For business owners looking to get more out of their Yelp profiles, we are eager to support you. Take a look at Yelp's Guide to Success for more information.

We have always operated in support of the businesses on our platform, regardless of their decisions about advertising. Of the nearly 20 million businesses in the US, only approximately 200,000 purchase search advertising on Yelp (as of March 31, 2019). However, many millions more enjoy great reputations and success on our platform solely by providing great customer experiences that naturally lead to positive reviews.

Yelp’s sales team calls local businesses to see if they’d like to advertise on Yelp to get more exposure for the great reputation they’ve earned. Businesses can pay to have an ad appear above Yelp search results. If they don’t want to advertise or don’t want us to call again, it’s not a problem. We don’t threaten business owners and never have. Like other credible companies, we have a “Do Not Call” list for businesses that don’t want to hear from us.

But how does this story keep coming back up? Here's how...

1. The Internet. If we’ve learned anything about the internet, we know that this conspiracy theory about Yelp will never go away completely. The so-called Woozle effect (the frequent citation of previous publications that lack evidence and mislead people into believing a false story may actually be true) is powerful and unrelenting.

2. Sales calls + review software = misconception. We know that simply by the nature of our business, this may not be the last we hear of this conspiracy theory. Our sales team is in touch with thousands of businesses every day, some of whom will decline to advertise. At the same time, to maintain the trust consumers have in Yelp, we built our proprietary recommendation software that is engineered to highlight the most useful and reliable reviews by continuously evaluating dozens of signals. It is a dynamic process in which recommended reviews can change over time as our software learns more information.

While this process is completely unrelated to sales calls, some businesses come to the false conclusion that their decision not to advertise is somehow connected to a change in their reviews. The fact remains that of the many factors our automated software analyzes to provide a reliable and trustworthy rating, advertising simply isn’t one of them.

3. Malicious intent. We try to level the playing field for all businesses, and some don’t like it. There are some businesses who try to game the system to boost their rating, which misleads consumers and harms other businesses that play by the rules. When these businesses ultimately grow frustrated because they can’t game the system, they make false claims in order to discredit Yelp.