← To The Point - Home Services VIP Room Podcast
To The Point - Home Services VIP Room Podcast
Yelp Responds To Contractors' Biggest Complaints | Part 1
00:41:39
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, what's up, VIPs. Real quick. Before getting to this episode that everybody's waiting for, the highly anticipated episode with Yelp, you gotta remember to go and join our new Home Services VIP Facebook community group. So go on to Facebook Home Services VIP. All my friends, all the VIPs, all the special guests are in that group. So go on right now and join now. Enjoy this episode because it's a banger.
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B
What's the password?
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C
Don't talk about it, be about it.
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B
Welcome in to the to the Point Home Services VIP room, where we invite you, the listeners in to hang alongside some of the biggest, baddest and most successful VIPs of the home services industries. You never know which surprise guest will show up next. So let's get this party started.
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A
Hey, what's up? Why do we have a banger of an episode today? I'm so excited about it. Once I knew we were gonna do it, man, I knew it was gonna be a good one. Boys, to my co host, Chad P. Ag. Are you boys as excited for today as I am?
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C
I am too. I'm very excited.
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A
Yeah, absolutely, Chad, let me see your excited face.
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D
You're seeing it.
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A
Excited face looks the same as the happy face. As a sad face. They all pretty much look the same. You just try to cover it up with the beard.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Hey, listen real quick, boys. I know I'm trying to, trying to make sure that I give some updates here, here and there too, but the. I have everything prepped and ready to go finally to start this whole cancer treatment thing. So by the time this thing rolls out, I should be starting the following week finally, right? To get this, to get the. Asking this. Oh, and actually what I found out too, pre episode two is our guest, you know, Jed, was this. We just had fathers come up Father's Day weekend, so happy Father's Day to all you fathers. Previously or previously was Father's Day weekend. And, and Jed, you, your daughter fought leukemia, but now she's got zero percent. Right? Like she's, like she's remission. Right. Was this the first Father's Day with, with that as the case?
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E
Yeah, it was.
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B
Yeah.
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E
Thank you for asking. First of all, you know, I, I, I, I know what you're going through is a really tough process. I've witnessed it firsthand with my daughter. She's 23 and diagnosed with leukemia in September. And, you know, it's been, you know, a hard battle. The one that, one that she's winning and she's down to zero. And now they'll continue to kick cancer's ass for the next six months. But I know you are in an awesome position as well, and. And I can tell by your guns you're ready to go and strong and ready to hit this thing. So, you know, we are. We are all thinking about you.
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A
That's awesome, dude. Congrats, man. And I know the listeners, like, okay, cool, Chris. Let's get to the good shit. So I appreciate that. I'm gonna get to the good stuff, listeners. Don't worry. I know that you're all here for this, like, the excitement around this episode. You know, it's been. It's been so cool to hear people reaching out to me, texting me, sending me messages, so. But I don't want to get started too early without kicking off with an idiom. All right? And I know. I know listeners, you're like, come on, Chris, just get to it. So I. I. But I can't. I can't skip one. And I think that you listeners will really appreciate this one. I think that this is a really good idiom or metaphor, whatever you want to call it. And it was the end of the stick. I wondered, where did that come? What was the origination of the end of the stick? And as I kind of researched more into this, too, it's. It actually didn't start out into the stick. It actually started out the wrong end of the stick. And this is the. The original version of this came out in the 1600s over in England, and then it was referenced in a. In a. In a book, like, in the 1600s, you know, was the first time was actually referenced. But then the Americans, Go figure. Are the one that turned it from wrong end of the stick to the end of the stick. So leave it up to us to make it a little bit gnarlier. But to the listeners, maybe you felt like you had the end of the stick, and maybe you feel that way with our guests. Have you. It seems like it based on all the. All the comments and stuff that we got. And so when I love episodes like, this is, man, it takes. It takes a lot of nerve to come on here knowing you're gonna get a barrage, you know, of just bullets fired at you. And when we did this previously, I thought it was a fantastic episode. I respect so much that our guests came on here knowing what to expect, because I understand what they want the outcome to be. And what we all want the outcome to be is a fantastic solution for the contractors to have opportunities to scale their businesses. That is a best possible Outcome from this episode. So who's got to ask the questions? We're gonna ask the questions, but first, I want to go ahead and introduce our guests. We've got the COO of Yelp, who just can't splurge enough to get him a good microphone. But, hey, we got him on the battle. We got Jed knocking on here. Jed, welcome to the podcast, my man. Excited to have you. And we also have Chris Baish, which. You've heard the song I'm all about that Bass. About that bass. No, my bean song wrapped up on
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F
the tee box for golf.
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E
I like that one.
