If you’re a Skilled Nursing Facility, you may find some new information showing up on your Yelp page. Yelp is partnering with ProPublica to compile and post data gathered from their own research and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which routinely rates hospitals and nursing homes. The new information will include such information as how many beds a facility has, how much they’ve paid in fines and if they have any serious deficiencies.

The Power of Yelp
Yelp has grown to be one of the largest review sites on the Web, with an average of 142 million visitors each month. A whopping 98 percent of Yelp users have made a purchase from a business they found on Yelp. And while Yelp is probably best known for its shopping and restaurant reviews, more and more people turn to Yelp to find reviews for everything from locksmiths to dentists. Health facilities currently account for six percent of all reviewed businesses. Yelp expects that by adding this new information, that number will grow.

Creating and Monitoring a Yelp Page
It has become more important than ever to have a Yelp page. If you have a business and don’t have a Yelp page, you can create one. Anyone can create a Yelp page for your business, so you may have one even if you didn’t create it. Once your business has a Yelp, you need to claim the page and create a business login. Claiming your page allows you to:

  • Respond to reviews
  • Track the user views and customer leads Yelp generates
  • Add photos and a link to your website
  • Update information such as phone numbers, business hours, etc.

You also need to monitor your page to see what’s being said about your business. If you see a review that you think is suspicious, you can report the review by clicking on the flag icon in the lower right-hand corner of the review. Yelp will generally remove reviews that don’t reflect a personal experience, were written by a competitor or ex-employee, contain lewdness or hate speech, or if the reviewer has reviewed the wrong business.

It’s also important to respond to reviews, particularly those that cast your company in a negative light. Doing so provides an opportunity to tell your side of the story. By actively monitoring your Yelp page, you have an opportunity to continue spreading the message you want people to hear about your company. In a previous post, we discussed some valuable tips on how to respond to negative reviews.

Yelp’s Filtering System
This latest move by Yelp to add information from third parties is just another step to help ensure the information on the page is as objective as possible. Yelp, perhaps more than other review sites, routinely filters reviews posted on its pages and hides them if they feel they’re not genuine. Of course, the system is imperfect and many businesses get frustrated by legitimate reviews that get hidden.

We recently discovered that many assisted living communities and skilled nursing facilities are having challenges in this area. Reviews from residents and family members are being hidden from view. We’re not sure why this is happening, but here are some red flags that may cause a review to get filtered out:

  • This is the only review this reviewer has written.
  • The reviewer has no profile information (profile photo, link to Facebook, etc.).
  • The review contains very little specific information.
  • The review is from a location other than where the business is located (this may be why reviews from family members are being hidden, if the family lives in a different area than their loved one).
  • Have numerous reviews coming from a single IP address (this could account for residents’ reviews being hidden).

Soliciting Reviews
While many companies solicit reviews from their patients, residents, clients and families, you should know that Yelp strongly discourages this practice. But if someone shares a positive experience with you, it doesn’t hurt to ask them if they’d be willing to share their story on Yelp or another review site. You can also let people know you’re on Yelp by posting a “Find us on Yelp” sticker, which is a subtle reminder for people to consider posting a review. You can order your sticker here.