It probably would have been a good thing if they would have played their cards right.

I don’t think Yelp is doing so well after all with all the big boys catching up. Probably it would be moving to the Deadpool too in the near future…

Mike and the TechCrunch team,

“it’s” = “it is”
“its” = possession

Yes, I know, it’s nitpicky to point it out, but no one else is editing these types of things for you guys, evidently.

I don’t think less of you, just so you know!

So no one has cracked the “local search engine/community” game yet. Anyone wanna offer some insight why they’re all failing?

Shop: http://www.proline.pl/

I am a Yelp lover, and if they go down, I will go down with them No, seriously, i also believe Judy’s lost the focus… this is what Yelp has… now, The new review system on Google Maps, is also a serious contender for Yelp… I wish Google would focus on what they do best, and not stick their heavy dollar nose in every niche market….. Lets support Yelp as much as we can.

This is and isn’t a surprise. The market for local search is prime right now so I am surprised to hear that they are leaving. Yet Judy’s book, in my opinion, wasn’t that great of a service.

I can’t believe they cant make enough money to run a company with only 12 people. Shoot, AdSense alone could provide enough cash to pay the bills.

(though I am not suggesting that is the answer)

Hey Michael,

“Yelp Is The Last of The Local Review Sites Still Standing.” … I don’t think so.

They aren’t all failing. A number of these sites are performing quite well and some of them do a good job of running efficiently (low overhead) and know how to monetize their traffic effectively. If ever you are interested in some numbers and information about business models, feel free to contact me.

Disclosure: I am a founder of YellowBot

I love Yelp. It’s modern and easy to post to.

Judys Book wasn’t that good of a site. I always felt that it was a lot of middle age ladies complaining.

Wait, you forgot Insiderpages.com. That’s still around around. They aren’t bad at all.

How do the title and last paragraph of this post work together? There are still many local players, and much to be done in the local space.

Anyone got any news on FatDoor? It wants to index all businesses AND people in your neighborhood.

@Brandon: Thank you, oh, thank you; the heedless apostrophizing was driving me nuts.

According to Compete.com, Yelp was killing them in total traffic. What is driving Yelp’s traffic and why didn’t JudysBook see the same share in increased interest in local reviews? This is very disappointing news and I think they pulled the plug too early. They may have lost focus, but reviews are big business and they should have been able to monetize or sell their content.

It’s to bad Andy had to close down shop. His blog was a refreshingly open discussion about the hardships he faced as an entrepreneur.

The local search space is still young. It’s a very large space with 10’s of billions in advertising dollars migrating from print yellow pages to online local search. There are still several players taking unique approaches and I think Yelp will fair just fine.

Michael -
A couple points:
1. Judy’s Book and Yelp haven’t been competitors since Judy’s Book changed focus last year to compete with the likes of http://www.fatwallet.com
2. I think you are getting soft in your old age. You used to trumpet companies joining the deadpool, now you seem a little sad about it. I like the new Michael. Feelings are good

What about http://www.mojopages.com? I hear they are still growing.

More room for Uncover.com?

1) Where does that leave angieslist.com?

2) CNET destroyed Chowhound.com - completely convoluted the UI. It was THE place for great restaurant reviews.

The collapse of the “Social” stuff has begun!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Judy’s Book and Yelp haven’t been competitors since Judy’s Book changed focus last year to compete with the likes of http://www.fatwallet.com

I couldn’t figure out why they did that change. Go from an emerging market to an already mature one where there’s established players. I’m not sure who thought that was a good idea.

Yelp needs an acquisition of some social nightlife site to better add to its mix of bogus reviews and paid for content.

@Michael 12:

The problem being Andy Sack doesn’t care (though one might argue he could do it if he wanted to) and Chris Devore doesn’t know what he’s doing (so it wouldn’t matter either way).

They are the co-founders.

Hi Ian (#15),

mojopages barely have any traffic according to compete.com.

http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv

#8: insiderpages were bought by citysearch.com.

- Ask (like Emad above, also a yellowbot.com founder)

That makes me sad. When I first moved to Seattle, I was given so much useful information and almost felt like the Judy’s Book community was holding my hand every step of the way. I wish the staff all the best.

Yelp! is NOT thriving in my area. There have been numerous four letter obscenity laced reviews that clearly aren’t safe for work (or much else) - yet Yelp is unable to react to these reported problem postings.

