How to Get Your Bar Trivia Night Banned from Yelp

I’m taking a break today from writing about corporate team building and employee entertainment to recount one of my war stories from the land of pub trivia. Back when I was first starting out in 2006 as a bar quizmaster on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the bartender Paul and I developed a wacky idea: make ours the best bar trivia night in New York City.

We were already on a roll, having generated a tremendous following relatively quickly, and were getting listed weekly on the pages of Time Out New York. How, then, could we kick things up a notch, and “officially” rank ours as New York’s best pub quiz? The answer, of course, was Yelp.

The user-reviewed site was incredible popular back then, and still is; however, for obvious reasons they have a very clearly-stated policy: you may NOT solicit positive reviews! Doing so weakens the integrity of the site, and is unfair to Yelp’s users. But sadly, that didn’t stop us from doing just that.

Paul made me do it. “Dave,” he said in his ridiculously charming Irish accent, “announce we’ll give away a pitcher of beer to any team who gives a good review on Yelp, and brings in evidence.” It seemed so harmless – after all, these patrons DID enjoy our trivia night, and we were just giving a little incentive to post something positive.

So I announced it. The following week, the reviews of the bar on Yelp went from a sleepy 12 or so, to NEARLY 30 – all glowing, 5-star home-runs talking about how awesome our pub quiz was. People came in armed with printouts of their reviews, and Paul let the free beer flow. Oh, happy day!

By the following week we’d hit almost 50 reviews, and we were stoked. That is, until Paul came over to me, mid-question, and demanded that I look at one of the customer reviews. “This trivia night is awesome, the host is great! Cool bartenders, beer selection…” Okay so far. “…and if you write a good review on Yelp, they give you a free pitcher of beer!”

Holy CRAP, are you serious??!

Some nimrod actually WROTE that in his review. By the following day, all – I mean ALL – of the bar’s glowing reviews were gone, including the one left by Captain Genius. Over the following weeks, people would continue to write in positive reviews, which were summarily deleted by Yelp within hours. We’d been flagged!

Truth is, we deserved it. I don’t allow cheating at my trivia nights, and stuffing the ballot box by offering rewards for Yelp reviews is just as bad. Eventually, Yelp allowed reviews of the pub again, and I’m proud to say we eventually DID become on of the best-ranked bar trivia night in NYC according to New York Magazine, Time Out New York, CBS New York and other media outlets. However, it’s a cautionary tale that cutting corners to gain favorable Yelp reviews just plain isn’t worth it.

Have you had a similar experience trying to accumulate favorable reviews on user-reviewed Websites? Did you screw up as big as we did? What are some legit ways to build user reviews which WON’T get you flagged?