I have a website development and digital marketing company. Yelp hounds me constantly to get my clients to advert with them.

I always ask the rep the same question: when will Yelp have a real tracking pixel that allows clients to attribute their website conversions to Yelp? There’s never an answer.

With actual marketing platforms like Facebook and Google Ads, your tracking snippet will allow you to track attribution on your conversions. Example: someone searched on Google, clicked in your Google Ad, went to your site and made a purchase/submitted a contact form/etc. I can then see that “hey, we had ### conversions directly from your Google Ads…let’s make decisions based on that.”

However, with Yelp, you don’t get that. They’ll say “well you can see how many people clicked your Yelp Ad!” Which I say, who cares? Don’t care about clicks. Need conversion attribution. You could run a click farm for all I know and jack the numbers up. I want to know how many Yelp referrals led to measurable conversions. They won’t do that and it’s because their advertising platform is shit. It’s a scam.

Yelp is in the bad review business. They make no money on good reviews because businesses sign good reviews don’t need advertising. They need businesses with no reviews or bad reviews to survive. Those businesses and vulnerable to the Yelp marketing scam.

In my business I always just say “after reviewing the project, I don’t think our company is a good fit for you. Wish you all the best with getting this project knocked out!”