Tag Archive for: Yelp

Yelp Announces Its “Biggest Update In Years”

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Yelp has revealed 3 new features aimed to make it easier for brands to connect with customers and to improve user trust in the brands they find on the platform. 

These three features, which include a satisfaction guarantee program, implementing AI to deliver a better search experience, and more immersive videos, make up what Yelp is called its “most significant update in years.”

Below, we will explore each new feature and when you can expect to see it for yourself:

Yelp Guaranteed

What is it?: Yelp Guaranteed is a new customer satisfaction program that guarantees up to $2,500 back if you are not happy with home improvement work done by a verified business. Specifically, the announcement says that you’’ be able to submit a claim if you have problems resolving an issue directly with the business. 

Additionally, the company says verified businesses will receive a badge and may be prioritized in future search results on the site. 

When will you see it?: This program is gradually rolling out to both users and businesses in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Seattle, and Washington D.C. though the announcement says they hope to expand the program nationwide soon. 

To be a part of the Yelp Guaranteed program, your business must be a Request a Quote-enabled advertiser in these industries:

  • Movers
  • Plumbers
  • HVAC
  • Contractors
  • Landscapers
  • Electricians

Yelp says it hopes to be able to include other markets in the near future.

Enhancing Yelp Search With AI and Large Language Models

What is it?: Yelp is in the process of improving its search tools to include a slew of new abilities using AI trained with Large Language Models. Through this, the company has been able to better understand search intent and deliver  more precise and personalized results,

The first wave of these AI-enabled features to be revealed includes highlighting the most relevant parts of reviews for your needs, providing search suggestions based on search intent, clickable category tags, and even a way for the site to “Surprise Me” with dining suggestions.

When will you see it?: The first wave of these AI-powered search features seems to be rolling out to users across Yelp now, though the announcement suggests you can expect to hear about more AI-led features soon.

New User Engagement Features

What is it?: Yelp is using new visual and interactive features to make its platform more engaging and encourage users to share their own opinions and reactions. It will do this by introducing new reactions, new ways to share media in reviews, and providing ideas for generating more effective and informative reviews.

Specifically, the announcement highlights these three new features:

  • You can now include high-resolution videos up to 12 seconds long along with your text reviews and uploaded pictures.
  • Yelp will now suggest topics users may want to discuss when writing a review. Such as “food,” “service,” or “ambiance.”Once a reviewer has covered these topics, Yelp will mark each topic with a green checkmark. 
  • Respond with reviews with a wider range of review reactions beyond just “Useful,” “Funny,” and “Cool.” Now, users can select from more options including “Helpful,” “Thanks,” “Love This,” and “Oh no.”

For more about Yelp’s biggest update in years, read the full announcement here.

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Yelp Releases New Features Just For Services Businesses

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Yelp may be known for being the place to go for restaurant reviews, but what is often forgotten is that the site covers a huge variety of services businesses – including salons, movers, plumbers, hotels, and much more. 

Now, the company is releasing a slew of new features for all of these businesses, like custom search filters, new ways to drive reviews, Project Cost Guides, and ads themed around what makes your brand great.

Project Cost Guides

To help consumers make informed decisions before they hire a professional, Yelp is introducing new Cost Guides which show the average cost of specific services in your area. These prices are based on data pulled from Yelp’s Request-A-Quote service, which has facilitated “tens of millions” of projects.

Along with these pricing averages, these pages provide tips and cost-saving methods for consumers.

Currently, unique Cost Guides are available for around 20 categories, more than 90 service types, and 150+ cities.

Custom Search Filters

Users can filter businesses based on their specialties or unique abilities, such as filters for:

  • Fast-responding businesses
  • Businesses who offer virtual consultations
  • Specific types of jobs or repairs
  • And more available for services including movers, plumbers, HVAC, auto repair, roofing, real estate agents, home cleaners, painters, electricians, landscaping, pest control, and flooring

Themed Ads

Services businesses that are running search ads can now take advantage of themed ads to highlight what makes you stand out from your competition.

