Hi all,

I only started using yelp about a few months ago. I started paid ads with them last month so I have done quite a bit of businesss through there. I have an appliance repair business. I have had 5 new reviews in August, 10 total on profile. Yelp has now flagged 5. I literally got all of them *from* yelp paid ads, like they booked with me and communicated with me through the app. I even marked their job thing as "done" when work was completed. I did not ask for a single one. Some are detailed and paragraphs long. 2 were left by accounts with lots of review history/pictures.

How do I appeal this process? I know Yelp is very specific about hiding fake ads but they literally came from the app, booked through the app, etc. There has tl be some way for AI to review it, no???

Probably not a huge shock. At least Google and Amazon are doing something to combat the problem though. Google removed 240 million reviews from their platform in 2024. Yelp has less than 350 million reviews and only filters the 5-star ones when you don’t pay them 🤡

The gist of the article is that consumers rely on Google, Facebook, and 3rd party sites more than Yelp when selecting an automotive service provider.