they should have that right. Business owners have no recourse, except for a LIMITED space to comment to a reviewer, which I did properly. I think they need to rethink their policies about deleting our reviews.
Yahoo.com, Google, MerchantCircle, InsiderPages, & CitiSearch are much more reliable, higher class, and better for business owners."