Business Reviews

February 29, 2012Josh Friedman

UWSMC – SOC MED 200

Business Reviews

Business Reviews

•Category-specific

•Location-specific

•Consumer reviews

•B2B

•Government

•User-generated vs. Curated

•Founded in 2004 in San Francisco

•Every Major Metro Area in the US and Canada

•Expanding in Europe and Australia

•Free, ad-supported

•Incentive-based system

•25 Million Reviews• 23% Shopping• 22% Restaurants• 10% Home and Local Service

•Seattle: 60,000 Reviews, 70% of Seattle Restaurants

•Seattle Times Covers Only 5% of Seattle Restaurants

•Food and Wine Magazine Covers Less Than 1%

•66 Million Unique Visitors per Month• 5.7 Million Visitors on Mobile Apps• 40% of Search Traffic on Mobile Apps

•User Demographics• Young (18-34 = 42%)• Wealthy ($100k+ = 64%)

•80% of Reviews are 3 Stars or Higher

Harvard Business School study

“…increases in independent or small chain restaurants' Yelp ratings lead to revenue increases, with ratings having more impact the more reviews a restaurant gets.”

•3,582 Restaurants (Seattle)

•2003 – 2009

•1 Star Rating Increase Boosts Revenue 5% - 9%

• Yelp Review Filter http://youtu.be/Dqi-jjbEKcs

Vs.

•Customized Reviews

•Business Features

•Insights

• Users– Ratings– Reviews– “Smart” Recommendations• Google+• Search History• Location/Google maps

• Business– Listing

• Google search results• Google Maps

– Content (photos, videos, menus, etc.)– Offers/coupons/promotions– Respond to reviews– Insights– Targeted advertising (Google Adwords)– Other Google services for business

“Not participating doesn’t make people stop talking about you. It just means you aren’t part of the conversation…”

Sources

• http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/03/17/small-businesses-join-lawsuit-against-yelp/tab/article/

• http://www.businessinsider.com/this-chart-explains-why-yelp-may-never-make-a-profit-2011-11

• http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/yelp_is_leaving_chains_behind.html• http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/yelps_ipo_will_test_the.html• http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-016.pdf• http://officialblog.yelp.com/2010/03/yelp-review-filter-explained.html• http://www.yelp.com/html/pdf/Snapshot_Q4_2011_en.pdf• http://smallbiztrends.com/2011/02/yelp-data-shows-power-mobile-marketing.html• http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2011/03/25/20-user-re

view-websites-critical-to-small-business.aspx• http://www.wolf-howl.com/socialmedia/react-negative-social-media-reviews/• http://www.marketingzen.com/online-business-review-sites/• http://mashable.com/2010/08/04/google-place-pages-reviews-response/• http://www.bbb.org/us/