It is my opinion that Yelp! have very little staff and is treading water hoping for a buy out. Activity in my area of the country is minimal and without thriving content, Yelp! will be bowled over easily by much bigger and better managed sites.

I predict that Yelp! won’t be alive by 12/2007.

We’re taking a different approach to local search by allowing users to post their local search needs and then alerting all local businesses of matching posts in real-time. We’re providing this as a free service to all local businesses and currently have over 15 million business listings in our database.

Never got Judy’s Book. But always admired their PR engine. And that’s all that’s happened here. Yelp is flavor of the moment.

It seems to me that at some point a real business has to think about how it will make money.

I realize it’s become popular again to focus only on audience. But an ability to sell and service advertisers is part of the equation too (at least at some point).

Now, if the idea is to be bought, then perhaps you should shy away from revenue. There was a funny quote in the NY Times recently from someone at Right Media saying that the financing game is best played by avoiding actual revenues “since that only limits the imagination of investors”.

Two interesting folks to watch are Angie’s List and Kudzu.com They both appear to be trying to build a business — not just an audience (although I definitely agree that audience is critical).

Angie has a subscription model for consumers, while Kudzu.com is built as much from business profiles (free and paid) — as it is from consumer reviews.

Of course, Angie will have to see if consumers will want to keep paying for data that is increasingly free. And Kudzu will have to see if it can expand from Atlanta where it is very, very deep. Other than a handful of other markets (Phoenix, Las Vegas and San Diego) the rest of the country is still lean.

Oh and then there’s SuperPages. It probably would be better not to have the print albatross. But last time I checked they actually made money.

What? Judy’s Book was still in business?

In 2005 and early ‘06, before it became a deal site, Judy’s Book had built up a national network of local-local sub-sites that included, what looked like to me, a lot of articulate, knowledgeable and often passionate contributors of community-based reviews. Trouble was, when the reviewers exhausted the easy pickings — primarily restaurants — they didn’t get any guidance from Seattle on where and how to expand their horizons. Fearful of losing their TrustScore ratings if they didn’t keep generating content, they began posing online questions across the network as an easy way to collect PVs and maintain their TrustScores. The questions got increasingly inane, but still Seattle did nothing about guiding the desperate contributors toward other areas of their communities. The “city editors” who were supposed to provide guidance were chosen by criteria that had little to do with mentorship ability. All this was extensively, and heatedly, dissected on the JB site. Contributors, including the best ones, pleaded for direction, but Seattle declined (”It’s your site”). Many of the best contributors finally quit and headed to other sites. At that point, Seattle decided to throw over local reviewing entirely and concentrate on deals. But there were already well-established deal sites, and the reconstituted JB brought nothing unique to that business. It was only a matter of time till Judy’s Book called it quits. Andy Sack and Chris DeVore were prudent spenders, so maybe their investors will get back some of their $10.5 million.

The user-generated content will make a difference rather than the reviews from yelp alone.

I think Judy’s Book was a rip off of Anjie’s List (maybe it was the other way around).

I love Yelp, and all those fake paid reviews!!

Don’t forget who backs Kudzu - Cox (so they have some serious backing).

be it yelp or tripadvisor, all the user-generated review sites suffer from too much noise and not enough trust. more and more restaurants/hotels are being characterized by reviews that say they’re the best thing ever…or the worst. users are left as uncertain as ever.

The value of yelp reviews has been steadily declining for quite some time now. When the site first came online, a lot of the info was fairly accurate, but now it’s mostly paid advertising disguised as user generated content. Next.

Andy was an innovator and a great competitor in the early days of local social search. It’s sad to see JB go down. As you can see with the proliferation of local reviews sites (at least 29 national plays that I know of), the barriers to entry are relatively small so there’s little margin for error in the execution.

If you read a review on Yelp that you find particularly useful, add that person as one of your “fans.” By picking out individual users you find trustworthy, you push their reviews to the top on the business profile page when you are logged in. This is key to limiting the noise everyone complains about. You have to put a little effort in on your part, but you end up with a usable site in the end. If you can’t be bothered to take that step, then stop going to UGC review sites and stick with Zagat. Personally, I find the “fan” concept very useful because my opinions don’t necessarily fall in line with the mainstream. I can highlight the reviews that are useful only to me. For example, if you’re a vegetarian and someone who is not writes a review about a vegan restaurant, slamming it for “not tasting like meat at all,” then you don’t care about that. Likewise, if a vegetarian rates a steakhouse poorly because “they slaughter thousands of helpless animals a week,” that’s useless to…well, just about everyone. UGC sites give back what you put in.

