Anyone decipher the Yelp Sort ?
-
Anyone tried to decipher the factor in the default sorting order on Yelp? I've not done any formal testing but from experience my gut feel is as follows (chime in with your own opinion based on your own observations).
On searches - #1 factor is of course keyword(s) appear in category business is in or business name
After that, or for just browsing categories30% proximity of business location to location entered in address field
20% number of reviews and average rating
20% if they are paying Yelp for any services - the is unfair but I'm pretty sure it's a factor (call to action button, advertising, etc)
15% Business Profile is filled out
15% keyword (if using search) appears in specialties section (which interestingly Yelp started charging to display!)This is a TOTAL GUESS. I'm wondering if these factors may effect it:
- Quantity photos and/or keyword matches photo captions
- How long business has been listed on Yelp
- How long ago business was started
- Whether a street address is entered or not (a factor of Google Local Results I think)
-
Hi Wizkids964!
I just want to say I'm sorry that your thread didn't receive replies from the community. I haven't seen any good, formal data to either verify or challenge your analysis, and I expect others in our community are in the same boat.
What I have seen is videos like this one which hypothesize how to move the needle in Yelp:
https://localu.org/blog/guest-video-top-10-yelp-tips-small-business-2016/
But they aren't broken down into percentages like you've done here. It would be nice to see more studies like this, and again, my apologies that no one here had data to help prove or disprove your hypothesis.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Has anyone noticed the Google quote request response rate never changes?
We respond to almost 100% of our quote requests, yet every quote email that comes in from Google shows a 27% response rate and it never changes. Has anyone else seen this or have any insight into it?
Local Listings | | r1200gsa0 -
Anyone notice a change in local search traffic between May 9th to May 12th or it was it just me?
My ranking tool didn't show this but GoogleMyBusiness Insights did show traffic has dropped between those dates. Please see screenshot below. URL: https://www.screencast.com/t/FSD1jvFlHl Has this been caused by local algorithm update? Please help!
Local Listings | | jasondumana0 -
Question About Replying to Yelp Reviews and SEO
Hi guys, I was wondering if responding to negative yelp reviews would in turn boost yelps seo ranking for my business name. I'm trying to direct attention away from yelp being that we've had little success having real clients get through the review filter. We unfortunately have nasty competition that seems to be leaving fake negative reviews incessantly.
Local Listings | | Dsv2 -
Help with Yelp for Brands :)
I want to restructure our franchise Yelp accounts, I am looking for an easier way to deploy Yelp accounts that are structured at a brand level where I can add franchisees as managers but still be able to look at Yelp at a brand account short of advertising of course. We have over 380 locations each with their own accounts and ad goals. Is this possible? Does it have a method like Google My Business or Bing Places? It's not a priority for us since we first claim and optimize this for all of our franchisees, Just looking for an easier way to help your franchisees with deployments, scale and also helping us keep a consistent brand standard. Cheers, JonGeek
Local Listings | | uBreakiFix0 -
Yelp SEO in action
Please help me figure out how come E Appliance Repair Yelp page pops out every time I search Google for next keywords: Dacor repair Los Angeles, Miele repair Los Angeles, Sub Zero repair Los Angeles, and others like those? What direction do I need to move in to get close to those results? Any advise will be highly appreciated!
Local Listings | | kirupa0 -
Has anyone ever used a specific page (instead of home page) when building links in directories?
Instead of the home page, have you ever done (domain)/page-1 for the URL in directories? I figured this would be a good way to build some page authority up for deeper pages for small businesses that can't seem to garner any attention with content / links. BTW, these directories are not considered spam directories. Thanks, Cole
Local Listings | | ColeLusby0 -
Promoting a home based business on yelp
Hi,
Local Listings | | corn
I have several clients who run firms out of their homes but they want to promote on yelp. Does yelp allow someone to hide their address but to still come up in search results for a city? If so, how do I do this? Cornelius0 -
Competitor outranking me on google with their yelp, facebook and youtube pages
I'm working to rank for a local search term (my city wedding photographers). I'm frustrated that my competitor is outranking me not with their website (they are no. #9 and I'm #6) but with their Yelp account (#1) Facebook Account (#5) and Youtube account (#7 - not outranking me, but right below me). I'm going to continue working on my SEO to hopefully get higher up, but even then, they are basically dominating page 1 with their links. It gets worse on page 2. They are showing up 5 times for youtube/vimeo videos, and 1 time with a spammy landing page with no images, full of keyword anchored links to their main site. What gives? Since when are social media profiles outranking local sites on google organic searches? Could it be that our keyword is just so low competition that google has allowed all this stuff to rank so highly?
Local Listings | | studio35design0