Local review site Yelp quietly released an API today to allow third parties to access much of the content and features of the service.
The API allows a number of input requests. Applications can retrieve business review and rating information for a particular geographic region/location, display reviews and pictures for a business or businesses, pull up business information based on a phone number, etc. There are no commercial boundaries on the APIs for up to 10,000 requests per day - above that and you have to work out a deal with them.
We recently poked fun at Yelp when a review popped up for a “full service” landscaper - but in reality the site is doing extremely well. They’ve raised a total of $16 million in capital from Bessemer and Benchmark over two rounds. Competitors include Intuit’s Zipingo and Insider Pages, which was acquired by Citysearch earlier this year.
Comscore shows yelp at about 1.4 million U.S. visitors and 6 million page views per month.
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can you clarify what those ‘terms of use’ are?
Yelp! That’s great!!
kent - haven’t read them, but they are available here:
http://www.yelp.com/developers...../api_terms
If their maps are based on Google Maps, does it mean users need to follow Google’s TOS too? Otherwise, great service from Yelp!
You are way off on the traffic. See http://siteanalytics.compete.com/yelp.com
Someone is going to make the next great mashup with this.
maybe this will help them expand their presence outside of the bay area!
Yelpers are *quite* passionate about Yelp. They’ve got super-entrenched loyalty - what everyone strives for.
7 they have presence outside of the bay area, except I have heard a lot of is paid. I think they use some of that money to buy reviews in places like chicago and etc.
I also think Yelp clique is a tad elitist which might hurt them in the long run…only time would tell.
The terms of use are rather restrictive…
* Collect end-user ratings or reviews of local businesses on any website that uses the Yelp API or Yelp Content;
* Aggregate Yelp Content alongside content from other sources (e.g., you will not create aggregate ratings combining ratings from Yelp and other sources);
* Display Yelp Content on any web page or application page that includes local business reviews from another source.
If using Yelp precludes me from using Yahoo local, why bother?
The CrunchBase is good. Why is this not on the TechCrunch Network ?
Why this site hasn’t been snached up yet is beyond me. They have an absolutely rabid userbase with a ton of local datapoints. Some of these people live and breathe Yelp and it makes the service that much better.
This is the kind of site that once you use it once, you won’t use anything else. At this point I pretty much pick all of my restaurants/bars/venues based on Yelp. I love this service.
=Ryan
rstewart@adobe.com
why can i not have a hotmail adress
Ryan
They haven’t been “snatched” up yet because up until about 15 minutes ago they had no clear path to monetization (still unproven), and they are barely able to break out of their home turf of San Fran & L.A. and establish huge traction despite a ton of funding.
Ryan,
wow…you sound really genuine about yelp…no way you’re a yelp plant.
@13 No way. I’m in Seattle and every restaurant I want to go to is covered. When I’m traveling this is all I use to find places to go. If it isn’t on Yelp, it doesn’t exist for me.
They’ve gotten a lot of funding, which is the big problem with finding a buyer, but they’re far and away the best local web company and you can monetize that a bunch of different ways.
@kent Yes, I’m a Yelp plant. Google me. I’ve set up this whole persona, even blogged on TechCrunch, because I *knew* the day would come when I could comment on a post about Yelp and try to raise the valuation.
=Ryan
rstewart@yelp.com
@ ryan,
hmmm…didn’t know yelp had an office in seattle
@ryan,
i knew it
They just recently had some really good coverage in I think it was Fortune magazine so that’s a good sign that they’re doing something right.
@kent
Ryan Stewart is a real person who works for Adobe as an AIR evangelist. Let me guess, you must work for.. uhh… CitySearch. Yeah, that’s it.
I love me some yelp!
Use it all the time in both LA / Bay Area - I look forward to mishmashing the content to see what is possible - Got to read the TOU though!
Agreed to a certain extent that coverage in other areas is somewhat lacking but for my use cases it has been fantastic (works pretty good in smaller cities like Santa Barbara, Monterey as well)
They don’t have any real fan base on the east coast. And most of the reviews I’ve read, read like they were created by someone paid to put them there. ie. not knowledgeable and short.
A big problem for Yelp is monetization. I have a friend who advertised their cooking business on yelp in SF…. and got nothing for her efforts. 80% of her business comes through google, not yelp. Needless to say she dropped yelp and concentrated on SEO. Yelp has gotten consumer traction from the 20 something crowd, but is far from getting any traction with local businesses.
Also most of the reviews are from the ranting, foul-mouthed myspace crowd who often get it wrong. If you ask me Zagat’s is more on the mark.
I use Yelp in the Denver area. I wouldn’t say it’s the biggest online Denver community, but I think it has pretty good coverage by people who’s opinions I’ve learned to trust, and I have finally been getting around to adding my own reviews as well.
whatever the numbers, Compete, Alexa, NetRatings, Comscore or even the new http://www.quantcast.com (I like how it displays info), seems like Yelp is on a course to figure out how to monetize.
Echoing the comments made by BS meter, monetization will remain a challenge as word of mouth marketing (WOMM) is the best promotion any business, especially local businesses, can get. Yelp’s user recommendation content model underscores WOMM. This means local businesses with much support from the Yelp community has little incentive to advertise on Yelp as their promotional ad won’t carry as much weight as the opinions of Yelpers.
At the other extreme, local businesses which are slammed on Yelp clearly aren’t going to advertise their business on an online community that slams their goods and services. Hence, using an old term from b-school, Yelp is “stuck in the middle”.
