Business owners everywhere are getting familiar with Yelp – the app that sources customer reviews and ratings – and they’re trying to figure out how to benefit from it. What sets Yelp apart is that they give the business no power – no managing abilities as to which reviews are showcased, and which are hidden. By doing this, Yelp can pretty much guarantee that their business reputations are accurate.

If the reviews on your Yelp are disappearing, it could be from a number of things. If a review goes away, the author could have deleted it, or it could have been deleted by Yelp because the author violated the terms of service. If it isn’t either of these, then it most likely isn’t showing up because it’s been flagged and filtered.

Yelp filters their reviews.

This means that they don’t approve every single review to be posted and taken into account for a company rating before first making sure it’s not fake. If a review is flagged as fake, it will be hidden from sight and it won’t count towards the business’ overall rating. Yelp figures that this is the only way to avoid fake reviews.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a lot of reviews to be marked as illegitimate by Yelp. If you’re having trouble getting a good Yelp rating, check out our How to Fix a Bad Yelp Reputation post for help.