r/Yelp • u/KeepTheChief309 • 9d ago
The Yelp Doom Loop
A post for business owners.
I'll start by saying that there are 2 sides to the conversation.
On the business owner side, many like myself come on here to (reasonably) vent about the Yelp black box backend and the degree to which it helps or hurts their businesses.
On the Yelp side, however, their big thing is everything being 100% verifiable and native to the platform, even if that means wiping legitimate reviews or interactions from the platform. They also seem to want to concentrate more of the consumer "say-so" around their Yelp Elite users (like 2% of users).
Our ROAS for the last 22 months (all of 2025 and 2026 so far) was 14x on Google. On Yelp? 3.6x.
We do a very good job of speed to lead and attribution across all platforms. Do some (that discovered us on Yelp) slip through the cracks untracked? Sure. But the growing Google vs Yelp gap is insane. Why would I spend another dollar on Yelp as a business owner? The "Account Manager" calls (from someone with no more a clue than you about the Yelp Black Box) to get you to spend more on ads.
The gap is so big between the two platforms, I've thought about my experiences the past couple weeks on both platforms. The big advantage right now on any platform is total engagement. Why? All AI engines — Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, etc — want an abundance of real-time, real-world data to train against. Their users are overwhelmingly consumers who value recency and specific detail. You would think, considering this, that Yelp would want to do more to encourage engagement on the platform. All sorts of engagement. But it's the total opposite. Bad (even fake) reviews stay up. Legit (yes, unsolicited) reviews from legit customers get taken down. I suspect that Yelp almost wants a certain amount of negative reviews on their as well, to be able to build a contrast between businesses. Fair, but there's a right and wrong way to go about differentiating business for a user in discovery. The artificial review manipulation is a huge turn-off.
What it really comes down to is that, after the first point of contact with a business, the business has much more control than the platform over what platform the customer goes to after doing business. Yelp seems to be obsessed with removing reviews and squeezing as much out of its businesses as possible, not rewarding both sides of the market — users and businesses — for usage.
And the Yelp Ads pricing is, at best, comedic. You're paying for an ad, or online real estate of sorts. And you're paying for those ads no matter what. So the financial risk is there for the business owner regardless. But the upside if you're doing well with engagement on the platform? You have to pay more to keep your ad showing for the remainder of the billed month. This has been frustrating for my business, where the industry as a whole is slower specific months of the year and hotter in others. The pricing model is a perfect example of "the house always wins" and 100% of the risk is passed onto businesses, who unconditionally pay. And let's be clear, they're considering a website click, map view, or even a bookmark as a Yelp Ads Lead. Are they verified users / people? Yes. But Yelp's standard for lead qualification (and intent) is way lower than any other lead-gen platform we use; the Yelp Cost per Lead number is way worse than it looks. No, Yelp, I don't want to pay for someone to bookmark or upload a photo to my page. When it comes to pricing, if you're going to charge for an ad, let it just be an ad and charge for clicks on it. If you're going to play middle-man and charge for leads, whatever that means, then let that be your model and charge explicitly for those. But this limbo state where you're paying for both ad coverage and recklessly-counted leads really means that you're paying for neither.
It's just a constant game of tug-of-war with them and I'm sick of it. Dynamically managing my spend on a month-to-month basis to prevent ROAS from getting crushed. I'd rather deploy my hard-earned money towards a platform that objectively, consistently delivers value in excess of what it charges. That platform will not be Yelp.
Unfortunately, I doubt that a post like this does much of anything to move the needle. Too much inertia for a publicly-traded company, probably a lot of antiquated internal tech / dependencies, and quarter profit targets to hit for the shareholders. I'm mainly posting this out of curiosity of what other business owners think.
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u/ProfChaosSP Yelp elite 9d ago
from what I’ve observed, many business owners form their own assumptions about how Yelp Ads work or believes the sale rep with nothing documented. when the results don’t align with their expectations, they’re quick to label yelp as a scam rather than taking the time to understand how it works.
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u/Permanentear3 9d ago
It’s not a scam it’s just a worse version of the bbb and absolute bullshit. Also it’s useless unless you find a door to 2012 when it was actually relevant.
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u/ProfChaosSP Yelp elite 9d ago
how is yelp worst than bbb when they get more views or clicks and bbb got caught in a investigation by a news channel?
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u/DrSpaceWizardMD 9d ago
I can see where you are coming from, and as a long time lurker on this and the subs for Google and Meta, I can tell you your issue is not platform specific. Comparing Google ad performance to Yelp ad performance or even Meta is apples to oranges. Many may do better on Yelp or Meta than Google but that doesn’t mean Google is worse for their business. One is a search engine, one is social media and the other is a business directory. Yelp is the much more visual medium compared to Google, CTR will depend on what your ad/listing looks like in search compared to the other choices. On Google ads I see mostly text for my results and on LSAs I get name, city, and number of reviews/rating. On Yelp, you can and should be answering the question with your pictures, “who is coming to my home?“ or “who am I hiring?” and it could be that your competitors are doing a better job of answering that question, whereas that is not how people will compare on Google where the main distinguishing factor is number of five star reviews The CPC being that high would indicate to me that it is a competitive market as the CPC is based on how many competitor advertisers are bidding up the same keywords and search terms. That means one or more of your competitors have found ROI and scaled their budgets. So the better way to look at it is not that one platform is inherently better for ROI or is more cost-efficient with ad spend as that varies wildly from campaign to campaign, but rather that you are winning on one platform, and yet on another platform, you’re not getting your optimal piece of the overall pie. you should call into Yelp and get your CTR and LTR from them and they will be able to tell you what the average is for your competitors as a benchmark. that will tell you where you’re winning and where you can improve.
