How to delete a bad Yelp review

A bad Yelp review can be a real pain for your hard-working team. Even worse if it’s inaccurate, untrue, or blatantly from a competitor because online reviews make a real difference to your business.

Unfortunately, if you didn’t write it, you can’t outright delete a Yelp review. But there are several things you can do instead to stay on top of bad reviews and limit their impact on your business.

How to delete a Yelp review

If you wrote a Yelp review that you now want to remove, it’s easy to delete that review. There are several reasons someone might want to delete a review from Yelp:

• They wrote it in the moment and later felt like they were too harsh on the business.
• They revisited the establishment and had a very different experience the second time around.
• They interacted with the business and received an apology/discount for poor service, so their original review feels disingenuous in light of this.

If you’re the review author, you can delete it so it no longer shows up on a company’s page. To do this, you should log into your account and follow three short steps. The process is the same whether you’re logged in on desktop or mobile:

1. Navigate to the Reviews section of your account

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2. Click on the three dots beside the review you want to delete, and then select “Remove review.” 

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3. Provide a reason why you’re removing your review, and then click “Confirm” to delete the review.

Alternative options for businesses

If you’re a business that’s received a negative review, you can’t just delete it. Yelp has content guidelines that lay out what isn’t appropriate to include in reviews, and if the review in question doesn’t break any of those guidelines, unfortunately, you just have to accept it’s going to stay on your page.

Instead of deleting a review, take some practical steps to respond to it and reduce its impact on your business going forward.

1. Respond to the review promptly. This shows the customer (and potential future customers) that you take their review and opinion seriously and care about their experience. Chatmeter’s reputation management solution alerts you to negative reviews as soon as they come in, helping you to reply quickly. It can also help you identify trends and common themes in your reviews.
2. Apologize for the poor experience. It’s tempting to get defensive — especially if you feel the reviewer was unfairly harsh or critical of your team. But a simple apology goes a long way and makes your business look better in the long run. To help, we’ve put together a list of customizable review response templates.
3. Drum up more positive reviews. One negative review amongst ten will stand out, but when you’ve got 20 or 30 reviews, that critical one loses its impact. Encourage your team to proactively ask for reviews from happy customers so the glowing feedback outweighs the bad.

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How to report a Yelp review

It’s important to note that you can’t report a Yelp review and get it taken down just because it’s negative. It needs to specifically go against Yelp’s content and review guidelines, otherwise no action will be taken.

But If your business has received a review that goes against Yelp’s content guidelines, you can report it to get it removed from your page. In rare, extreme cases, a business could be flooded with a wave of negative reviews from bad actors, which fill up your Yelp page and drown out genuine, positive reviews. 

Some other examples of when reporting a review might be the best option include:

• If the reviewer has a conflict of interest — for example, if they’re a competitor
• If the review contains inappropriate content, such as threats, harassment, or hate speech
• If the review is inaccurate and doesn’t give a true representation of the person’s experience

To report a review, log into your company’s Yelp account and follow these steps:

1. Go to the Reviews section of your account.
2. Locate the review you want to report and click on the “More Options” icon (which looks like three dots).
3. Click on “Report review” to report it for content moderation.

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How to edit a Yelp review

A business can’t edit a review someone’s posted, but if you’re a user who’s left a review of a business, you can edit that review after publishing. You might want to do that if the company’s response or actions have changed your opinions from what you shared in your original review. Alternatively, you may have just spotted a few typos or want to add a bit more context to your review.

To edit an existing review, log into your Yelp account and follow these steps:

1. Go to the Reviews section of your account.
2. Find the review you want to change and click “Edit.”
3. Make changes to your review.
4. Click “Post” to save changes and publish the edited version of your review.

How to update a Yelp review

A business also can’t update a review someone’s posted about their company, but a user can update their review to add more information after publication. You might want to do that if you’ve visited the same company several times instead of leaving multiple reviews. That way, your review stays up-to-date and continues to provide an accurate impression of your experience with them.

To update a review, log into your Yelp account. Then:

• Go to the Reviews section of your account.
• Find the review you want to update, and click “Write an update.”
• Write your new review and add a new star rating based on your latest experience with that business.
• Click “Post” to publish the update to your Yelp review.

Bad Yelp reviews don’t need to be bad for business

While you can’t delete negative Yelp reviews from your page as a business, you can take defensive action. Your best bet is to be aware of these reviews as they occur so you can respond quickly and work to improve the experience for your customers — hopefully helping them change their minds so they edit or update their reviews based on your response.

That’s exactly what Rise Brands did. They partnered with Chatmeter to boost their local search rankings, elevate their online search visibility, and increase the number of 5-star reviews on their business pages. See how they did it, or get in touch with our team to get a feel for how Chatmeter could support your business.

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