Businesses of all sizes know the importance of using Yelp to help grow customer reviews, testimonials and getting real feedback from their consumers. Yelp is one of the most popular sites in the world, and if someone is going to be looking up your company or brand on the internet, there is a good chance that Yelp will rank at the top of the search results for your name. The impact of negative or positive reviews on your businesses Yelp page can have a huge impact on the decision process of your potential and current customers.

While almost every business knows the power and benefits of Yelp, not many of them actually know how harmful it can actually be to your business. Yelp is the largest review site on the internet for customer reviews, and while it may seem like a good idea to send your existing clients to their site to post reviews for your business, it’s actually not.

When you are sending your valuable customers to their site, you are losing control of your content, your reputation and what your customers have to say.

Brand.com recently did an article on this topic and had the following to say about Yelp’s review services, “the company removes up to 25% of the reviews posted to their site, and they also have a significant portion of “fake” and “suspicious” reviews on their site.”.

This is just one of the many examples why Yelp is a bad decision for your business when it comes to collecting customer reviews and feedback. A much better solution would be to collect feedback and reviews from your own and post them on your company web site. This will allow you to have complete control over your online reputation, while also helping your web sites and content rank higher in the search results when people are looking for reviews on your company.

The next time you are thinking about sending your customers to a Yelp site to leave feedback for your organization, consider the disadvantages listed above.