Speaker 3It was up VIPs, Rookick for getting to this episode that everybody's waiting for, the highly anticipated episode with Yelp. You got to remember to go and join our new home services VIP Facebook community groups ago onto 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.
Speaker 0What's the password?
Speaker 6Don't talk about it. Be about it.
Speaker 0Welcome in to the two of 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, it surprised guests will show up next. So let's get this party started.
Speaker 3Hey, what's up? Yeah, he's, why do we have a banger of an episode two day? 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, Chattapee AG, are you boys as excited for today as I am?
Speaker 5I am too. I'm very excited. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3Yeah, let me see your excited face.
Speaker 1You're seeing it.
Speaker 3excited face looks the same as the happy face as a sad face as they all pretty much look the same you just tried to cover up with the beard.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 3Hey listen real quick, boys. I know I'm trying to try to make sure that I give some updates here here and there too but uh the, um, I have everything prepped and ready to go finally to start this whole cancer treatment thing. So by time this thing rolls out, I should be starting the following week. Finally, right to get this to get to ask you this. Oh, but, and actually what I found out to pre episode two is our guest, you know, Jed, um, was this, we just had fathers came up Father's Day weekend. So happy Father's Day to all you father's, our previously, our previously was Father's Day weekend. And and Jed you your daughter fought leukemia, but now she's got zero percent right like shit She like she's remission right was this the first father's day with with that as the case
Speaker 2Yeah, it was, yeah, thank you for asking. First of all, 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 it's been a hard battle, but one that she's winning and she's down to zero. And now the continued to kick cancer's asked for the next six months, but I know you are in an awesome position as well. I can tell by your guns, you're ready to go and strong and ready to hit this thing. So, you know, we are all thinking about you.
Speaker 3That's awesome, dude, congrats, man. And I know the listeners like, okay, cool, Chris, let's get to the good shit. So, no. I appreciate that. I am going to get to the good stuff, let's just don't worry. I know that you're all here for this. Like the excitement around this episode, you know, it's been so cold here. People reaching out to me, texting me, sending me messages. So, but I don't want to get started too, really, without kicking off with an idiom, right? And I know, I know, listeners, you're like, come on, Chris, just get to it. So, I can't skip one. And I think that you, let's just, we'll really appreciate this one. I think that this is a really good idiom. We're not a foreign, but whatever you want to call it. And it was the shit end of the stick. I wondered, where did that come? What was your origination of the shit end of the stick? And as I kind of researched more into this, too. It's actually didn't start out the shit into the stick, but I actually started out the wrong end of the stick. And this is the original version that this came out in the 1600s over in England. Um, and then it was referenced in a, in a book like in the 1600s, you know, was the first I was actually referenced, but then the Americans go figure are the one that turned it from wrong and dubbed the stick to the shit into the stick. So leave it up to us to make it a little bit narrower to the listeners, maybe you felt like you had the shit into the stick and maybe you feel that way with our guess. Have you, see like it based on all the, all the comments and stuff that we got? And so what I love episodes like this is, man, it takes, it takes a lot of nerve to come on here knowing you're going to get a barrage, you know, I've just bullets fired at you. And when we did this previously, um, 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 asked the questions? We're going to 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. That's about how we got Jed and I'll go on your Jed. Welcome to the podcast, Phamanic side to have you. And we also have Chris Baysh, which you've heard the song, I'm all about that base. Got that base. No.
Speaker 4That's the key part of me. It's all about that from a T-box. It's all. I like that one.
Speaker 3I know you've heard that before. These people have had this game. OK, so damn, I'm not first the party on that one, but we got Chris Bay CEO of Hatch. Jack Chris, welcome to the VIP room, gentlemen.
Speaker 2Well, it is awesome to be here. I've been looking forward to this for a while, so.
Speaker 4I'm pretty fired up too. I'll watch a few episodes. You guys are super authentic and my type of people. So this will be a good, this will be a good up to it. Thank you.
