Leaving Yelp reviews on mobile without downloading app

[barry]

Hi,

Just a quick question. Is it even possible to leave a Yelp review from your mobile phone without downloading the app? (In other words, to do it straight from Yelp's mobile site?)

Thanks,
Barry

 

[Jon Hall]

Hi Barry,

It is possible. Yelp is pretty aggressive about driving people to download the Yelp app, though. Even when you follow a mobile web link of the format m.yelp.com/biz, you're still prompted with a big button to "DOWNLOAD THE APP", or in small gray letters: "[SUB]Continue to mobile site[/SUB]"

If you choose to continue to the mobile site, you can still write a review via the browser. Of course, Yelp benefits big from maintaining a functional mobile site that is well-indexed and gets a lot of traffic from search.

Jon

 

[barry]

Are you sure?

I see that "continue to mobile site" text when I'm just browsing yelp, but when it comes to leaving a review, it prompts me open the mobile app and doesn't seem to give me any other choice.

Am I missing it?

 

[Jon Hall]

Wow, Barry, I'm sorry for the misinformation.

Testing this on our battery of actual iOS and Android devices this morning (not emulators), Yelp does force the app download at the point you try to enter a rating or review when you follow the standard path above.

BUT it appears that you can still write a review via the mobile browser if you bypass all clicking on the Yelp mobile site and directly open a "write a review" URL, e.g. https://www.yelp.com/writeareview/biz/tuIH3ALOciWJRRmVzcOoJQ

I'm curious for others to weigh in. Hope this helps.

 

[Tim Colling]

...I'm curious for others to weigh in. Hope this helps.

As a consumer, I really, really dislike it when companies FORCE me to use their smartphone apps. It's annoying and it interrupts the flow of what I was doing.

As a marketer, I don't have any control over what Yelp does, so I have to adapt to their practices and use good tools to optimize the reviews that I can get for my clients.