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A
I know you've heard that before. These people have had this done. Okay, so. Damn it. I'm not first the party on that one, but we got Chris Bay, CEO of Hatch. Jed, Chris. Welcome to the VIP room, gentlemen.
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E
Well, it is. It's awesome to be here. I've been looking forward to this for a while, so.
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F
Yeah, I'm pretty fired up too.
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C
I watched a few episodes.
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F
You guys are super authentic and, like,
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C
my type of people. So this. This will be a good.
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F
This will be a good episode, I think.
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A
Yeah, I appreciate that. And listen, the deal is, like, let's not skip over all the, you know, like, let's just get right after it, have a super transparent conversation. You guys have committed to that. And like I said, you know, Jed, when we went on our initial call, I was like, let's just be human beings talking about this, you know, like, let's just hit all the. The real stuff. Like, let's put the corporate jargon on the table. There's some parameters. I understand you have to stay in, but you kind of are of the mindset of let's just let it rip. Like, let's just talk about it. And that's what we want is, like, real conversation. And the hope is from this. The hope is from this is this is just another. Another way for you. Even if you have a dealer advisory council or whatever you call it, which I believe that you do, this is another way for you to listen to the contractors and what they have to say and the things that they want and, you know, and hopefully come up with additional solutions to make the overall product better, which I believe is why we're doing this. Is that fair?
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E
Yeah, absolutely.
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A
Yeah, we're.
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E
We're excited to talk about it. You know, I've had a lot of these conversations over the last 20 years at Yelp, and. And looking forward to this one. I mean, what, what, what. What an incredible audience you have, and. And and the listeners. And certainly we're going through a pretty unique time in terms of the way, you know, technology is changing the, the home services industry. So it, it'll, it'll be fun to talk about.
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A
Well, so to our listeners, I'm go just so you have a, a quick idea of some of the questions I'm going to ask ahead of time. I don't typically do this, but I want to give you a heads up because two part this episode is yes, we are going to hit the review questions like right out, right, right up front. We're going to nail the review questions. A couple of you had them to the tune of about like 80 plus percent of your questions you want us to ask were all around the review process. We're also going to talk about the lead transparency aspect of things. Geographic performance also came up quite a bit. And then we're going to talk about on more of the strategic side, what are some of the top performers doing differently. So that'll be great insight to get from these guys on, from, from their perspective and then overall customer experience and re earning or building trust between Yelp and you, the contractor. So we're going to hit on all these things and then, and then the boys and I have some questions that we'll kind of sprinkle in throughout. So I say we get after it and I want to put this out there for both you right off the bat. The desired outcome of this podcast is that we, you, you listen, you know, you're, you're listening, you know, via us, the other hosts to the contractor's questions and complaints. And the hope is that we can come to a desired outcome that is the best possible solution. Leveraging all AI that's coming into the mix, all the things. It's a, it's an open conversation between contractors and Yelp via the VIP room. So that's what we want. And I respect you guys coming on, knowing what you're, what you're getting yourselves into. So thank you. Aaron can be a little bit of a loose cannon, so we're just gonna let him. Chad's gonna be a little more PC. But real quick before I jump into those questions, I know you guys want to get to it. Chris, I want to hit you with a quick one around this hatch acquisition. So you know what? I want to understand the. Well, first off, and we don't have to go like super, super deep into it because nobody's, you know, like, we don't want to get deep into it. I just want to understand high level Yep. What was the purpose? You know, and maybe, Jed, you want to chime in on this, too? What was the purpose of this whole Hatch acquisition? And, like, why you, Chris? Like, why. Why your company? Why was the right fit for whatever this next phase is? What are you guys looking at in the future that made all this make sense for Yelp?
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F
Yeah, that's a good question. I. I'll take it from the hatch side, Jed. Is that cool? And then you can probably Yelp's perspective. So, you know, for Hatch, you know, we've been around for, gosh, almost 10 years, six of that. We are a software company. And then the last three years, we really doubled down on AI as we saw the need in the industry. You know, we were growing like a weed since AI came out, because it makes so much sense that you could get AI to do some of these tasks for you, Right?
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C
Whether it be phone calls, text emails,
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F
bookings, all that stuff. We went out to market, not to get bought by Yelp. We actually went to go raise more capital to grow our business. And during that process, what I realized is capital is not a differentiator. Everybody's getting capital right now for AI. What is a differentiator is people that understand the industry and distribution. And I get to a lot of folks fast to help them. Yelp had both. So when I met with Yelp, I remember we went to dinner with Jet and some executive team. I left realizing that this crew is super passionate about the industry we're in, right? They care about home services. They're investing heavily into it. These are the right people I can partner with. And they have distribution. 250,000 contractors are on their platform every day, either trying to get reviews or trying to figure out how to get more customers and build their business that's, like, aligned with what we do. So that's how it came together on my end. And I was like, this makes total sense. They acquired us for 270 million bucks plus some retention, which helped retain a lot of the. Thank you. Which help.