Speaker 3Yeah, I appreciate that. In listen, the deal is like, what's it, but we're 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 from when we on our initial call, I was like, Let's just be human beings talking about the, you know, like, let's just hit all 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, 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 way for you, even if you have a dealer advisory council or whatever you call, 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 hopefully come up with additional solutions to make the overall product better, which I believe is why we're doing this. Is that fair? Yeah.
Speaker 2Absolutely. Yeah, we're excited to talk about it. You know, I've had a lot of these conversations over last 20 years of yelp and looking forward to this one. I mean, what what what an incredible audience you have and the in the listeners and certainly we're going through a pretty unique time in terms of the way you know, technology is changing the home services industry. So it'll it'll be fun to talk about
Speaker 3Well, so to our listeners, I'm good, just so you have a quick idea of some of the questions I'm going to ask ahead of time. I don't typically do this by wanting to give you a heads up because we're going to have to do part of this episode is yes. We are going to hit the review questions like right out the 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 where 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 one more of the strategic side, what are some of the top performers doing differently? So that would be great insight to get from these guys 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 the boys and I have some questions that will kind of sprinkle in through out. So I say we get after it and I want to put this out there for both of you right off the bat. Um, the desired outcome of this podcast is that we, you, you, you, uh, listen, you know, you're, you're listening, you know, via us, the other hosts to the contractors questions and complaints. And the hope is that we can come to a desired outcome that is the best possible solution, um, leveraging all, you, a, that's coming into the mix, all the things. It's a, it's an open conversation between contractors and y'all 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 going to let him get. Chad's going to be a little more PC. But real quick, before I do up 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. Well, I want to understand the, well, first off, and we don't have to go like super, super deep into it. Cause nobody's, you know, like we don't want to get deep into it. I just want to understand high level. Yeah. 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 you're company was the right fit for whatever this next phase is, well, you guys looking at in the future that made all this make sense for help.
Speaker 4Yeah, that's a good question. I'll take it from the hatch side. Yeah, it's that cool. And then you can probably, y'all'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 weeds and AI came out because it makes so much sense that you could get AI to do some of these tasks for you, right? Whether we phone call, text, email, booking, all that stuff. We went out to market, not to get bought by you. 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. and distribution and I get to a lot of folks fast to help them. Yelp head both. So when I met with Yelp, I remember we went to dinner with Jet in some of the executive team. I left realizing that this crew was 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 contracts or 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 are quieter for 270 million bucks, plus some retention, which helped retain a lot of that. Thank you. What, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, 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.
Speaker 5This is a cross-product Engineering and in particular customer service
Speaker 4because we're going for it, man. Like this is the team, like work going for it. We want to help this industry become what we think it's going to come in the next five years, which is, you know, service business, if it'll be the next millionaire class, guys. Like it's, it's happening. And so anyway, we shared that vision 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 help. So over the edge, so that would be helpful.
Speaker 3Clearly, clearly. Yeah, that's a little bad game. So hey, real quick. You said 250,000. You shared with us pre-pock-ass G2 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 care about what the percentage was you said, I don't say it was like 70 something.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, we do over 70% of our revenue in services and so, you know, if you're 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 yelts that we see. From past seven or eight years, we have been, you know, solely focused on growing our services business. And, you know, we've released over 200 products since 2020, specifically related to services. You know, 70% of our revenue, as you mentioned, is coming from services. And we are in it to win it. And, you know, as it relates to the Hatch Act was vision. you know, when we obviously leave management is a really important part of the funnel for everybody listening to this. We partnered with, you know, it starts out like we were dating, right? We had a partnership 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 to 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 operate with integrity and like all those things kind of came in a place and as you know Chris was kind of going out to market to raise money you know it became really obvious that we could accelerate our strategy on the on the lead management side and and I got to tell you You never know until you actually put the ring on the finger and it's after the honeymoon. 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 road in terms of how AI is going to be transforming the way we all work and interact with consumers.
