The company is also discouraging businesses from asking customers for reviews in-store, which many would no doubt argue is when the experience is freshest in their minds. As far as Yelp is concerned, asking for reviews is pretty much like spam.
“Unfortunately some businesses are trying to sneak through fake reviews in an effort to boost their reputations on Yelp and other review sites,” says Yelp’s Kristen Whisenand. “Others may be encouraging their customers to write reviews from the store, which may not sound all that bad until you ask yourself just how objective you’d be if you were at the dentist’s office and she dropped an iPad on your lap and asked you to write her a quick Yelp review. Solicited reviews are often biased and don’t result in the most accurate overall portrayal of that business. You can also be assured that businesses are almost never asking their unhappy customers for reviews.” Emphasis added.
Part of the problem (on Yelp’s end) with people leaving reviews from in stores is that they come from the same IP address. It would seem that reviews coming from a single IP address has been one of the biggest factors in the company determining when reviews are spammy. In fact, the company said right in its new post on the subject, that it “looks for businesses that have received a disproportionate number of spammy reviews, like those that originate from the same IP address.”