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Your Helpful Guide: Yelp’s New Review Solicitation Policy

Yelp recently announced that it will be more aggressively enforcing its “Don’t Ask” policy, penalizing companies that show signs of “organized review solicitation.” Specifically, companies that Yelp believes to be actively soliciting reviews are now at risk of having their pages demoted in the platform’s search results as well as having a “Consumer Alert” warning placed on their Yelp business page. A Yelp spokesperson explained the company’s reasoning for its “Don’t Ask” policy stating, “A business is more likely to ask their satisfied customers to write reviews, and when businesses heavily solicit or offer freebies or discounts in exchange for reviews, that puts other businesses that play by the rules at a disadvantage.” Whether or not Yelp’s policy is a sound business decision is yet to be seen. In the meantime, business owners need to figure out their next move. If you’re working on your own to collect more reviews … Continued