Does Yelp Hate Car Dealers?
Keith Theisen ??
Stop The Race To The Bottom * Get Lotlinx * Increase Turn & Profits LotLinx Florida Market Manager
I consult with automotive dealers and recently I kept hearing from them how so many of their YELP reviews are getting flagged by YELP’s software as “NOT RECOMMENDED” and are thus not counting in their overall scores.
One of my stores had 3 good reviews showing but 35 more reviews that were marked as NOT RECOMMENDED. This meant that 1167% more of their reviews were marked as NOT RECOMMENDED than were marked as recommended. WOW!
Then the very next day, I heard from another store that stated that they had 7 good reviews but 90 more were marked as NOT RECOMMENDED. 1286% of their reviews were not counting in their store.
These stores are two of the top rated dealerships on Google for their make and have hundreds of positive reviews on other sites. Surely there must be some hanging chads or missing links around here somewhere...
Something had to be up with this. So as a highly ranked YELPER with lots of reviews and friends and an overall rosy personality, I left my own review for one of the stores I had done business with, knowing that it would certainly stick. Right?
Well yes... but only for one day.
The General Manager emailed me telling me that they just removed my review and marked it as NOT RECOMMENDED. He thought I was something special with all of my Yelp badges and flair, but you could see his respect dwindling for me by the second.
To quote Scarlett O'Hara, "I have never been so mortified in all my years" Or maybe that was Martha Stewart.
Seriously, I was ticked off but rather than write some rant and post it on Linked In for everyone to see, I called a representative at YELP first.
He told me that this happens to all kind of businesses in all kinds of categories, and that CERTAINLY they were not purposefully targeting certain kinds of businesses. There was no profiling taking place based on my profile.
I suggested that “maybe” there was a glitch in their software or that there was something else that was so egregiously tipping the scales against our beloved car dealers.
Once again, he stated the infallibility of YELP and their software, so… I decided to run my own random test and check out this equal opportunity YELP software for myself.
AND THIS IS WHERE THE STORY GETS GOOD…
I searched for “Lodging” in my local area and wrote down the results from the first 15 businesses that popped up
Then I searched for “Restaurants” and wrote down the results from the first 15 businesses that popped up.
Guess what I found… not a single business had over 50% of their YELP reviews marked as NOT RECOMMENDED.
Restaurants came in at 25% NOT RECOMMENDED
Lodging came in at 14% NOT RECOMMENDED
Now I did this same test for Auto Dealerships in three major metro areas around me, only this time I did it for 66 franchised and independent auto dealerships.
And guess what I found, Paula Deen...
Auto Dealerships came in at 370% NOT RECOMENDED.
What the WHAAAAAAT?!?!?!
The gentleman at YELP that I spoke with said that their software could tell when customers were being coerced into leaving reviews or when a dealership was trying to "game" the system.
We can all agree that in any industry there are certainly a few bad apples out there. I could understand that line of thinking for 6 or 7 or even 10 stores, but there are still a lot of dealerships out there that are just not paying attention to their online reviews. They have no strategy or game here. It's obvious. Just look at their Google reviews.
So how could all but 1 of the 66 dealers that I checked be "gaming" the system and have over HALF of their YELP reviews listed as NOT RECOMMENDED.
I am not making this up… 98.5% of all dealers had their reviews buried by YELP's infallible software.
And the one dealer out of 66 who didn't have over half of his YELP reviews marked as NOT RECOMMENDED, came in right at a 50% flag rate, twice that of restaurants and four times the rate of lodging.
More amazingly over half of these dealers, 36 of them, had over 200% more reviews pushed to NOT RECOMMENDED than they actually had reviews displaying on the site.
I am all for statistical improbabilities, but surely something is rotten in Denmark.
I am not here to bash YELP, I just want whatever error is causing this in their software to be fixed, for better or for worse. Customers are missing out on getting to understand the full picture.
As a Yelper, I feel as if millions of reviews suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
My study certainly has its limitations, as do I, so I encourage anyone who reads this to go to www.Yelp.com and run their own study.
Post your results as a comment so we can all understand this better.
Chief Operating Officer at Morgan Auto Group
9 年Keith, Nice article. The fact that Yelp clearly discriminates against car dealerships in general is not up for dispute, at least no one disputes it other than the company who is actually committing the act of discrimination itself, Yelp. The question that I keep asking myself is why? What is there motivation, or hope for gain in doing this?
Unless you pay Yelp and the person writing the review is a frequent Yelper... Nothing sticks for more than a day. Do I trust or recommend Yelp to anyone?? Absolutely NOT. Google is the real deal.
Associate Professor at California State University, Sacramento
9 年Yo, Dino! Very keen observation on websites! ))
Director, Financial Systems at Cresco Labs, Foster Parent, and Father of Children with Disabilities
9 年Great report Keith. I agree with Robin that many people using a computer will search Google and look at their reviews, however, when on-the-go, I have found that Yelp and Google Maps tend to be more equal and Yelp has more reviews, so their reviews are viewed by the consumer as more reliable. None-the-Less, Google WILL win out in the end. @Keith Theisen: if you flip through those 566+ filtered reviews, you'll notice that many have one thing in common. (0 Friends), and are viewed by Yelp as profiles created to leave a good/bad review and abandoned (possibly from the same IP address). While there are no checks and balances for who is and who isn't spamming a company with bad or good reviews besides Yelp's word, it does leave you wondering what about the people with hundreds of friends who were filtered.