Speaker 3Well, I, I, I listen, I think I'm, you know, getting to get to get to know you a little bit. Yeah, 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 sweet.
Speaker 2And I just, I think it's a miracle that I got my role. I'm like, when are they going to fire me? Yeah, I don't know what's going to happen.
Speaker 3God, I want to see if I could be more helpful than Andrew here. Okay. I do want to say something real quick before we jump into 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 somebody's guys you might have also a partnership with you, but Number one, thanks to you guys for coming on board as a as a sponsor on the show Know this episode did not come because of that it was because it became a sponsor, it gave us opportunity to also have a interview, guys. So I'm super grateful for this opportunity. So thank you guys for being supportive of this podcast. Cook shout out to Avoka, also one of our long-time sponsors. One of our newest sponsors, Chad's coaching group, can't stop the growth. Chad's been doing coaching for quite a while with some contractors. Chad is obviously a hundred million plus, a hundred and twenty million, I can't remember how many he is now, but They play an industry. Also to one of my favorites, send the email marketing the home services email marketing company Right here on the on the hat and last one of sales ask her one of our newest sponsors the 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? like that. So when we sent out a poll, I yell at you, come out and kick this thing off. And we could do this. When we sent out a poll, what we did is, you know, we were 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 service space. We're all 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 you, you tell us what are your biggest complaints. And so what we had done was taking all of them, all of them. And I'm not even sure how many hundreds that were where it took them, compiled them down, prioritize them. And we just took like the top of your 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 about it and chat goes 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
Speaker 5Yes, or start off first off by saying thanks for being here. Uh, no, we got a nice little pre call about some stuff pretty candid conversation with trying to judge by the way. And uh, 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 what that was. And if that's a big background, yeah, for at least today, you moved into somewhere else to make it look good in this plan. 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, but 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 idea as like, you know, as Yelp really representing me properly through reparate through its reviews, right? And I look at my Yelp review right now. Be 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 a highest review service company in the whole state of Ohio. There's only three businesses that are reviewed more than ECO. We have 197 97 total thousand reviews. And I'm going to hear the brag about them here to kind of set up baseline for this conversation. And there's the one people more is the Columbus Zoo Cedar Point King's Island, right? And then eco. And then we go on all the other platforms really high level and you get to yell. And it just feels like why? Like how? There's lots of reviews that come in. I think a lot of people fill this way. And over time as a company candidly we said this before as we just kind of bailed on the help. There was just no reason for us to be involved with the help. 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 it 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 y'all. Maybe Chad and I have maybe similar feelings and this 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 should be the people 100% I agree with all that but why like why does that happen at yell 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 and the community and do stuff. So why is that? What is the algorithm to that? And why is 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 know say all, but there's a lot of comments around this not feeling very great about how and why Yelp does what it does.
Speaker 2Yeah, well, thanks for the question, you know, over my 20 years, I've been beaten up with this question enough times and answered it and certainly things have evolved over time. I would step by 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 and do it. We get it organic traffic that comes in a yelp. They may come in for 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 in the 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, if all your listeners, if you get a bad review or one of your reviews is not recommended, it doesn't feel good. This is your livelihood, this is just 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 has cited 72% 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% of our reviews have between 500 and 1000 characters. That's 6% for Google. And You know, about 30% of Google's reviews, I think it's might be 30%, have zero text at all, and 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 is a lot of incentive to make sure you get a lot of reviews. We don't pay it play the quantity game. The way I like to, I just tell an analogy, taking yourself out of kind of the home service is space for a little bit. You know, if Starbucks wanted to go get the most reviews possible compared to local coffee shops. they can 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 look at the review distribution, there was an FTC study that we had, I think, in 2024, that showed, we have a much wider review distribution than other platforms. you know, world, you know, you go to Uber now. If you get 4.5 driver on Uber, that's basically an S 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 it on it? And that doesn't mean, and it is what I would just remind people is it's the nuance behind the reviews. It's that depth of information that comes in there. But it can be really, really frustrating. 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, just 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 LMs, and we have deals with OpenAI, we have deals with Amazon, 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'll 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.
