Reputation Armor

Reputation Armor received several calls a week from businesses that are having issues with positive 4+ star Yelp.com reviews being filtered and not viible to visitors of their yelp listing.

The big question is why does Yelp filter reviews and what can trigger a good review to be filtered?

Based off of our (Reputation Armor’s) research it was found that yelp reviews (goos ones and bad ones) can be filtered for many reasons. Some of the reasons are listed below:

-Your company has put “good” reviews on yelp immediately after a bad one was filed on yelp. A good review immediately following a bad one has the characteristics of foul play within yelps eyes.

-A user has flagged your good reviews and yelp looked in to it and feels it may be false review trying to combat a bad review.

-You are getting to many reviews and it does not look natural to Yelp. It you normally get 1-2 reviews a month and then all of a sudden you get 10 in one month, Yelp will filter some of the because it is not natural looking.

- The same IP address (computer) is trying to post multiple reviews. Yelp can tell that your computer has been there before. They will filter duplicate user or IP reviews (Good or Bad).

-The location of your computer might play a role. If you are in Salem VA, and trying to review a restaurant in LA, then a restaurant in NC, yelp may  think they are false reviews since your computer is sitting in VA.

-Too good to be true? Most reviews online are negative in nature. Not many people go out of their way to say good things about a company unless they are pushed to do so. Yelp is not made up of idiots; they are quite smart and have put hundreds of thousands of dollars in coding to ensure real reviews go live. It is apparent that any GOOD review will go through a greater verification process and maybe a live moderator will read it. If your review sounds over zealous it may get filtered.

-Using a proxy (hiding your true IP) might get god reviews filtered. Proxies are shared with others and yelp might stay up to speed with the newest proxies and give them no creditability.

In Yelp’s Own Words:

“Here at Yelp, we’re trying to connect people with great local businesses. Providing consumers with trusted review content is critical to this mission. One question we occasionally get asked on this topic is why reviews sometimes “disappear” from a business page. While the overwhelming majority of reviews aren’t affected, we figured this might be a good time to offer some specifics on why reviews sometimes don’t appear on business pages (and why we think this helps make Yelp the most useful consumer review site around).”

“Yelp has an automated Review Filter that many people are surprised to learn was put in place soon after our big launch in 2005. Of course, it’s evolved over the years; it’s an algorithm our engineers are constantly working on. Its purpose, however, remains the same: to protect consumers and business owners from fake, shill or malicious reviews.”

Conclusion: If you need help managing a yelp review issue please contact us at 1-888-358-2766 x 701

Reputation  Management and social networks like FaceBook and Twitter go hand in hand. What about MySpace? MySpace.com used to be the big dog in the social networking world and was considered the #1 social site in the world. MySpace is still a great website and will remain very popular, however MySpace is not the most professional place to network if you are a business or a business professional.

MySpace profiles are usually tricked out with bling, music, and funky themes, which appeals more to kids and the younger generation. When I hit a MySpace profile it usually reminds me of being in a nightclub full of underage drinkers. When I drop by other profiles like ones found on facebook and twitter, I feel a little less confused and distracted.

MySpace is still a good tool for reputation management in the sense that the profile might outrank something negative. After playing around on MySpace for a few months Reputation Armor has decided not to use the site anymore.

If you are looking to create a social presence for your company try out list of social networks.

Facebook’s latest changes have plenty of implications for reputation management. Likes and recommendations are potentially great for building a good reputation, but even while there is no dislike button (at least yet), a lack of likes/recommendations may reflect poorly on your brand, particularly when your competition is getting all kinds of love from Facebook users.

On the other side of things, you may want to be careful what you like and recommend yourself. Wording of likes and recommendations can come off as inappropriate, but the bigger issue may be liking and recommending stuff that that paints you in a non-professional light. Depending on what you do and the image you are trying to portray, this may or many not be a problem, but for those who wish to be careful about how others perceive them, this is something to think about.

The story below shows how social networks are becoming a universal tool for the Government, social networks like FaceBook are used by Gov. agencies to not only track what suspects are doing but they can also be used to locate people.

Virginia State Police is crediting tips from its Facebook fans for the arrest of a fugitive.

State police had asked for the public’s help in a Tuesday posting on the agency’s Facebook page. On Wednesday, the agency said in a Facebook posting that information provided by fans helped troopers find and arrest a man wanted on a parole violation.

The suspect faces additional charges of felony child neglect and driving on suspended license. State police say he ran and left an 11-month-old child unattended in a vehicle after a Smyth County trooper began following him.

Over the years Reputation Armor has seen the number of Social networking sites grow very fast. Below is list of the top 175 social networking sites. Reputation Armor (ReputationArmor.com) utilizes a majority of these, along with others, in order to deliver our clients a comprehensive social networking base to their reputation management campaign. *Listed Alphabetically*

Reputation Armor understands the importance of Social Networking Sites. So we would like  to share  the Reputation Armor top 20 list. Rankings bases on popularity as of this month

1 | facebook.com

2 | MySpace

3 | twitter

4 | LinkedIn.com

5 | classmates.com

6 | Ning.com

7 | Bebo.com

8 | HI5.com

9 | Tagged.com

10 | myyearbook.com

11 | Multiply.com

12 | friendster.com

13 | Meetup

14 | BlackPlanet

15 | Gaia Online

16 | Piczo

17 | orkut.com

18 | FotoLog.com

19 | Skyrock.com

20 | badoo.com

To learn more about how to use social networking to manage your online reputation,

contact Reputation Armor @ 888-358-2766

Use the “About” text box to place keyword-dense prose near the top of your Page

Reputation Armor suggests that a key SEO strategy that should be employed on your Facebook Page whenever practicable is placing keyword-dense text as close to the top of the Page as possible. Because Facebook limits where Page owners can place large chunks of text on the default Wall tab of Facebook Pages, the “About” box, in fact, represents the uppermost position in the CSS structure of the page to add custom text.

In order to add text to your Page’s “About” box, click the “Write something about [YourPage]” in the box underneath your Page’s profile picture. You’ll then be able to enter custom text in the input box – there is a 250 character limit, so choose your words wisely.

On March 4^th, Twitter climbed to another remarkable milestone: the company’s 10 billionth tweet. You’re probably wondering, like us at Reputation Armor, what did it say? Something philosophical ? Spam?… The answer is, nobody knows. According to Mashable, the 10 billionth tweet came from a protected account, which means that the only people who can see the update are friends of the user. We would like to think that it was from one of our many satisfied Reputation Armor clients.

Treat your email subject, twitter post, etc as if it were a headline.

SEO quote of the day brought to you by,  Reputation Armor

ReputationArmor.com recommendation:

Check  all of your social networking sites account security settings to find out what  information about you others can see.

Example, Facebook : By visiting the search privacy settings page, you can control the visibility of your public search listing which is visible to Google and other search engines. You can turn off your public search listing by simply unchecking the box next to the phrase “Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing”.