Yelp- business name locked?

[Chris Ratchford]

I'm in the Yelp business owners' dashboard and noticed that the business name has been changed. I'm not able to edit the name and there's a small lock icon above the field.

Has anyone else encountered this before? How did you resolve it?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

We encounter this all the time. It mostly happens when an authoritative source has submitted or claimed the listing.

We don't really deal with Yelp, but to solve this issue I would e-mail feedback@yelp.com and cc your client on the email and tell them that this listing has wrong information and it should be changed to (insert what it should be changed to). Tell them you are unable to change it yourself since the listing is locked and that you've cc'd the client.

There are other solutions, but this is about as far as we usually go with it.

 

[Chris Ratchford]

Thanks Colan!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Chris, have you made any progress with this?

 

[Chris Ratchford]

Hi Colan,

Before I posted, I did go to the contact us section in the Yelp Biz section.

I will email them later today and let you know what comes of this.

Thanks!!!

 

[nicholas_milestone]

I have the same issue on quite a few of my managed Yelp listings.. only way around it is to contact your Yelp account manager directly.. they told me "Directory information is often locked so that user aren't able to go in and edit business listing information." doesnt make sense when these are paid listings i manage.. but thats how yelp is

 

[Chris Ratchford]

@Colan-

Took less than an hour for a response!

The Yelp rep fixed it.

Thanks!!!!!!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Awesome!!

 

[Phil Rozek]

It sounds like you guys have got this particular Yelp issue ironed out, but one thing I?ve noticed is that after a certain period of time ? usually at least a couple months ? Yelp *seems* to unlock the business name. Maybe it?s just me? But I seem to have noticed this on several occasions ? almost as if there?s a ?freeze? period.

This probably isn?t germane to a claimed listing, but I?ve had a few clients who never get around to doing the phone-verification that?s necessary for claiming a listing, which means sometimes the dilemma becomes ?Gee, how can we change a locked business name on a listing that isn?t claimed?? Anyway, I think part of Yelp?s anti-spam efforts involve preventing *frequent* changes to the business name, so in some cases I?d say that as a last resort simply waiting might help, whether or not the listing has been claimed.

 

[Mike Pedersen]

Yelp is SO frustrating!

I have a client that I've trained to get yelp reviews from happy clients. They got 7 legit ones in one week and yelp isn't showing any of them. The staff is losing motivation as they are seeing no results for their efforts.

Anyone else experience this?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

 

[Chris Ratchford]

@Mike-

If clients aren't Yelpers (power users) are more likely to have their reviews filtered.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Mike

As Chris said, Yelp is hugely biased in favor of seasoned Yelpers. First-timers' reviews get filtered mercilessly. (Kind of a paradox: "Which came first: the Yelper or the Yelp review?" Maybe that's a Zen koan worth meditating on.)

Another big factor seems to be the frequency at which people try to post reviews. If 7 people in a week try to post reviews, that looks weird to Yelp - particularly if the week before or the week after nobody tried to write reviews. The pace at which customers even try to write reviews needs to be slow and consistent long-term.

Also - and this is empirical on my part - Yelp's filter seems to favor reviews that aren't just gushing. Most reviews on Yelp are pretty nuanced, along the lines of "I had a great experience at [business], though one minor quibble I had was [insert trifling complaint that wouldn't rankle a normal person]." Don't take this point to the bank, though; again, it's just my observation. Definitely be mindful of the "frequency" factor I mentioned earlier, though.

 

[Chris Ratchford]

This happened to bar/restaurant right near me. I go there a quite often- best bar food in town. It's a dive- only locals go.

Well two months ago they had a PR nightmare. After a Panthers game, a disabled Marine (amputee) came to the bar wearing a Cowboys jersey. Needless to say, some drunk loser mouthed off to the Vet and things went south.

The manager had to stop it and asked the Vet's party to leave and then kicked out the drunk.

Two days later it was all over the news- "Local pub refuses to serve double amputee Veteran". It went viral within a few hours. The pub had to delete their FB page. They received death threats- so they had to take the phone off the hook.

Hundreds of people went to their Yelp page (and G+L) and wrote scathing reviews.

Long story short- a few weeks later when the mob moved on, the Yelp reviews were deleted and filtered. Now it's back to pre-sh*t storm... with a few negative reviews still published.

Crazy.

 

[Phil Rozek]

This happened to bar/restaurant right near me. I go there a quite often- best bar food in town. It's a dive- only locals go.

Well two months ago they had a PR nightmare. After a Panthers game, a disabled Marine (amputee) came to the bar wearing a Cowboys jersey. Needless to say, some drunk loser mouthed off to the Vet and things went south.

The manager had to stop it and asked the Vet's party to leave and then kicked out the drunk.

Two days later it was all over the news- "Local pub refuses to serve double amputee Veteran". It went viral within a few hours. The pub had to delete their FB page. They received death threats- so they had to take the phone off the hook.

Hundreds of people went to their Yelp page (and G+L) and wrote scathing reviews.

Long story short- a few weeks later when the mob moved on, the Yelp reviews were deleted and filtered. Now it's back to pre-sh*t storm... with a few negative reviews still published.

Crazy.

I hope that pub went out of business and the owners are sleeping under a bridge somewhere, getting nibbled on by rats. What losers.

Typical Yelp. They chicken out, even from their own "principles." The same activist employees who pillory businesses that allegedly "buy" reviews (maybe they do, maybe they don't) don't want to get their hair ruffled in a legitimate uproar. Personally, I'd rather have a few shill reviews on the site - which I and most other people can smell a mile away - than have to wonder whether a business I see on Yelp has had its reputation artificially propped up.

Anyway...thanks for sharing that sad story, Chris.

 

[Chris Ratchford]

I should have included- that the owner (also a vet) rushed to get to the restaurant right after it happened- the Marine and his family already left.

The owner banned the drunk from the bar. The family went on his FB page and posted how upset they were. The owner publicly apologized, asked to meet with the fam... but it was too late.

There was some talk that the Marine and his family weren't totally innocent either. Some witnesses claimed that the wife of the Marine was drunk too.

One report said that the drunk guy was kidding around w/ the Marine- trying to have a good time- but the wife went ballistic.

But the ugly side of social media/anonymity/mob reared its ugly head.

Even death threats on Yelp.

It's a good place. Just handled the problem the wrong way and it spiraled.

But that's totally off topic. Sorry about that!

My initial point was about Yelp and the barrage of fake negative reviews.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Chris
Gotcha. Thanks for the extra detail. I see what you mean, and that the whole situation was probably way grayer than I initially thought.

It sounds like the owner isn?t a horrible guy, although I do think any response short of giving the vet and his party a hearty apology and a round of beers on the house is inadequate and unfair (to say nothing of throwing out the guy).

I guess Yelp does need to draw the line at death threats and the like. But I also hope that Yelp was at least consistent when deciding whether to throw out reviews by people who weren?t patrons: Unfortunately, there are a LOT of those on Yelp (?the receptionist was rude, so I didn?t do business with them?), so I hope Yelp didn?t make an exception in this case.

Anyway, sorry to ramble. That?s probably just my twisted outlook on the whole thing!