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A
Chris, hell of a job, buddy.
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F
Thanks. Thanks. I appreciate it, but it's, like, just getting started, and I didn't know how it would feel once we got acquired, but, like, we've added 65 people in the past 30 days. This is across product engineering, and, in particular, customer service. Because we're going for it, man. Like, this is the team. Like, we're going for it. We want to help this industry become what we think it's going to become the next five years, which is, you know, service business. It'll be the next millionaire class, guys. Like, it's, it's happening. And so anyway, we shared that vision and, and so that's why I was like, let's do the deal. And the 270 didn't hurt. You know what I mean? Like, that kind of helped over the edge. So that was, that was cool.
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A
Clearly. Clearly, yeah, that's the bad gig. So, hey, real quick, you said 250,000. You, you had shared with us pre podcast Jed to that. That when we were thinking about the Yelp customer base, everybody, we think if you think restaurants, there's actually a massive chunk of home services professionals on there too. But I can't remember what the percentage was used. I want to say it was like 70 something.
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E
Yeah, I mean we do over 70% of our revenue in services. And so, you know, if you were to walk down the street and kind of ask people about yelp and ask 10 people, what are they going to say? You know, what does Yelp do? They're going to tell you it's a restaurant review site. And you know, when you look back at our journey and it's one of the reasons I'm really excited to be on here because I don't think it's the most common narrative around Yelp that we see. For the past seven or eight years, we have been solely focused on growing our services business. And we've released over 200 products since 2020 specifically related to services. 70% of our revenue, as you mentioned, is coming from services. And we are in it to win it. And as it relates to the Hatch acquisition, obviously lead management is a really important part of the funnel for everybody listening to this. We part with, you know, it starts out like any. We were dating, right? We had a partnership with, with Chris and the team. Our customers were using Hatch. We got to work with them on a daily basis. And that was probably. It's. Things started to really heat up kind of this time last year. And there's two things you're looking for, right? Do they have a great product that's going to accelerate where we can be in the lead management space over a period of years. And number two, is the team cool to work with and, and, and, and operate with integrity? And like all those things kind of came into place and as you know, chr going out to market to raise money, it became really obvious that we could accelerate our strategy on the lead management side. And I got to tell you, you never know until you actually put the ring on the finger and it's after the honeymoon. And these guys have been nothing but a pleasure to work with and so much fun. I have a blast with Chris personally. He's a really fun guy and it's fun talking about what the future can be here because I think we're in the first inning of a pretty long in terms of how AI is going to be transforming the way we all work and interact with consumers.
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A
Well, I appre. I listen, I think I, you know, getting to get to get to know you a little bit. I, I love your personality first off. It's like you never know when you. What you're. What you're going to get when you start talking to the C suite. And I just, I think it's a
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E
miracle that I got my role. I'm like, when are they gonna fire me? I don't know what's gonna happen.
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A
Yeah, well, I want to see if I could be more helpful than hindering here. Okay. So yes, I do want to say something real quick before we jump into all the, all the really good stuff too, because I don't want to forget to do this. And I got to give a shout out to our sponsors. I think some of these guys you might have also have partnerships with too. But number one, thanks to you guys for coming on board as a, as a sponsor on the show. No, this episode did not come because of that. It was because it became a sponsor. It gave us opportunity to also have a, to interview you guys. So I'm super grateful for this opportunity. So thank you guys for being supporters of this podcast. A quick shout out to Avoca, also one of our longtime sponsors, one of our newest sponsors, Chad's coaching group. Can't stop the growth. Chad's been doing his coaching for quite a while with some contractors. Chad is obviously 100 million plus 120 million. I can't remember how many he is now, but big plan industry. Also to one of my favorites, send to email Marketing, the home services email marketing company right here on the, on the hat. And last one is Sales Ask are one of our newest sponsors. So shout out to Sales Ask. So let's get right into it, boys, because I think this is what everybody wants to hear. Are you ready? Okay. You like that? Like that? Okay, so when we, when we sent out a poll, Agla, you could kick this thing off, but let me do this. When we sent out a poll, what we did is, you know, think we're super involved in the social media space with the contractors. Between myself, Aaron and Chad, we have a massive group of Friends, our friends are in the home services space. We're all deep, deep into it. We have a lot of connections. And so all we did was leverage those and say, hey, you tell us, we're going to. We get. We get the pleasure of interviewing Yelp. You tell us what are your biggest complaints? And so what we had done was taken all of them. All of them. And I'm not even sure how many hundreds that were word. Took them, compiled them down, prioritize them, and we just took like the top, you know, six or seven. And we're going to try and roll through these because I want our listeners to hear what you guys have to say. But again, from that poll, like over 80% was all around reviews. And I know that Aaron also feels a certain way, you know, about it, and Chad feels a certain way about it, and a lot of our listeners probably mirror the same thing. So for the sake of time, let's just go ahead and get into it and start with all the listeners questions. Ag. You want to hit us off with the review?