I’ll bid $50 for the Judys Book domain name (yeah, I’m feelin’ generous today!)
(Same for Yelp.com)

It has always puzzled me how a site that sells “Make me Yelp” panties
http://www.yelp.com/store expects to one day sell advertising to landscapers, dentists and vets — otherwise known known as the local business community.

BUT maybe they don’t plan to. Maybe the future is selling event guide sponsorships to Beck’s beer.

That’s a fine plan — certainly works for CitySearch and TimeOut magazine in London.

It’s just a different plan than what Google, Kudzu and Superpages appear to have in mind. Their’s is less sexy (YellowPage panties would be a non starter. Does Kudzu clothing give you a rash?). But it is where the $100B is presently spent.

yelp is going into the deadpool next. don’t believe the hype. free beer and parties only last so long and don’t constitute a sustainable business model.

The founder’s name is Andy Sack not Andy Sacks.

yet another comment re: “last one standing” . . .
Menuism.com is a solid local reviews site and they’re still around. Apparently bootstrapped without millions by two UC Berkeley alumni.

I wonder what’s going to happen to their sister site, couponlooker.com

As others have already stated, this is quite a diverse space, the game is just starting, it’s far from over.

It’s an industry with billions in revenue for traditional publishing, I don’t see how this will not significantly move online [1,2]…

Full disclosure/pr/pseudo-linkbait : I am the CTO of Praized Media and we are quite active hacking the weave of the web to make sure local platforms are part of any serious internet publishers playbook… (insightfuls ones will find us!)

1. http://blog.searchenginewatch......907-090546

2. http://www.bizreport.com/2006/.....llion.html

Citysearch is mentioned in the post by Michael, but not in any forum posts. How is it doing?( And how is IAC as a whole?)

I see Judy’s Book as a victim of raising too much money. When you raise $10.5M, it puts an awful lot of pressure on you to get massive in a hurry to get to an exit in which people actually get paid. When your trajectory doesn’t seem to be mapping to a big exit, the plug gets pulled.

I thought that Judy’s Book was a pretty nice effort, and I followed Andy’s very transparent blog regularly. I didn’t see a lot of errors in execution. My opinion is that the biggest mistake they made was panicking at the big rounds raised by Insider Pages and Yelp, and piling $7M more on an initial institutional round of $2.5M. With 12 people and a UGC driven business model, they had no business taking on such a heavy round.

Oh yeah, Yelp, who raised even more money, DOES seem to be mapping to that trajectory. They’re killing it.

Did an internship at Judy’s Book when it first started summer of 2001. I showed my Andy a recently-founded but little-known site called “The Facebook” and suggested we consider marketing college kids (like I was at the time.) He laughed and said “That’s nice, but who the hell cares? College kids have no money.”

Oops.

Here’s my example of why I think Yelp! is on life support.

Every so often you’re going to get a post by a user that cross the line from being helpful to being offensive.

The purpose of a company like Yelp, is to have a system that can manage these types of posts. Better yet you need a vibrant community that helps to keep things orderly.

On September 10, 2007 - one of the members flagged as “Yelp Elite 07″ posted this review (see the review attributed to member “Stephen I” written 9/10/07 and ends with the comment F**k off busboy, starts by proclaiming that the place s*cks big d**k and primarily rants about being told to remove a baseball cap while in the restaurant)

http://www.yelp.com/biz/B6ftNB.....dAJz5z0QHQ

I don’t particularly care that members go wild and post this type of thing. It happens all the time. I’ve participated in dozens of sites where I have seen messages cross the line.

BUT - the messages are usually all taken care of rather quickly when they cross the line from being helpful content to be obscenity laced tirades of questionable value.

Yelp was notified on several occasions through the tools on their site that the use of f*ck off in a review might not be the best choice.

So far as I can tell nothing happened - no maintenance. Thus I conclude that Yelp is on life support and again reinforce my prediction of them being an excellent candidate for the death pool.

I’ve always thought it was a shaky proposition that a generic, national site would be able to generate enough good will with local users to get them to contribute rich content on a regular basis. I’m biased, of course, but I think sites with an established local user base are much more likely to crack this nut. Then some VC-backed company with a web 2.0-sounding name can buy them up AFTER they’ve got the critical mass of content.

erm… 2004 it ’twas…