Your client just sent you a nice e-mail. He was so pleased with your service that he wrote a review on Yelp singing your praises. That kind of e-mail is a wonderful respite from the usual barrage of upset, complaining, whiny people.

You took a break from the phone calls, the drafting, and the meetings to go read the review on Yelp. You found your listing, scanned down the page, and found nothing from this guy. Where is his review?

Welcome to the Yelp Review Filter. Yelp has a system that attempts to screen fraudulent or unreliable reviews from visitors to the site. The site doesn’t simply delete the reviews. It posts them, but they’re hidden way down the page, and you have to click on “Filtered Reviews” to see them. The site even puts a captcha between you and the review just to be sure you don’t accidentally stumble on them.

Which Reviews Get Filtered?

How does Yelp decide which reviews to publish on the site and which reviews to hide behind Filtered Reviews? That’s a proprietary secret belonging to Yelp. It’s attempting to make the site better by publishing the best reviews, and it doesn’t make the workings of the system public.

Some experts speculate that the filter operates on reviews from inactive users and users who haven’t yet left many reviews. The good news is that a previously filtered review can come back to life if things change. Some observers believe that a filtered review from an inactive Yelper will come back to the main page as that Yelper gets more active.

Keep checking Yelp and, as time goes by, maybe your review from that nice guy will eventually show up on your page.