Yelp Help? (Sorry, I couldn't resist that rhyming title)

[Tim Colling]

Is anyone here especially good at solving listing problems on Yelp? I have a client who has a business in Chicago. She is an assisted living placement consultant, helping seniors choose assisted living facilities, and she originally chose "retirement homes" as her Yelp category. That may be where her problem started.

She listed her home address as the business address but she never met clients there. She has three favorable listings that are visible for that listing and three that are "hidden" or "not recommended" that are also favorable.

She moved to a new home in another part of Chicago and attempted to change the address on her listing. She never meets clients at her home. She merely wanted to update her business address on Yelp and retain those favorable reviews.

Yelp took it upon itself to mark the original listing as MOVED and created a new listing for the new address. All those nice reviews for the original listing are "stuck" with that orginal listing.

My client objected but Yelp claims that in her business category (retirement homes) they never allow address changes to the original listing because assisted living facilities don't move.

I called on her behalf once so far and talked with someone who said that they would try to fix this but they apparently weren't successful.

What we need to do is get the address changed on that original listing and then have the new listing deleted, and retain the nice reviews. Unfortunately, it looks like we cannot gain access to the original listing anymore to attempt to do that.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

 

[Caleb]

I've had issues with Yelp. I was able to get a hold of someone there who solved my problems(Ally Tucker, maybe?). But the resolve was short lived and most of my listings were reverted or the additional information I provided was removed. Now I make a point of not spending too much time on any one of these local sites. Make sure you focus on GMB so people can get the correct information. Sorry for your frustrations.

 

[carolyn2]

I find using Yext is very helpful in cases like this - but agree that its better to not rely on Yelp reviews - I'd make slideshow videos of each individual review and rank them separately - even the ones that aren't showing - that way if Yelp won't help - at least this won't hurt - and I'd use the word Review on Yelp - in the title of the video - its just syndication of content - but it positions your client less reliant on Yelp.

 

[HoosierBuff]

Ugh, I have the same issue with a client, and optometrist with 55 reviews. . . now down to zero because he moved his location. There has to be a better fix than losing all your reviews . . . what a waste.

 

[delstele]

Been fighting this problem for 2 years good luck...

 

[Tim Colling]

I know that it's Yelp's right to do or not do whatever they want to, I don't disput that.

It seems to me like it's not ethical.

But then again, Yelp doesn't seem to care what small businesses think about Yelp's ethics, and especially not if they're not paying for Yelp advertising.

 

[Tim Colling]

Hello everyone -

I'm writing to give you an update on this and to say thank you. I reported the listings as being in the wrong category "Retirement Homes, and suggested that the correct category would be "Elder Care Planning".

If I recall correctly, I did that for the old listing, marked "moved", using my personal yelp account because I wasn't able to edit it using the client's yelp-for-buisness account. I also made the same category change for the second yelp listing, the newer one, using the owner's yelp-for-business account.

Finally, I sent a message to them asking them to merge the listings based on the category change. I don't know whether or not the message made any difference.

As of this morning, it looks like the two listings have been merged and the reviews have survived the merge, and the address shown is the correct one. The category shown is the revised category.

That's what we wanted!

Thanks again to everyone for your help and advice. I'd like to especially thank Phil Rozek who provided a lot of help and advice via email.

Thanks!