Speaker 5Yeah, and I think just to follow up with that on a Chris or shadow jump in here, but you know, so I hear all that. And 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. It 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 it like, what's going on? The BBB, right, Angie's list, you know, my thumb tack reviews, all these other places, right? And then you get to yell, What's going on here? And then I do have good reviews and you're like, yeah, and it's like, no, not approved, right? So it's and I agree that you want great review content, because I think we are moving to a whole new world, which we'll get into a little bit that's around customer settlement. 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 do we actually make sure that we are getting good content under to bring us up? So we can be engaged with that through your algorithm. Because I still don't know 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. the outcome of how we work with y'all to be successful in that. And then we'll go from there.
Speaker 2Totally. I mean, listen, the most successful folks on our platform and as I think Chris mentioned before, we have over 250,000 professionals with paying relationships. By the way, so much larger number that interact with y'all 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, and, you know, I don't want you to give up on yelp. I hear you, Lancler, 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 in yelp because we are a different type of platform.
Speaker 5And I think that's important. That's, I think that's the more people just want to understand, right? Like, how do I, what is that? And how do I get educated to use this platform? Because it does seem like you guys have actually a lot more people coming this platform for home service than I even, when we have the pre-call and even this brought up than I even assumed. And I think people have kind of just said that, 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 know we know Chad and I in Chris feel that way. So I appreciate that in like 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 want I want us to be all of our contractors just successful and include yourself on every platform, right?
Speaker 2Because we want to win, right?
Speaker 5And we want to serve our community and do the right thing. So thank you for that.
Speaker 2Well, you know, 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 a consumer saves up $15,000 to go redo their roof, that is a massive decision for them it then to make and it is the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of service professionals as well and so you know we You know, y'all pumps through, I think it's over 350,000 leads a day, 10 million a month, home services leads, 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. This is a very small step and going to do that. And you know, it's something that I think's really important as, you know, we become even more of a service company.
Speaker 3You're real quick, Kevin, before you jump in. I think he's going to 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 is like, that can't be the best practice for your y'all. But if that's the perception, perception is reality, right? So that's going to be a good one on the cover because it seems like of the, as 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? So I think I agree.
Speaker 5That's nationally wise. We talked to contractors across in the other end of field, but it's not just like a regional thing or a Midwest thing or this that everybody kind of has 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 view. I take a series of still to this day. I'm an epic mail chain 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 personally, right? Well, then when you're trying to fight against it, you're you feel like you're up and up a pill battle. So if we can beat up not long enough, but I think 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 community home
Speaker 2And you know, I know I'm hammering kind of on the like the review. So this is the thing I'll just say with like a natural reaction for folks is I go get some sort of, some sort of presence on y'all by 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 how do I go get a bunch of better reviews right 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 where 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, that is one of the factors that, you know, impacts the review recommendations off or so. We've got to do a better job of educating the best folks on Yelp who like make their businesses and turn into huge businesses or the ones that kind of let the reviews come naturally and let everything speak for itself and their other ways for you to kind of improve that reputation that are not review based, all the free tools that we offer, the paid tools and we can go into that stuff later if you want but there are a lot of avenues to go out and do that.
Speaker 1Yeah. I guess, and maybe this was 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 rates 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? At least I hope, shit. But I guess how does, and you've kind of got into this, but just to kind of tag along because I think it's again, hopefully add some more clarity to what people are feeling out there. But so if I look at my reviews and I get, like, hey, a lot of merges to star rating and you're asking and so on and so forth. 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 a 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, to a certain degree. It just, they went to help and they, or they didn't go to Google and so on and so forth. So like how does, how do you explain that?
