Those that kick ass on Yelp..

[Mikey P]

Demien, RIchard from Oroville, Ofer and who ever else.


Like me, I'm sure you are on cruise control by now and enjoy the "bombardment" of work generated from the site.

How would you recover if Yelp went down?

Does Google Reviews do anything for you?
Do you think people would go back to looking at all the top sites?
Would they go back to asking retailers?
Would Kudzu or Angies rise to the occasion?

 

[Lint Basket]

You pimpin yelp or what?

I don't even know what yelp is until I just googled it.

 

[ruff]

Demien, RIchard from Oroville, Ofer and who ever else.


Like me, I'm sure you are on cruise control by now and enjoy the "bombardment" of work generated from the site.

How would you recover if Yelp went down?

Does Google Reviews do anything for you? - Not for me, I don't even know if I have any review there. Should get off my butt.

Do you think people would go back to looking at all the top sites?- Don't know. Yelp seem to have a good following here and in many other places and seem to have good management and better name and perception by the public.

Would they go back to asking retailers?-I think some still do. Another area where a good relationship wouldn't hurt us.

Would Kudzu or Angies rise to the occasion? - Very different organizations. Kudzu does not seem to have much of a footprint here, so so far they seem irrelevant and management does not seem to be very dynamic (Yelp is.). Angie's List seem so greedy and aggressive that they seem to really antagonize most businesses. Never seen a business that was able to create so much bad will at such a short time. The feedback that I am getting from a few clients is that they discontinue membership after a few years. On the other hand they sure are aggressive in advertisement and pushing their brand. Be interesting to see what will happens.

There's also "Diamond Certified" here. Though in my past experience, after the initial few years, they did not generate much business to justify the cost. I reconsidered them for a while, till their recommended company in S.F. became Stanley Steemer. In my opinion, by doing so, they seem intent on pushing their brand into irrelevance. The public is not dumb.

Just like you, I do worry about it and I guess the best policy is to keep pushing in as many areas as possible and hedging our bets.

 

[Mikey P]

Yelp, much like the IICRC is wasting time and resources by trying to go international. Texas and Italy have no need for this sort of modern convenience

 

[ruff]

The issue with any publicly traded company is the need for constant growth to justify stock price appreciation.
Every publicly traded company goes through that, many times at a cost for advertisers and participants.

Once the growth stops, so does the appreciation in stock price. Then they need to tempt the investors (create value) with dividends, which again creates a pressure to produce high income to support the dividend. Always a conflict with stock owners and subscribers value. Once public, the winner and emphasis seem always to be directed at creating short term value for the stock owners and majority stock holders and not necessarily for long term health and value of the company.

One example why some very successful companies will not go public. It changes the whole business.

 

[SamIam]

I'm blessed to have a competitor paying to advertise in my area because I show up in two cities on links get 10 to 20 leads a month and don't pay a dime.

Having 7 5 star reviews doesn't hurt either, 12 filtered?


....

 

[The Great Oz]

If Yelp dies someone else will move in and try to avoid the same mistakes. Citysearch and others that gather reviews from multiple sites will rise back to the top. Maybe Facebook will move in. Google+ is just too invasive for customers to use, and even techies laugh about how useless their G+ accounts are. Angies seems to eventually anger all users, so maybe Porch takes over.

 

[WillS]

Do you pay for your listing to appear first in results on yelp? Is that how you generate business from there or are you just having customers review your company on there? I noticed some with higher reviews are showing up on first page of results (not the ad part, but actual results).

 

[Mikey P]

I don't think the order you appear matters to Yelpers at all, it's how many prolific (wordy) reviews you have that really matters.

 

[WillS]

Ah gotcha. We did try offering $20 off future cleanings for review of our service on yelp, but noticed that if people are just signing up for yelp accounts to review us, their review goes into the "not trusted" link or whatever that is. They have to really be an active user of yelp for their review to show on our page as trusted. Not sure if it is worth it to keep getting them. We have booked a few jobs through Yelp tho..

 

[Mark Saiger]

Yelp is not big in our area yet, but like Jeff Cross said at MF10 during his presentation, you should at least go out and claim your Yelp page.

I just got done setting up our this morning.

Will review it another day as well, but I got it up and going at least....even including some pictures

Now I'm excited to see if it will come up in my New Dodge Ram on it's Yelp app on the Uconnect

Mark

By the way....that Jeff Cross sure puts on a great presentation. If you haven't heard his presentation on web presence and the sort, do your best to seek him out....was one great presentation at MF 10. Glad I got to hear it!