I personally know quite a few restaurant owners and GM’s who have had their restaurants reviewed on Yelp. None advertise, yet their comments range from “I love Yelp, it’s great for business” to “Yelp sucks”.
I use Yelp occasionally, but I still prefer the old fashioned personal experience so that I can form my own opinions.
I like the Yelp Phone API which allows you to lookup a business review based on the phone number.
i sure as hell hope yelp gets more than 1.4M uniques/month - for their sake.
Really? I didn’t notice that. Most reviews seem relatively normal to me, if not possibly manufactured in certain cases.
Also - Yelp seems down for me. Did they get Crunched?
I think the uber-loyalty and cliqueness is actually in their favor unless they want to be come a huge, mass-market review site, which I don’t know if they do.
#26 made some good points. Yelp is shooting itself in the foot by allowing bad reviews on the pages of the very businesses they’re trying to sell! DUHHHHHH!
And secondly they have no on-the-ground sales force. Most small businesses aren’t going the self-serve route. Most of the readers on this website think that Silicon Valley and San Fran are the norm. No one spends more time online than you folks, so don’t expect biz owners in Houston to be acting like you.
Lastly, paid Yelpers like Ryan totally undermine what Yelp should be about. UNBIASED REVIEWS. If I think people are doing these reviews simply cause they’re getting paid, what’s the point? Word of mouth is powerful because there is no “agenda” other than seeing a friend share in a good experience (or avoid a potential bad one).
If I owned a restaurant in a city, I’d hire one of my staff to be a Yelper, and have that person trash all of my competitors. Simple enough huh?
Yelp is rock. Period.
When I am either looking for a local shop or checking a place someone has suggested we go to, I use Yelp first, everything else second.
As others have said Yelp has such a strong community. I do notice that Yelp skews very upper class in income and so forth.
I don’t know why it took them so long. We may see some grates things coming from this api.
Monetizable or not (ads tend to bug people after a while, and there’s only so much subtlety you can employ in the “sponsored review” world), Yelp can pack out a new place in L.A. or S.F., at least with a certain crowd, and it’s not the MySpace crowd- it’s the Northeast LA thirtyish hipster crowd. Open API only encourages ubiquity, & I don’t think the TOS are that bad.
Oh, and I don’t work for Yelp……
I think Yelp is better suited than most of these services. I also think the API addition should help them. I didn’t even know of Zipingo. I did a quick check of Zipingo in my town and it’s easy to tell the content is outdated. They still list a restaurant that had a spectacular fire 18 months ago and no longer exists. Hey, but I can be the first to review!
Kidding aside, I still have problems with Yelp for several reasons. First, there is a group of people that I’ll call “naysayers”. These are some people who post a very negative review about any business. If you go look at all their reviews you won’t find a positive comment anywhere. They’re happy complaining.
Of course, there are the “Pollyanna’s” to counter these folks. They could get food poisoning from a business and blame it on themselves or any other factor, but the restaurant.
It appears everyone is weighted the same. I suspect a portion of the “naysayers” or “Pollyanna’s” are fictional based on the restaurants I’ve reviewed and know. Reviews created for the benefit of the business or a competitor. A common problem with many review sites and it dilutes the value of people that post honest opinions.
The other failing I see with Yelp is in their sales. I’ve been asked by a number of local merchants about the service. The sales people will stop by and say that the business has great reviews and they should advertise. What they don’t give the merchant is good qualitative data about sponsorship/ads and the ROI. Merchants need to know what is the return on their ad spend. Even basic stats don’t seem to be available. I could be wrong about this, but I’ve been asked a half dozen times from different merchants. At least with Google AdWords, merchants have stats to determine ROI.
In concept, I like Yelp and would like to see them succeed as I think the service makes sense especially for travelers or people new to an area.
What a great move by Yelp! This is especially useful for ventures based upon city domain names. =) They now have a holy grail for content.
Just an FYI for everyone.
Another competitor to Yelp is http://www.mojopages.com
For some reason techcrunch has never covered them.
Probably because they are not in silicon valley, but Southern Cal.
API’s are always a nice touch - and get you mentioned on techcrunch, which doesn’t hurt publicity.
Local search that pays for content. Great..the wool is over our eyes. Here are a list of better sites that do the restaurant thing but actually is home grown:
1. FriendsEAT.com - Food and dining site made by some dude in his spare time. Gorgeous design and cool Fan System
2. Grouprecipes.com - Fun recipe website with thousands of good recipes. Cool ajax!
3. allrecipes.com - Just bought by Scripps Network (food network)….i guess all our recipes will be branded by FN.
get over yelp. it’s too busy. Too much $. Give me 16 million..I’ll hire 30 pakistani developers and give you insiderpages.
I’ve just published a Ruby library built on top of the new Yelp API. See:
http://lemurware.blogspot.com/.....-ruby.html
May this give the growing Ruby community a leg up on doing cool things with the Yelp data.
I have seen most of the local business review sites on the internet. I make regular rounds to keep tabs on reviews of my business. I also contribute to local business reviews. When I need to find a service provider I want to see the reviews. Each review site does not have that many reviews for any given business, but I believe that will continue to grow. The site that I see the most use of is yahoo local. People like the use of photos with reviews, although they tend to only do this with certain types of businesses. I encourage clients to write reviews for my business. For a while, google was including yahoo local reviews along with theirs, but now seem to mostly use insiderpages and citysearch. Does google have some connection with them? I was wondering why they favor those two. The local business review site that I personally like the best is mojopages. They let the members put whatever backgrounds they want on their home page, and let business photos be added to the reviews. Mojopages is the better overall site in my opinion.