What is Yelp?

Yelp has been helping people find businesses online, businesses such as, plumbers, health services, local events, and much more.

Yelp’s rich local listings and reviews help people who are looking to connect to reliable services near their area. All they have to do is yelp for help.

How does Yelp work?

A basic registration is required in order to access the information and to get connected with local businesses. It is free. Not only do users get to connect with local businesses, they get access to over 53 million local reviews!

Business owners can set up free accounts, post products pictures, reach out to their customers, track the traffic on their pages on Yelp. They can also use advertising services on Yelp.

How does Yelp recommend businesses?

Yelp ensures that there is no bias in the recommendations that it provides to its users because the results are based on factors such as quality, reliability, and various other factors. Yelp makes it very clear that there is no preferential treatment given to any advertiser. Advertisements are clearly demarcated from the rest of the listings.

With Yahoo! planning to integrate Yelps reviews and business listing in its search results, what would this mean for local businesses and searchers?

As I see it, local businesses would get more exposure going forward. Yahoo! users will benefit from the added advantage of user reviews and an even richer local content. It will be a perfect blend of optimized local listings and reviews.