The currently available themes include brands that reply to Request-A-Projects within two hours, businesses that have special offers, or those that provide free consultations. 

Running themed ads costs nothing extra and Yelp says it plans to introduce more themes in the future.

Automatic Review Prompts

After users submit a project with Yelp’s Request-A-Quote tool, the platform will now use this information to generate a prompt for users to write reviews. 

For example, prompts may ask a series of questions about their experience to kickstart the review process and drive more thoughtful informative reviews.

You can find out more about these new features for services brands in the official announcement from Yelp here.

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94% of Consumers Used Online Business Listings This Year, According to New Report

It is well known that business listings on sites like Google My Business or Yelp are an important part of connecting modern consumers with local businesses in their time of need, but you might not realize just how essential they are. 

A survey recently conducted by BrightLocal makes it perfectly clear, showing that 94% of consumers use business listings websites to find local businesses and more. 

Below, I’ll be breaking down some of the most interesting findings from the study:

Why Do Consumers Use Business Listings?

After showing that nearly all consumers (94%) have used business information websites in the past year, the survey asked what the respondents had been hoping to achieve. 

They found that most had multiple reasons for searching business listings, but most were driven to specifically connect with brands they’d never done business with before.

Specifically, the results showed that 66% of consumers used business information sites to find new businesses, while 66% found information on businesses they were already aware of but hadn’t used.

Meanwhile, less than half (48%) used local business listings to find information about businesses they had already used before.

Which Business Listing Platforms Do People Use?

Out of more than 20 options, the results showed that the vast majority of people used a small handful of sites to find information about local businesses.

Unsurprisingly, Google led with 89% of consumers using the service to find a local business at least once in the past 12 months. 

For comparison, Facebook followed with 48% of respondents using the platform for local business information. 

It should be noted that in many cases, a platform like Yahoo may be using another service’s search engine – such as the case with Bing. Though only 15% of users directly used Microsoft’s search engine to find local businesses, more than a quarter (28%) used platforms powered by Bing.

Additionally, the reason popular platforms like TripAdvisor or Waze don’t appear high on the list is likely that they focus on one niche, unlike Google or Facebook.

Wrong Information Is Rampant

It should be obvious that your listings need to be accurate for a number of reasons. Not only is important for potential customers to be able to actually find the businesses that offer the products or services they need, but local listings serve as powerful SEO signals as well. 

This is why it is rather surprising that most consumers say they have encountered incorrect information in business listings in the past year. 

According to the report, 85% of consumers found incorrect or incomplete information on a business listing in the last year, and 77% saw conflicting information on a business across different online directories.

Wrong Information Loses You Business

To make it clear how directly inaccurate information on your listings affects your business, 63% of consumers say that finding incorrect information on a business listing would stop them from using that business. 

That is more than half of your potential new customers gone because your phone number, hours, address, or other basic information are wrong online. 

How Covid Impacted Local Listings

It has to be noted that online local business listings have taken on a new level of importance over the past year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Quickly changing business practices, new safety measures, shifting hours, made it necessary for consumers to check online before going to any business – even ones they’ve been to dozens of times. 

For example, 74% of consumers used local listings to see what Covid-19 safety measures brands had put in place.

Unfortunately, brands didn’t always keep up their side of the bargain by updating their listings as things changes. Based on this survey’s responses, 81% of consumers visited a business that said online it was open, but that was actually closed due to the pandemic.

As the study shows, you don’t need to have your business listed on every site out there. Instead, it is better to focus on keeping your information accurate on every directory your business is on – even if you are only on a handful of local business information sites.

For more information, including additional findings methodology, and further analysis, check out the full report from BrightLocal here.

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Incentivized Check-Ins Can Help Your Business Generate Yelp Reviews

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Reviews are one of the best tools local businesses have for establishing a reputation and trust within their community. The problem is it can be difficult to convince customers to leave their opinion on Google or Yelp, especially due to Yelp’s strict “no review solicitation policy.”

