Yell is committed to being a trusted online destination for consumers to connect with businesses. Central to this trust is Yell Reviews, and we and we ask business owners to comply with this Reviews Policy for Business Owners (the “Policy”) and the Review Policy for Reviewers (“Reviews Policy”) and share our values so we can ensure that consumers can trust reviews and post new ones.


Reviews may be removed from a business listing and further sanctions imposed where we consider them to be in breach of this Policy.   


How reviews are accessed and reflected in your business listing

  • We will ascribe an overall reviews star rating for your business, using an algorithm that looks at volumes of reviews by star rating.
  • Star ratings will feature against your listing, and within your business profile
  • Specific reviews will be accessible via your profile page.
  • In some cases, reviews are also published in third party search results e.g. Google.


Requesting a review

We actively encourage business owners to proactively manage their online reputation. This includes the ability to request reviews from their customers (not friends or family). This can be done via the ‘Request a new review' feature through the  Yell online account accessible through the Yell Business App.


Offline requests can also be made, with consumers needing to be directed to: Yell.com/reviews.

Business owners can find additional support for managing reviews by logging into their Yell online account and visiting the ‘promote your reviews’ link.


Posting a review

Your review must comply with the following:

 

  • You can only review a business with whom you have had a direct, first hand, experience in the last 12 months
    • an ‘experience’ is where you have actively engaged with the business as part of a buying process or delivery of a service e.g. if you obtained a quote from a business but did not accept the service, you can review your experience with obtaining the quote, but you cannot review the delivery or ongoing support for the service
    • keep proof that shows your experience with the business as we may ask you to verify your interaction with them. Such proof may include email conversations, phone calls or text messages, order confirmations, invoices or receipts
  • You may not write a review about a business:
    • that you or any family member has any financial interest in;
    • that you are employed by or otherwise work for; and/or
    • that is a competitor of a business that you or any family member has any financial interest in, are employed by, or otherwise work for.
  • Your review must be your own, unique work. This includes not uploading images/ videos or using content in videos to which someone else owns the copyright, such as music tracks, snippets of copyrighted programmes or videos made by other users and/or unattributed quotes.
  • You must not have offer incentives to your customers to post a review on your listing. Incentives can include (but is not limited to) discounts, monetary rewards, free products, loyalty points, gifts, coupons, and/ or referral bonuses.
  • You must not discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively soliciting positive reviews from customers;
  • You must not try to have negative reviews removed leaving only the positive reviews (astroturfing). If you are found to be artificially boosting your review ratings through fake reviews, you could face a potential restriction or deactivation of your reviews feature as set out below.
  • Your review must not be fake or otherwise breach any applicable legislation or this Policy.
  • Your review must not contain abusive or offensive language or behaviour towards businesses or other users. This includes (but is not limited to) the use of profanities; threats; prejudiced comments; hate speech; sexually explicit language; and/ or, illegal harms (as set out in the Online Safety Act 2023).
  • Your review must not contain personal information such as names, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers or bank and card details etc.


Responding to a review

  • You will be informed whenever a new review is posted against your business, subject to you having review notification functionality switched on in your Yell online Account.
  • If you have registered for a Yell online Account, you can respond to a posted review on your business. You can do this via the ‘Received reviews’ page within your Yell online account.
  • When you respond to a review you will be highlighted as the business owner to consumers via the ‘Business Response’ flag.
  • Any response should be constructive and written in a non-biased way. See here for guidance on how to respond to reviews.
  • Any respond you submit will be published in real-time and will be visible to all.


Reporting a review

We actively encourage business owners to report any review they believe contravenes this Policy by using the ‘report review’ link on the specific review they want to report.


We may temporarily remove the review from the business listing whilst we investigate the report.

We will determine whether the reported review meets our threshold for action. In certain circumstances, we will contact you and/ or the reviewer for further information to support our investigation. In the absence of a response, the review may be withdrawn as unsubstantiated.


Where we determine the review meets our threshold, we may take action including:

  • permanently removing the review;
  • applying a sanction; and/or
  • rectifying the review or requiring you to rectify the review to make it comply with this Policy.


Where we determine the review does not meet our threshold for action it will remain in place.

You may decide to temporarily or permanently remove the reviews functionality from your listing. In such cases, all review data both positive and negative is removed, and you will no longer be able to request or receive any new reviews.

 

Sanctions for publishing fake reviews

 

To maintain the credibility of our reviews, we may impose sanctions on users who publish fake reviews including:

  • Review Removal – We will remove fake reviews from your business listing if they breach our policies to ensure only genuine feedback is displayed

 

  • Warning or Notification – We may issue a warning if a review (or reviews) on your business listing breaches this, Policy. You may be asked to rectify the content of a review you post to comply with this Policy and/ or arrange for the review to be removed. If you do not correct the content within the specified timeframe given, we will remove the review

 

  • Account Suspension or Banning – If we identify that you are repeatedly receiving reviews that do not comply with this Policy, we may temporarily suspend and/or permanently disable your reviews account. In extreme cases, we may consider removing your business listing from Yell’s platform.  

 

Appeals Process

You can raise an appeal to dispute any decision we have made within the last 6 months. You can dispute decisions like the permanent removal of a review (or reviews), a warning notification; the suspension or blocking of your account or  

To appeal a sanction, you will need to complete the form available below. 


When submitting an appeal, it is important that you are transparent, honest and provide as much detail as possible to improve your chances of having any sanction imposed by Yell lifted.


You can only dispute the same decision or sanction once. If you have already disputed a decision or sanction, our team will not review it again.


We reserve the right to remove a review at any time for any reason or no reason.


The reviews posted on Yell.com are individual and highly subjective opinions. The opinions expressed in reviews are user opinions and not that of Yell Limited. We do not endorse any of the opinions expressed by reviewers and we are not affiliated with any establishment listed or reviewed on Yell.com.