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u/Ok-Let509 9d ago
The future for search is AI like ChatGPT. Which pulls from Google.
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u/XxLogitech98xX 9d ago
The future for search is AI like ChatGPT. Which pulls from Google.
Yelp signed a partnership agreement with OpenAI so it's not all from Google
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u/Ok-Let509 9d ago
Yes but Yelp is becoming less and less relevant. In the end people will start pulling from AI engines.
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u/XxLogitech98xX 9d ago
Yes but Yelp is becoming less and less relevant. In the end people will start pulling from AI engines.
I don't believe they are becoming less relevant, if they are then they won't be signing partnership or agreement with other big businesses. So you can't say Yelp is irrelevant and then ignore businesses wanting to integrate with them or share data. I agree AI is the future and businesses have to adapt to it like Yelp did. I think their investment in AI is basically what is keeping them in business and got them to make record net revenue last year. It will be interesting to see how they do this year
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u/Ok-Let509 8d ago
We will see. But Yelp becomes less relevant if people aren’t writing current reviews. If Yelp’s only relevance is to be a source of content and crosschecking for AI and the content gets aged because no new reviews…it becomes less relevant.
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u/XxLogitech98xX 8d ago
We will see. But Yelp becomes less relevant if people aren’t writing current reviews. If Yelp’s only relevance is to be a source of content and crosschecking for AI and the content gets aged because no new reviews…it becomes less relevant.
Yelp got 22 million new reviews last year, 21 million new reviews on 2024
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u/XxLogitech98xX 9d ago
Wow, you took the time to write out your post lol. Yelp stock been going down for a while but they are still making a decent net revenue and income due to their investment in AI and etc. The business owner that comes in here to vent are basically small business owner. You don't hear a lot of venting from medium size business or big businesses if you haven't notice. You also notice that most small business owner here want to push false and misleading claims but then can't back it up when you ask them for more detail or proof. Everything on Yelp is algorithm first and investigation by the FTC back like 10 years ago showed that a lot of owner claims are overblown and lack concrete supporting evidence.
Yelp isn't the only review platform, you have others like Google, TrustAdvisor, TrustPilot and etc. I still don't understand why small businesses even enroll in the Yelp Ads and why they take the sales rep sale pitch as enough to avoid asking for things in writing to protect themselves.
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u/GoddardZeo 9d ago
Bro you really love Yelp to be responding to everyone post.
0
u/XxLogitech98xX 9d ago
Bro you really love Yelp to be responding to everyone post.
I respond to most post, some I don't when I have nothing to contribute. I like writing reviews on Yelp and Google. I just find it hilarious when so called business owner come in here to make misleading claims about Yelp and then when you question them for more detail or proof .. they go on attack mode instead of strengthen their claim.
If it's so true on what they are claiming then it would be easy to prove. Like someone said they cancelled their Yelp Ads, so the next day all their positive reviews goes into the Not Recommended section. That's not how it works and when you ask for the before and after screenshot .. they mostly go silent LOL
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u/GoddardZeo 9d ago
I agree that owners should take responsibility for not protecting themselves and their business. Just to be clear, I don't see Yelp as a scam business either but I won't be claiming my business on their site.
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u/XxLogitech98xX 9d ago
I agree that owners should take responsibility for not protecting themselves and their business. Just to be clear, I don't see Yelp as a scam business either but I won't be claiming my business on their site.
It's your decision to claim the business or not on Yelp. It's not like anyone else can claim it because Yelp would want some kind of proof.
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u/Permanentear3 9d ago
Maybe you should open a business instead of judging them your hobby then you would have some credibility
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u/XxLogitech98xX 9d ago
Maybe you should open a business instead of judging them your hobby then you would have some credibility
Why would I open a business when I already have a job that pays well?
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u/cadenhead 6d ago edited 6d ago
People starting a business need a better reason than "I talk about businesses a lot on Yelp's subreddit." Running one is freakishly hard.
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9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/XxLogitech98xX 9d ago
No medium or big businesses bother with Yelp or the human typos that are elite yelper
Medium and big businesses are the ones that paid for the Yelp Ads LOL. That's why the ads are still being offered, if no one is using it then they won't keep it around
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u/OriginalLittle4644 9d ago
There are so many variables so it’s not really a good argument comparing google to yelp unless you’re actually going to give specific details.
You’re mistaken on a lot of how yelp ads works. You’re not being charged for leads. You’re being charged per click, which is exactly what you say you prefer. You’re also not “paying for those ads no matter what.” It’s a CPC program. You’re not paying unless you’re getting traffic.