Austin Spaeth

8/9/2025

reviews

Business owners have noticed a pattern, Yelp reviews often seem harsher than Google reviews for the same business. There are several possible reasons: Yelp’s filtering algorithm, the type of users who leave reviews, the mobile-first experience tied to iOS devices, and even differences in the emotional state of customers when they leave feedback. Yelp has stricter review filters, which means that a glowing 5-star review might get buried while a 1-star remains visible. Google, by contrast, tends to publish more reviews without heavy filtering, so the average can skew higher. Yelp’s iOS dominance also means many users leaving feedback are doing so immediately after an experience, catching raw emotion before it cools. If the experience was negative, that emotion can hit your star rating hard. While you can’t change Yelp’s platform behavior, you can change the flow of how customers leave feedback. VisibleFeedback lets you capture private feedback in real time, address concerns before they hit Yelp, and direct happy customers toward leaving public reviews, on Yelp, Google, or anywhere else, balancing out your scores.