Yelp’s Luther Lowe gave a tip to help get past this hurdle and start generating reviews at the LSA SMX West Local Search Advantage Workshop.

Yelp’s policy against review solicitation prevents businesses from asking for positive reviews, though it has not prevented some other creative attempts to gain a positive standing on the site. However, Yelp does allow incentivized check-ins. Obviously check-ins are not reviews, but when users check-in to receive an offer, they are automatically prompted to review that business the next time that return to the site or mobile app.

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This system gives businesses a means of encouraging users to leave a review without placing their hands on the scale. The problem with allowing incentivized reviews is obviously that many people would be pushed to give dishonest reviews, but through a pre-review reward users are still free to speak their mind.

From a business matter, this also benefits Yelp because more check-ins equates to more value and usage, but it also gives a valuable place for businesses to lightly nudge customers to help spread the word.

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Yelp’s Study Says Yelp is the Most Influential Local Review Site

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Earlier this week we reported on a recent study highlighting the growing influence of online reviews, and there is no service as closely associated with online reviews as Yelp. Of course, Yelp agrees and they’ve commissioned a new study from Nielsen survey data to show it is the most frequently used, most trusted, and even the highest quality local reviews site. But, many are skeptical of their findings.

The study used a sample of just over 1,000 US users of review sites, including competitors such as Angie’s List, Citysearch, OpenTable, TripAdvisor, YP, and Zagat. The survey consisted of 22 questions in all and the sample was weighted for age and gender to be representative of Nielsen’s NetView audience. In a blow to the credibility of the survey however, it seems only a few of the results were released – presumably the results which favored Yelp.

Out of what was released, the survey showed that 78 percent of consumers use review sites to find local businesses and help make purchase decisions, with Yelp taking the lead in several categories such as “most influential,” “most trustworthy,” and “best quality reviews.”

Another source of apprehension for this study was the decision not to include Google or Facebook. When asked, Yelp told Greg Sterling:

Our findings specifically around review sites came after we included Google and Facebook in a question on what sites people use to find local businesses, but those sites aren’t solely focused on local business discovery. We dug deeper into those sites that are.

That led Sterling to the conclusion that Google and Facebook likely exceed Yelp as a source for local business information, but it isn’t dishonest to exclude them from a study focusing specifically on “local business discovery” because both platforms have such broad usage.

The study isn’t completely invalid because of these inconsistencies. It goes without question that Yelp is at the forefront of local business discovery and reviewing and several other studies show that Yelp is in fact influential in local purchasing decisions. This study reinforces the fact that Yelp is a major player in these categories, but obviously it should be taken with some skepticism.

You can see the graphic displaying Yelp’s findings below:

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Survey Shows Younger Consumers May Be More Accepting of Bad Reviews

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You can work on building your brand’s image and marketing as much as you want, but at the end of the day bad reviews can outweigh all that hard work. We’d all like to believe that good reviews can balance out the negative, however that notion got pretty well shattered when Mike Blumenthal recently published a set of surveys strongly showing that consumers perceive that a “negative review corpus hurts a business more than positive reviews help them.”

For businesses struggling with the issue of negative reviews, this news isn’t a relief. However, Blumenthal reviewed his results and noticed something interesting. Younger consumers seem to be more tolerant of bad reviews than their older counterparts.

Of course, younger consumers aren’t going to forgive a place with an outstanding number of one star reviews. But, it appears that consumers between the ages of 18-24, specifically those who are more savvy to online reviews, may be able to parse negative reviews more thoroughly rather than rejecting businesses out of hand. Rather than accepting the review at face value, they actively search for aspects that could be a deal breaker.

Obviously, the best way to handle a bad review portfolio is to directly address any valid concerns of reviewers, and encourage those who have positive experiences to review your site so that you can potentially water down the negative. But, Blumenthal’s survey suggests that reviews are always the end-all-be-all that we think they are.

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