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C
Yeah. Start off first off by saying thanks for being here. You know, we got a nice little pre call about some stuff. Pretty candid conversation, which I enjoy, Judd, by the way. And yeah, it looks like your. Your investment hatch is good. He's not showing up on the beach on this call. Right. So that's worked out well. Or at least today you moved into somewhere else to make it look good. I'm just playing. Congratulations to you guys. So I think, look, I think one of the things for Yelp, you know, I think Yelp's done a lot of good for a lot of things over the over years, especially. I always believe it as a restaurant app myself here in the Midwest. I think the west coast seemed to have a lot more influence around Yelp. But, you know, I've always been challenged with the ideas, like, is Yelp really representing me properly through its reviews? Right. When I look at my Yelp review right now, candid. Ours is a 2.8. And I don't think that actually truly represents our brand and what we do Everywhere else. We're 4.9. We're the highest review service company in the whole state of Ohio. There's only three businesses that are reviewed more than eco. We have 197. 197 total thousand reviews. And I'm not here to brag about them. Here to kind of set a baseline for this conversation. And there's only people. More is the Columbus Zoo, Cedar Point, Kings Island. Right. And then Eco, and then and then we go on all the other platforms, really high level, and you get to Yelp and it just feels like, why, like how there's lots of reviews that come in. I think a lot of people feel this way. And over time, as a company, candidly we said this before is we just kind of bailed on Yelp. There was just no reason for us to be involved with Yelp. We didn't feel like it was adding any value to us. We kind of, we didn't bother with any of it because it felt like anytime we were getting good reviews, they were just getting totally washed out. Right. And we weren't able to actually feel like we could turn that around. So I think that's. I think that's a. That's kind of a. I'm not saying that's for everybody in the industry because lots of guys in areas that are doing really well and have success with Yelp, maybe Chad and I have maybe similar feelings. And it seems like in some regions it just doesn't seem to resonate or I don't know what it is, but it has always felt like the review is not always on the favor. And I shouldn't be on the favor. It should be the people. 100%. I agree with all that. But why, like, why does that happen at Yelp but not happening in other platforms? And, you know, because we do provide a great service. We grow every year, we're doing stuff. We have, you know, hundreds of employees and we're growing and doing great service. But it doesn't feel like Yelp represents our brand the same way as we feel we are in the community and do stuff. So why is that? What is the algorithm to that and why does that seem to be happening to contractors on a regular basis, at least from our viewpoint and our viewers all feel this. I don't say all, but there's a lot of comments around this not feeling very great about how and why Yelp does what it does.
- [19:38]
A
Listen up, VIPs, I hope you're enjoying the episode so far. Listen, I wanted Yelp to give us something, so I said, give me something I can share specifically with the listeners. And here's what they wrote verbatim. New multi location advertisers on Yelp may qualify for a 20% bonus advertising budget when they start campaigns before September 30, meaning Yelp puts extra ad dollars on top of whatever you spend. That's free money. So fill out the form@business.yelp.com homeservice VIP or just go to the show notes and click on the link and the Yelp team will reach out to you to help get you started asap. One of the biggest mistakes operators make is assuming they know what's happening in the sales process. The reality is most managers don't have time to listen to every single call, sitting every ride along, or review every sales conversation. Sales Ask solves that problem. Chad and I use Sales Ask at our roofing company and seen great results. Their AI helps you review real conversations, identify coaching opportunities, spot the missed steps, and understand exactly where your team is winning and losing deals. If you're investing heavily in Legion but don't have visibility into your sales process, you're flying blind. What are you doing? Book a free sales visibility session with Sales Ask and mention to the point Home Services VIP room to get your free exclusive listener offer.
