Reviewing a Business

Yelp is a very valuable online resource to access to find great businesses.  Personally, I get most of my business from referrals and an online search for my website.  Beyond that, my Yelp listing is where I obtain most of my new business.   I use Yelp all of the time, in town, and when I am on vacation.  This resource has never let me down.  For example, while vacationing in Canada this summer, by checking in to local businesses, I met a Yelp employee via Yelp who gave me several great tips about restaurants, museums, etc.  I did discover very quickly Canadians don’t yelp as much as Californians do so that’s why I probably stood out when I was yelping.

Here are a few tips when using this resource.  When you do search for businesses, look at the overall star rating of a business.  The more reviews there are, the stronger likelihood there will be some negative reviews.  If the majority is positive, you should be good to go. 

If you feel inspired to write a positive review of a business, please write more than one sentence.  It is helpful if you could take some time and write a thoughtful review – think about what sets the business you are reviewing apart from all others?  If you feel compelled to write something negative, please take a day to think it over.  I have witnessed where people have really ripped into a business unnecessarily. Why not pick up the phone and address your concerns with the business owner?   

Be aware that if you don’t log on to Yelp regularly or write reviews, any reviews that you do write, might get filtered.  To view filtered reviews of any business, scroll to the bottom of the reviews, click on filtered and once you enter Captcha code, you will be able to read all of the filtered reviews.  Yelp filters reviews for a variety of reasons.  I don’t particularly agree with all of the filtering methods.   http://www.yelp.com/faq#which_to_filter