First-party reviews are reviews collected through Yext Review Generation and displayed on your own website. Unlike third-party reviews on publisher sites, you have the ability to manage first-party reviews directly — approving them early, flagging them for removal, or removing them yourself depending on your permissions.
The Quarantine Period
When a new first-party review comes in, it enters a quarantine period before being published to your website. The quarantine gives your team time to review it internally before it goes live.
To set the quarantine period:
- Navigate to Reviews > Generation > Settings.
- Click the Quarantine New First Party Reviews field.
- Enter the number of days, from 0 to 120.
- Click Save.
During quarantine, the review appears in the Monitoring tab with a status of Quarantined and shows the number of days remaining. You can take the following actions on a quarantined review:
- Approve early: change the status to Live before the quarantine period ends
- Respond: respond to the review to engage with the customer before it goes live
- Flag for removal: flag the review if you believe it should not be published
- Remove: remove the review directly if you have permission to do so
Note: For healthcare entities, the quarantine period begins after the review has been de-identified. Reviews containing PHI cannot be approved manually before that process is complete.
Approve a Quarantined Review Early
To publish a first-party review before the quarantine period ends:
- Navigate to Reviews > Monitoring.
- Locate the quarantined review. Filter for Status = Quarantined to find them quickly.
- Click the dropdown next to Respond and select Change Status to Live.
Flag a First-Party Review for Removal
If you do not have permission to remove a review directly, you can flag it. Flagging immediately unpublishes the review and creates a task for a user with removal permission to review the request. That user can then choose to remove the review or reinstate it to its pre-flagged status.
To flag a first-party review:
- Navigate to Reviews > Monitoring.
- Locate the review. To view only first-party reviews, filter for Site = First Party or External First Party.
- Click the dropdown next to View or Respond and select Flag for Removal.
- Select the reason for flagging and click Flag Review.
If the Flag for Removal option is grayed out, the review has already been flagged or removed.
Remove a First-Party Review
If you have the Remove First Party Reviews permission, you can remove a review directly without it going through an approval process.
To remove a first-party review:
- Navigate to Reviews > Monitoring.
- Locate the review.
- Click the dropdown next to Respond and select Remove.
- Select the reason for removal and click Remove Review.
The review status changes to Removed and the review is unpublished immediately.
To reinstate a removed review:
- Filter for Status = Removed to locate the review.
- Click the dropdown next to View and select Change Status to Live.
Guidelines for flagging or removing reviews
Flag or remove reviews that meet any of the following criteria:
- Contains inappropriate, hateful, or violent content such as profanity, sexual content, hate speech, or negative remarks about an employee
- Contains advertising or spam such as bulk messaging, harmful links, or content promoting another business
- Is not related to the entity
- Contains personally identifiable information for a healthcare entity type that could identify an individual
Publish a First-Party Review to Your Website
First-party reviews with a Live status are published to your website automatically if you have a Reviews Widget installed or a custom integration in place. No additional steps are required after a review goes Live.
If you want to display first-party reviews on your website and have not yet set up publishing, see Publish Reviews to Your Website.