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E
Yeah, well, thanks for the question. You know, over my 20 years, I've been beaten up with this question enough times and, and answered it. And certainly things have evolved, evolved over time. I would step back by saying, you know, like, our true north is making sure that we put trustworthy content and reviews in front of our users. Without users, we don't have a product. You know, unlike a lot of the other platforms, we don't rely on SEM to go drive leads into it. We get organic traffic that comes in a Yelp. They may come in for a burrito, and two weeks later they want to go find a plumber. And so we have that unique advantage of, you know, Yelp is a place where people go to discover local businesses. And our mission is actually connecting people with great local businesses. And so from the beginning, our true north is that we have a review recommendation software that takes into consideration hundreds of data points in determining whether a review will be recommended or not. And let me just start by saying it is a gut punch. I understand all your listeners. You know, if you get a bad review or one of your reviews is not recommended, it doesn't feel good. This is your livelihood. These are things that are really important and we are massively empathetic to that. The first part, however, is we got to make sure that we're putting content in front of people that is actually trustworthy. And side note, you know, as we have gone through this AI transition, you know, we've, you know, Yelp is cited 72% of of the time for home services in Google AI mode. And part of the reason is a lot of these generative LLMs have realized that our content is really, really, really high quality. You know, 28 reviews have between 500 and 1,000 characters. That's 6% for Google. And, you know, about 30% of Google's reviews, I think it might be 32%, have zero text at all on earning. It's just a star rating. And so our goal is not quantity, it's quality. We think about that all the time. How do we put the best content up in front of our consumers? By the way, reviews can move in and out of recommended versus not recommended. And we see that happen all the time. One of the things that is a little tricky here, and I know because I've listened to you guys before and obviously you're sure. Chris, on the, on reputation equals revenue. We know that's the case. And so there's a lot of incentive to make sure you get a lot of reviews. We don't play the quantity game the way I like to. I just tell an analogy, taking yourself out of kind of the home services space for a little bit. You know, if Starbucks wanted to go get the most reviews possible compared to local coffee shops, they could go out and blow away every little mom and pop in the entire world. We want to create a level playing field where it's not just the quantity of reviews that matters. It's kind of the quality and the depth that you see there. You know, you look at the review distribution. There was an FTC study that we had, I think, in 2024 that showed, you know, we have a much wider review distribution than other platforms. Again, taking yourself out of kind of like the, the Yelp, Angie, you know, world, you know, you go to Uber now. If you get a 4.5 driver on Uber, that's basically an F driver, you know, everything is condensed between like 4.5 and 5. And so it's shifted. We've, you know, really thought hard about how do you keep an on. And that doesn't mean. And it is. What I would just remind people is it's the nuance behind the reviews. It's. It's that depth of information that comes in there. But it can be really, really frustrating. You know, one of the signals is this review solicitation, one of the hundreds of signals that we look at. And so it's really, really important that despite what a lot of people have said is go get a bunch of reviews, you're going to go do really well. We have that bar, and that's one of the considerations as we go through the review conversation. I do think as we move forward and you look at all the LLMs and we have deals with OpenAI, we have deals with Amazon, we have deals with Meta. You know, that's going to be even more and more important in this next phase. And we're only in the first inning right now, but for everybody out there who has a reputation online, you want to make sure your AIO and Gio is in the right place. And all of the stuff that we do to control that quality will also be in service of that moving forward.
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C
Yeah. And I think just to follow up with that, I know Chris or Chad will jump in here, but, you know, so I hear all that and I don't, I don't think volume of reviews is always the number one metric for success by any means. I don't think, you know, it does show that people are willing to write reviews and do stuff just comes down that the equalizer doesn't seem to equalize across anybody, any of the other platforms. Right. Over time. And I think that's where people kind of get like, what's going on the bbb. Right. Angie's List, you know, my thumbtack reviews, all these other places. Right. And then you get to Yelp and it's like, what's going on here? And then I do have good reviews in. You're like, yeah. And it's like, nope, not approved. Right. So. And I, I agree that you want great review content because I think we are moving to a whole new world, which we'll get into here a little bit. That's around customer sentiment. How are you going to actually have real deep, deep reviews have more meaning. Even Google, I think, is coming to be a little bit stronger over time to filter those out. So what is Yelp really trying to do to help move that forward then in a positive way for contractors? Like how. How do we actually, you know, make sure that we are getting good content on there to bring us up so we can be engaged with.
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F
With that.
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C
Through that. Through your algorithm. Because I still not sure that we understand that. Besides, hey, we really hope somebody just writes a great, authentic review, which they do on other platforms too. Right. So I guess I still don't know if I know the answer. I understand your point. I'm not sure that I still understand.
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B
Yeah.
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C
The outcome of how we. How do we work with Yelp to be successful in that. And then, yeah, we'll go from there.
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F
Totally.
