Does Yelp recommend more positive or negative reviews?

Yelp's software is entirely automated and works to recommend the most helpful and reliable reviews to users, regardless of how many stars a user chooses. Our Fast Facts page publicly discloses the breakdown of reviews we publish.

To better understand why it may seem like many of your positive reviews are not recommended Yelp’s software—please consider the following:

• Because Yelp community members typically write more positive than negative reviews, many of the reviews in the not recommended section tend to be some of those positive reviews.
• Yelp’s recommendation software doesn’t favor businesses that advertise on Yelp; reviews from advertisers and non-advertisers are treated exactly the same.
• Follow our Content Guidelines and don’t ask for reviews. Asking customers to write reviews—either for “free” or using incentives like freebies or discounts—may seem like a good reputation building tactic, but is a violation of Yelp's policies. Yelp’s recommendation software is trained to detect that type of behavior, so solicited reviews may not be recommended. We find that the most helpful reviews are written by users who are intrinsically motivated to share rich and detailed experiences about local businesses.

Learn more at about Yelp’s recommendation software here, or watch this video for an overview of our recommendation software works:

We hope to continually improve the recommendation software, and appreciate any feedback you may have.