Yelp for Business

Why Yelp hides some of your reviews as not recommended

Yelp's automated recommendation software decides. Reviews it sees as unreliable, solicited or tied to the business go to a not recommended section and don't count toward your stars. No employee can override it.

6 steps

  1. Step 1: Scroll to the bottom of your Yelp page and open the link to reviews that are not currently recommended.
    2 min
  2. Step 2: Look for patterns: friends and family, new accounts with one review, or several reviews sent from the same place.
    10 min
  3. Step 3: Stop anything that asks for reviews: post-visit emails, staff contests, or review prompts after a feedback survey.
    1 day
  4. Step 4: Skip asking Support to restore reviews. Yelp says its Customer Support team can't manually override the software.
    1 min
  5. Step 5: Reply to your recommended reviews with a public Comment so readers see how you handle feedback.
    15 min
  6. Step 6: Check the section again in a few months. Reviews can move in or out as the software learns more about the reviewers.
    3 months
  7. Arrived: You understand which reviews count, you've stopped the habits that trigger filtering, and your rating reflects reviews from customers Yelp knows well.

Checked 13 Nov 2026 · source: trust.yelp.com

A filter, not a person

Every review posted on Yelp goes through automated software that scores it on what Yelp calls hundreds of signals of quality, reliability and user activity. The ones it trusts most are recommended and shown on your page. The rest are moved to a not recommended section reached by a link at the bottom of the page. They’re still public, but they don’t count toward your star rating or your review count.

The key point for owners: nobody can flip the switch for you. Yelp says no employee can manually override the software, and its business help page adds that Customer Support can’t either. Calls and emails asking for a review to be restored won’t work, however reasonable the request.

What the software screens out

Yelp names four broad groups:

  • Conflicts of interest. Reviews that look like they come from people with undisclosed ties to the business: friends, family, employees, or competitors.
  • Solicited reviews. Reviews the software suspects the owner or staff asked for. Yelp considers them more likely to be biased.
  • Less reliable reviewers. Reviews from less active users the software doesn’t know well enough yet.
  • Unhelpful content. Rants, raves, and text that has little to do with the experience.

Yelp’s support article adds a concrete example of reliability signals: several reviews coming from the same IP address are treated as less reliable. A tablet at your front counter for customers to review you on is exactly that pattern.

Why good customers get caught

This is the frustrating part. A first-time reviewer who loved your bakery may write one glowing review and never use Yelp again. The software has little to go on, so the review may not be recommended. Yelp’s business help page says this plainly: a review from a genuine customer can go unrecommended when there isn’t enough information to recommend it.

Recommendations aren’t frozen. Yelp says they change over time as the software learns more about reviewers and businesses, so a hidden review can come back if that reviewer becomes more active.

The part you can control

You can’t game the filter, and trying usually backfires. What helps is removing the triggers: stop asking for reviews, drop employee review contests, and don’t send review links after feedback surveys. Yelp’s own guidance for owners is to engage with customers, especially by replying publicly to reviews, rather than trying to influence which ones are recommended. Buying ads doesn’t change the filter either; the free vs paid guide covers what money does and doesn’t get you.

If the share of hidden reviews looks extreme, compare with the platform as a whole. Yelp’s 2025 Trust & Safety Report says 70% of reviews were recommended and 17% were not recommended as potentially unreliable, solicited or biased.

If it doesn't work

  • A loyal customer's glowing review is hidden: that's often because Yelp doesn't know enough about a less active reviewer. It may move to recommended later.
  • Many reviews hidden at once after a push for reviews: solicited reviews are a target of the software. Stop asking, and expect the filter to keep catching them.
  • A negative review is recommended and positive ones aren't: the software looks at reliability, not stars. Reply to the negative one calmly.

Questions owners ask

What share of reviews does Yelp recommend?

In its 2025 Trust & Safety Report, Yelp says 70% of the roughly 22 million reviews contributed that year were recommended and 17% were not recommended as potentially unreliable, solicited or biased. The rest were removed.

Do not recommended reviews affect my star rating?

No. Yelp says not recommended reviews stay viewable through a link at the bottom of the business page but don't count toward the star rating or the review count shown on the page.

Is this the same as Yelp deleting a review?

No. Removal is done by moderators when a review breaks the Content Guidelines. Not recommended is an automated reliability judgment, and the review stays on Yelp. One can happen without the other.

Sources

Checked 13 Nov 2026. When the platform changes its process we update this page and log it in What changed.

Related fixes

Written by Ellis Marr (a pen name) · Checked 13 Nov 2026 · How we check