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E
Yeah. I mean, listen, the most successful folks on our platform and as, as I think Chris mentioned before, we have over 250,000 service professionals with paying relationships, by the way, some much larger number that interact with Yelp on a daily basis. They claim their page, they make sure they have the right attributes, they respond to reviews. There are so many other ways to show and put a good foot forward on Yelp. That's not just reviews, right? And so, you know, I would hope, you know, and you know, I don't want you to give up on Yelp. I hear you loud, clear. There's a bunch of different ways we can do this. And part of what we need to do is do a better job of educating folks how to be successful, successful on Yelp because we are a different type of platform.
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C
And I think that's important. That's. I think that's important. People just want to understand, right? Like, yeah, how do I, what is that? And how, and how do I get educated to use this platform? Because it does seem like you guys have actually a lot more, a lot more people coming this platform for home service than I. Even when we, when we had the pre call and even just brought up than I even assumed, I think people have kind of just said, ah, there's not, there's nothing here for me. Right? So. And I think we all on this call would agree that let the work share for itself and then let the review come, right? I think we all, we know Chad and I and Chris feel that way. So I appreciate that. On a topic that I think people want to understand, it sounds like education through this and some of the things you said is very important and I hope that that's where we're leading to because I, I want, I want us to be all of our contractors to be successful, including myself on every platform, right? Because we want to win, right? And we want to serve our community and do the right thing. So, yeah, thank you for that.
- [28:28]
E
Well, you know, and, and, and it, it obviously it pains me when I hear all these things, right, because we like, our intention is to make service pros successful, literally. And consumers have a great experience. You know, if somebody, if a consumer saves up $15,000 to go redo their roof, that is a massive decision for them, them to make. And it is the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of service professionals as well. And so, you know, we, you know, Yelp pumps through, I think it's over 350,000 leads a day, you know, 10 million a month. Home services leads or services leads, over 125 million a year. And so the reason. And we operate differently than other platforms. That's been the case for a long time. And I've taken a ton of barbs as a result of that. But the reason people come and keep coming back on the consumer side is because they trust what they're going to see. And so we got to do a better job on the education. And this is a very small step in going in to do that. And you know, it's something that I think is really important as, you know, we become even more of a services company.
- [29:31]
A
Yeah. Real quick, Chad, before you jump in, I think he's gonna jump in here. But I just want to say thank you for saying that because it is a small step. Right. And it's like what happens after this too is going to matter. We all know that. But I just, when I looked at the review comments, people like these service contractors legit feel like you keep the shitty reviews and you don't add the positive reviews. And I just want to hit that head on as like that can't be the best practice for, for Yelp. But if that's the perception, perception is reality, right? So yeah, because it seems like of these people, that's what, you know, that seems to be the gap is like, you know, how. How does that continue or how does so many people think the same thing?
- [30:15]
C
So I think I agree that's nationally wise. We talk to contractors across and they all kind of feel the. It's not just like a regional thing or a Midwest thing or this, that everybody kind of has that, that perception that that's kind of what happens. Right. And these are our livelihoods. Like this is what I've been doing my whole life. This is everything to me. So I wake up and do every single day for 20 years now, right? And when I get a review, negative review, I take it serious. Still to this day, I'm in, I'm in every email chain of a, of a one star negative review. I get it personally. In our organization, no matter how big we are, I want to know about it, so I take it personal, right? So then when you're trying to fight against it, you're. You feel like you're up, uphill battle so we can beat on that long enough. But I think that that's the point. It is perception across the country and it seems like you guys want to try to help figure out how do we unpack that, how do we educate the team better the, the community home service better and, and you know, I
- [31:08]
E
know I'm hammering kind of on the like the review solicitation thing. I'll just say like what a natural reaction for folks. Folks is I go get some sort of, I have some sort of presence on Yelp. I have three, four, five reviews. Three are good, two are bad. You know, some sort of distribution in the way the world works, you know, and, and so my natural inclination is to go out, how do I go get a bunch of better reviews?
- [31:30]
C
Right?
- [31:30]
E
And it's not done in a malicious way at all. People go ask their customers, they're your customers. They did have a good experience in a lot of cases. But it's, hey, can you do me a favor and go write me a review, or if I did a good job, will you go write me a review? And so what seems to happen, you know, and a lot of times that's going to happen with folks that you're pretty sure are going to give you. And so this is not a malicious thing whatsoever, but it's something to keep in mind. And it's one of the, you know, you know, that is one of the factors that, you know, impacts the review recommendation software. So we got to do a better job of educating, you know, the best folks on Yelp who like, make their businesses and, you know, turn into huge businesses are the ones that kind of let the reviews come naturally and let everything speak for itself. And, and there are other ways, you know, for you to kind of improve that reputation that are not review based. You know, all the free tools that we offer, you know, the paid tools. And, and we can go into that stuff later if you want. But. But there are a lot of avenues to go out and do that.
