Has anyone successfully moved their Yelp profile to a new state and kept their reviews?
Would really appreciate any firsthand experience here as I’m trying to decide if this is worth doing.
Context: My original Yelp profile is #1 organically in a very competitive market (about 1,000 miles from where I work now). It has 38 visible reviews (and over 100 hidden). I created a second profile in my current market, but it only has 5 reviews that Yelp will show, which is just not cutting it because it's an even more competitive market. I’ve been operating in both states, but I’m now fully closing down in the first one.
My dilemma: I can move my original Yelp profile to my new location (confirmed by Yelp since I’m service-based with no storefront). BUT… If I leave it where it is, I can still refer leads out and get a referral fee. I used to get at least 5 closed referral deals a year off of it but now it's dropped to almost 0. (It's still getting tons of traffic to the page, just the people are not converting with my referral agent).
So if I move my page, I potentially bring a strong, review-heavy profile into my actual market. But I’m worried Yelp will drop/filter reviews and kill the value of me moving it in compassion to just leaving it in Market 1 and trying to get referral fees.
So, if you’ve moved your Yelp profile a significant distance (200+ miles, especially out of state):
Did your reviews stay or get filtered?
What happened to your rankings?
Was it worth it?