Speaker 2Sure. 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 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 gonna have a broader range. And it kind of mirrors the way your experiences are, right? You go on a 10 restaurants, you're gonna have two nine and 10 experiences, you're gonna have a few five to seven experiences and a couple of bad experiences. And so, 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 her tail and 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 screw it any answers on the questions. Our system is different. You're going to see review skewing higher on the other platforms. It's just fact. We know it. And 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 rather review, make sure you're responding in the correct way, which it sounds like you're doing. And it's something that, you know, try not to go solicitor reviews because that'll get trapped up into the recommendation software and it doesn't lead you to this.
Speaker 5I think that's one of the things we want to maybe understand there, just follow that solicitor reviews. 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 stuff, but the help doesn't allow any of that anyway. So when they do show up, how do you know that it's a soliciting review or not? Because it seems to filter stuff out. Is it really that if somebody's ever actually used yelp before for a review, like how much it impact the Zadhab, like how do it, because it might just be or get, because in certain regions, yelp is used more than other places, right? Lishol, I've met a lot of statistics on regional areas, right? You know, I don't, I don't believe Yelp is used as much for home service and in the mid west is used for restaurants. Right.
UNKNOWNRight.
Speaker 5Right.
UNKNOWNRight.
Speaker 5Right.
UNKNOWNRight. Right
Speaker 2Yeah. 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 yell 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. When I was talking 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. I mean, they keep that church in state and, you know, I, in fact, I've had buddies who couldn't mean they're like, can you just get this review removed? I'm like, I can't touch it.
Speaker 5Yeah, I mean, that's up. We make mistakes. I don't know for it. I don't know, like to with the other.
Speaker 2But Aaron, you did head out now in 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 it's not just first time that's a very simplistic way of putting it because it tastes in a lot of other factors as well, but you can kind of tell. And I don't have the details that I have to 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 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.
Speaker 3guys, we spent about 40 minutes on reviews. Do you feel it, Jed? Do you feel like we spend about 40 minutes? I do.
Speaker 2And I know it's important to people too. And, and, and, and.
Speaker 5Or make sure we get it all out there. Why haven't on here, not trying to tackle, I've got to get this data as we can, at least, and whether they agree or disagree with the way it works, at least we start to understand more of why, right? And what actions are being taken from Yelp's standpoint and why it is going on. So I think it's very worth it. I know you have some other areas I want to dig into. You know, lead transparency, some geographic, why don't we jump into a couple other topics? Thank you, Judd, for just, you know, going straight in on that and you got it. 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?
Speaker 2Yeah, and you know, 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, right? And so if you're on open AI and you know, 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, and it's going to be, you know, how are they, you know, drawing all of that information from those other folks, just pretty fun. I'm tired of this. Lord.
Speaker 3You touched on a few things, too. Like the G-Gribe for instance, like what the top performers are doing, and we're going to get into that, too. I do want to just close the loop on this review thing and say, I believe we're doing this and Aaron, I appreciate you asking all those questions and digging in because that is what the list is going 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 differential you want to be, but if it's a point of contention as big as it is, I certainly create a dress it. Right. Yeah, it's just 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 get anymore trust because you're listening to the customer.
Speaker 2Yeah, and the team that does that, you know, is constantly listening, listening to feedback and, you know, I could just go back to my original point like, you know, people come back to help and they do and, you know, we have, they do and drugs are service traffic is grown, you know, dramatically over the last seven years and we are, um, You know, we always want to be in service of how do you put the most trustworthy content 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 center, you know, at as, you know, why are they going to go, you know, come to yelp versus other platforms?
Speaker 3Yeah, and just I should say this to you before I transition on until 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 coast both these guys are hundred million dollar HVAC and plumbing contractors chads and and piece based in the annual but they're both in the west guys Aaron's in Ohio so both with players who are you know who have really authentic questions around this so so you understand who my co-hosts are. So Jen 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 than the conversation happens in the 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, really, bring it home. We'll see you next week.