- [32:28]
D
Yeah, I guess. And maybe this is kind of tagging along, kind of Aaron's question. So, you know, he says, or, you know, they've got a lot of positive reviews on Google, yet they have, they rate so low on Yelp. And I'm in that same boat too. And it's like, we can't be that bad. I mean, my God, what are we doing out there? You know, at least I hope. But like, I guess how does, how does. And you've kind of got into this, but just to kind of tag along because I think it's, again, hopefully adds some more clarity to what people are feeling out there. But like, so if I look at my reviews and I'm, and I get like, hey, a lot of them are just a star rating and you're asking and so on and so forth. But like, how do you explain that gap between, you know, I've got all of these customers who are rating me very highly and then I've got a very few, you know, I don't know how many Thousands of reviews we have on Google and then we've got, I've got my page pulled up 200 reviews on Yelp, yet they rate us so poorly compared to what people on Google rate us, I guess, because to me, it's like we're serving the same customer to a certain degree. It just, they went to Yelp and they, or they didn't go to Google and, and so on and so forth. So, like, how does, how does, how do you explain that?
- [33:48]
F
Sure.
- [33:48]
E
So first of all, broadly speaking, on YELP, you know, 70% of reviews are three plus star and above. So it's not a ranting platform. And you know, you do get this and it's, it was done in an FTC study in 2024. Like, our review distribution is a lot wider than all the other platforms. It just is. When you look at the concentration of positive reviews versus non positive reviews, like, we are going to, we're going to have a broader range and it kind of mirrors the way your experiences are, right? You go on a, you go into 10 restaurants, you're going to have, you know, two, nine and 10 experiences. You're going to have a few, you know, five to seven experiences and a couple bad experiences. And so, you know, the best thing I can say is that, you know, we, the organic reviews that folks who have a propensity to go out and review are the ones that are going to go out and do that for your business anyway when they have a good experience. And, you know, you can get trapped into kind of the Yelp thing and trying to chase your tail on like, hey, how do I get my, my reputation up? But there's so many other things that make your business good and that we have very, very, very successful businesses on Yelp, you know, that have, you know, naturally gotten those organic reviews over time and it's made their business. I know it's something that's controversial. I'm not trying to skirt any answers on the questions. Our system is different. You're going to see reviews skewing higher on the other platforms. It's just fact. We know it. And, you know, the best thing you can do on Yelp is provide an awesome experience. Make sure you're following up with people. When you do get a rad review, make sure you're responding in the correct way, which it sounds like, Aaron, you know, obviously you're doing. And it's something that, you know, try not to go solicit reviews because that'll get trapped up into the recommendation software and it doesn't lead to good things.
- [35:44]
C
I think that's one of the things we want to maybe understand there. Just follow that solicit review. I keep hearing that all the time. It's like, well, we're not soliciting any reviews through certain things. There's platforms that allow some of stuff, but, you know, Yelp doesn't allow any of that anyway. So when they do show up, how do you know that it's a solicit review or not? Like, because it seems to filter stuff out. Is it, is it, is it really that if somebody's ever actually used Yelp before for a review, like, how much impact does that have? Like, how, how do, how do. Because, you know, it might just be organic. Because in certain regions, Yelp is used more than other places. Right. I imagine a lot of statistics on regional areas. Right. So it's like, you know, I don't, I don't believe Yelp is used as much for home service in, in the Midwest. It's used for restaurants. Right. In other areas. So when somebody does come to it, it's like, does it just believe this is a solicited review? Because they've never used it before for anything else? Like how? Like, you know, so I think that's a hard one to understand.
- [36:38]
E
Yeah, I, you, you nailed it in terms of we want to know as much as we can about the user, right? And so when somebody comes to Yellow for the first time, and this is a very basic kind of example, and we have no history on that person, we don't know where they came from. I always talk about it like, you know, in the restaurant space, it's really easy. Bob's Pizza gets five awesome reviews in a two hour period of time. And Fred's Pizza across the street gets, you know, five one star reviews in a very short period of time. That's a very obvious signal. There are a lot of signals that we can take in and our knowledge and history of that person and who they are is one of those things. And you can look at, you know, there's a bunch of different factors. I quite frankly don't have access to the full algorithm and I never have. They keep that church in state and, you know, in fact, I've had buddies who've come to me, they're like, can you just get this review removed? I'm like, I can't touch it. Like, I've never been able to touch it ever in my life for the past 20 years. That's like the. No, no, I don't want any removed can you add the ones back in?
- [37:37]
C
Yeah,
- [37:40]
F
yeah.
- [37:40]
C
Like, I mean, we mess up, we make mistakes. I'm all for it. I own them. I'd like to, but.
