The new Yelp Ask the Community feature allows Yelpers to ask public questions for the rest of the community (both users and business owners) to answer. We want to help your business get the most out of this new tool. Read our guide below to learn more.
What is Yelp Ask the Community?
Yelp Ask the Community is a feature that allows consumers to ask public questions to be answered by the business owner and Yelp users. These questions will live on the Yelp Business Pages for future viewers to reference.
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How does this benefit businesses?
Business owners and the Yelp community will be able to provide answers to the questions that potential customers often have, but might not be currently accessible or readily apparent on a business’s website or Yelp Business Page. It saves both the Business owner’s and Yelp user’s time in that answered questions are available to any Yelp user. This can help a Yelp user decide more quickly and easily whether your business is right for their needs. This means better educated and better-qualified leads for Business owners.
How does it work?
Yelp users can post questions and answer existing questions for any business on Yelp. In order to post or respond to a question, users must be logged into their Yelp account. Business owners can also answer questions as long as they have claimed their Business Page. They can answer questions via the Yelp for Business Owners website and apps for Android and iPhone.
Both the Yelp community and Business owners can vote on which answers are the most helpful (or unhelpful) and, in extreme cases, report inappropriate content for removal from the site.
Should businesses answer every question?
Not necessarily. Some questions are best left to the Yelp community to decide, as information from the Business owner would either seem too biased or not make sense. For example, a question like “What’s the best thing on the menu?” is best left to your customers to respond to. In contrast, a question like “What are the vegetarian options?” is a question that a business owner can chime in on and provide valuable insight.
How does a business answer questions?
With the Ask the Community feature, a business user will receive an email notification or push notification (optional) that a new question has been asked about their business by a Yelp user.
Upon receiving this message, they can visit the Yelp for Business Owners website or open their Yelp for Business Owners app to view the question and provide an answer to the question.
Business owners will see a new question in the “Questions & Answers” section (or “Q&A” for short) where they can see all the questions that have been asked for their business, all the answers provided by Yelp users, and any answers provided by staff from that business.
They just type in the answer and click to post.
They can also vote if any existing answers provided by Yelp users are either helpful or not helpful for answering the question.
What if a user-submitted answer is incorrect?
The best way of addressing incorrect answers is to provide an answer as the business owner. Business owner-submitted answers appear differently than user-submitted answers — you will have a different badge so consumers will know that you represent the business.
You can also vote that an incorrect answer is “not helpful”, which is a good signal to Yelp that the user-submitted content should be shown less frequently to users. Yelp does its best to ensure that the best answers are featured higher in a question’s default sort.
What if a question or answer is inappropriate?
A business owner has the option of letting Yelp know about inappropriate content through our reporting feature for questions. You can view which options the reporting feature allows within the tool. Also helpful is reading our Content Guidelines for more details on best practices for reporting questions.
Do you still have more questions about the Ask the Community feature? Check out our Yelp Support Center to find your answer.
The information above is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice and may not be suitable for your circumstances. Unless stated otherwise, references to third-party links, services, or products do not constitute endorsement by Yelp.