 

[SamIam]

I did try to sign up for my area Mike to advertise with them at the $300 per month for a year, They said there was a mistake and they only had carpet and office cleaning for $500 per month. So I passed for now. Still getting 10 to 20 jobs a month from yelp and I don't pay a dime!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Lars]

Thats a good question Mike....
i don't think it will revert back to the old days, but just evolve into whatever is the next best thing.

 

[SamIam]

You also probably know this but Google and Apple are competitors. When people use Siri to search for a local business Siri use's Yelp. So I think Yelp is fine.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[lust1kiddo]

The good thing about Yelp for me is that it saves me a boat load of money I would have to pay for SEO. I have like 40 reviews or something..once you get that ball rolling it really really works well. I pay like 500.00 for advertising but have just started that a few months ago. I am also on Angies list and stuff. But again..if you are good on yelp you come up high on google searches because yelp is optimized to the max here in NY. Kill 2 birds.

 

[WillS]

Are you asking customers for reviews after the cleaning? How many say they use yelp or are they just signing up for new accounts and then reviewing? I find a lot of our customers are using facebook so when we ask for reviews, its usually going on there. We are a bit over 4,000 followers on there.

 

[thecleaningdude]

What's Porch?

If Yelp dies someone else will move in and try to avoid the same mistakes. Citysearch and others that gather reviews from multiple sites will rise back to the top. Maybe Facebook will move in. Google+ is just too invasive for customers to use, and even techies laugh about how useless their G+ accounts are. Angies seems to eventually anger all users, so maybe Porch takes over.

 

[lust1kiddo]

Are you asking customers for reviews after the cleaning? How many say they use yelp or are they just signing up for new accounts and then reviewing? I find a lot of our customers are using facebook so when we ask for reviews, its usually going on there. We are a bit over 4,000 followers on there.

I always ask for a review. Most people here think of Yelp right away if they want to review something. If they sign up for just writing one it doesnt really matter..it will help your ranking and other real yelpers will find you..then when they are happy, they will automatically write without you even saying so. Most times they do it before even getting a thank you card from me.

 

[The Great Oz]

What's Porch?

Porch.com. Some former Microsoft execs got together to form a referral site for homeowners. No mechanics, restaurants or movie theaters, just services related to homes.

They have both free sign-ups and paid programs. pro.porch.com

 

[Barry-QDCC]

I did try to sign up for my area Mike to advertise with them at the $300 per month for a year, They said there was a mistake and they only had carpet and office cleaning for $500 per month. So I passed for now. Still getting 10 to 20 jobs a month from yelp and I don't pay a dime!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Same here...Not \paying a dime but getting 10-20 jobs a month ( for the last year or so) EXCEPT all of a sudden yelp calls have almost stopped in the last 3 months. I was afraid this was going to happen.

I have 14 - 5 star reviews and 8 others that are filtered - all of those were 5 star reviews at one time.

 

[SamIam]

Do you still show up on searches? Or mine says others viewed these places also and mine shows up


....

 

[Barry-QDCC]

I think the bottom line for Yelp is whatever you get be happy with it.

Yes I do show up on searches - in fact for my city I am #1 right below the yelp ad. The crazy thing is the #2 guy doesn't service my area, nor does he want to. But he has 105 - 5 star reviews and so I guess that boosts his rankings even in areas that are not his. I called this morning and talked to him and he doesn't pay anything to Yelp. He also has noticed and up and down response with yelp calls recently. I searched other cities nearby that are in my area and no where near his and he shows up ranked above the companies that do work in those areas. I myself, who does work in those areas either doesn't show up at all or I'm way down on the list.

My "Yelp activity report" what I get shows in the last 2 weeks I've had over 120 user views, 35 customer leads, 30 clicks to website and 10 mobile calls. I call BS on all those numbers. Greatly inflated in my estimation.

I guess you can't bitch about something that is free, but at the same time if I was Yelp I'd be concerned because me, as a potential paying customer, my attitude is no way in hell would I give you money when your system is so screwed up.

Don't even get me started in discussing their "algorithm" for deciding what reviews are legit.

 

[idreadnought]

Thanks for mentioning me Mike, however I don't think I am in the same league as some others concerning yelp.

Would I survive if yelp died? Yes very much so, Yelp has the most value for me because it shows up above the local search on google in my market. Essentially the very top result is my yelp listing with 13 reviews. This is where I think most my yelp customers come from vs actual yelpers.

Back to the question of whether I would survive? lmao! There isn't a single marketing source, online or offline that could bust my company. For starters we offer the best service available in my market, and if I didn't think I did I would improve it. This leads to a tremendous amount of referrals and repeat work. Second I have multiple sources for new customers so that any one source wouldn't devastate us.

 

[WillS]

This is almost exactly what Yelp emailed me one time. lol

1. Ignore Yelp
2. Be Happy With your Free Listing
3. Pay for Yelp Ads to Better your Business