- [37:46]
E
But, Aaron, you did hit a nail on the head. Like, you know, there's some really obvious signals that somebody is like, hey, I'm writing a review for the first time, you know, and, and, and. And it's not just first time. That's a very simplistic way of putting it because it takes in a lot of other factors as well. But you can kind of tell. And I don't. I. I don't have the details that I have done, but I know that there are hundreds of factors that go into, like, hey, was this somebody saying. And I just want to reiterate, like, I don't think anyone's malicious and asking their customers to go write them a good review. That is not in any way kind of what we're talking about, but we want to go pick the most trustworthy ones. And again, over time, those sometimes move into the recommended reviews. But it was a great point that
- [38:31]
A
you brought up, guys. We spent about 40 minutes on reviews. Do you feel it, Jed? Do you feel like we spent about.
- [38:39]
E
I do, and I know it's important to people, too. And, and, and, you know, I just
- [38:45]
C
want to make sure we get it all out there. Why have it on here and not try to tackle. Try to get as we can. So at least. And whether they agree or disagree with the way it works, at least we start to understand more of why. Right?
- [38:56]
E
Yeah.
- [38:56]
C
And, and what actions are being taken from Yelp standpoint and why. Why it is going on. So I think it's very worth it. I know you have some other areas you want to dig into, you know, lead transparency, some geographics. Why don't we jump into a couple other topics? Thank you, Judd, for just, you know, going straight in on that.
- [39:14]
E
And you got it.
- [39:16]
C
The idea is to trust that Yelp is trying to do the best thing, as I hear from you, to get the most authentic reviews. Right?
- [39:24]
F
Yeah.
- [39:25]
E
That trust, honestly, people wouldn't come back to us. It's why we have so many leads flowing through the system, and it's built up over years, and we're really psyched for this next evolution of, like, hey, where does AI play into this?
- [39:37]
F
Right.
- [39:37]
E
And so if you're on OpenAI and, you know, Yelp is referenced or any of the other platforms, like, that's the next kind of battleground for all of us. Right. It's not going to be a list of, you know, 500 companies that you can go make a choice on. It's going to be, you know, how are they, you know, drawing all of that information from those level folks. So it's pretty fun to on time, forward.
- [40:03]
A
You touched on a few things too, like the Geographic performance and like what some of the top performers are doing. And we're going to get into that too. I do want to just to close the loop on this review thing and say, I believe we are doing this. And Aaron, I appreciate you asking all those questions and digging in because that is what the listeners want to hear. No, ultimately we're doing this because hopefully the COO has some influence on whoever's managing the algorithm to say, hey, you should listen to our customer feedback and maybe, maybe we should, you know, consider some, you know, reconstruction to this algorithm to be like, you know, I don't know how much of a differentian you want to be, but if it's a point of contention, as big as it is, I certainly agree. You gotta, you gotta address it. Right. Otherwise it's just the same, it's the same thing over and over again. And if you talk about trust, that's a good way to not get trust. Right. So this should be like a way of opening up the door to, to getting more trust because you're listening to the customer. Yeah.
- [40:58]
E
And the team that does that, you know, is constantly listening, listening to feedback. And, you know, I just go back to my original point. Like, you know, people come back to Yelp and they do. And, you know, we have, they do in droves. Our service traffic has grown, you know, dramatically over the last seven years. And we are, you know, we always want to be in service of how do you put the most trustworthy content out in front of people? Do we get it right 100% of the time? Absolutely not. But we have to be listening to your point and also make sure that the consumer is kept front and center, you know, as, you know, why are they going to go, you know, come to Yelp versus other platforms?
- [41:37]
A
Yeah. And just I should, I should say this too before I transition on. And to our listeners who are listening for the first time because they want to hear this episode, I didn't really do a great job of introducing my two co hosts. Both these guys are $100 million h vac and plumbing contractors, Chads, and he's based Indiana, but they're both Midwest guys. Aaron's in Ohio. So both big players who are, you know, who have really authentic questions around this. So, so you understand who my co hosts are. So, Jed, I appreciate you taking all the bullets, man. You're still alive and kicking, so that's great. Hey, VIPs. I know, I know. Don't kill me. I gotta cut it short. This is a two part episode, but how good was this first part? 80% of all your questions were around this review stuff. And I felt like we hit it pretty good. Now there's more. The conversation happens in this second part around reviews, but also a lot of the other things that you had to hit on. And we went deep on it and we really put the pressure on them. So the first part was really, really good. And the second part, we really bring it home. We'll see you next week.
- [42:39]
B
What's the password?
- [42:41]
C
Don't talk about it, be about it.