What Does Advertising on Yelp Get You?
By Matt McGee on Mar 10, 2010 in Local Search, SEM
That was one of the topics of Luther Lowe’s presentation Tuesday at the annual SearchFest conference in Portland. Lowe — Yelp’s Manager of Business Outreach — gave a generally clear description of what the company says are the benefits of advertising on Yelp. I say “generally” because he said that advertising on Yelp gets a business owner “SEO,” but he really meant to say “visibility.”
These are not the same examples he used during the presentation, but they show the same points he made.
1. Visibility on Yelp search result pages
Advertising on Yelp gives a business the opportunity to show up above the regular search results for category/city combinations, like this search for dentists in Los Angeles.
2. Visibility on other business profile pages
A Yelp ad may show up on a competitor’s business profile, like in this example here.
3. No competitor ads on your profile page
Using the example above, no competitors’ ads will show up on the profile page of that dentist because she’s advertising. She’s essentially paying to keep competitors from advertising on her profile page. But note that Yelp still does show other competitors on the page under a “People Who Viewed This Also Viewed” heading.
4. Added content options
Yelp advertisers can also add extra content to their business profiles, such as a photo slideshow and an extra content spot to post alerts or discounts.
5. Promote a “favorite review”
(Update: shortly after this post was published, Yelp announced the end of Featured Reviews.)
Yelp sponsors can also choose one review of their business and mark it as a “favorite.” In doing so, that review will show up first on the business profile page, as seen here.
Lawsuits: The 800-lb. Gorilla
Before his presentation, Lowe called out the 800-lb. gorilla in the room: the recent lawsuits from small business owners who claim that Yelp has offered to remove negative reviews in exchange for payment. I don’t recall his exact wording, but Lowe rejected the claims of the lawsuit, saying that the alleged behavior — if it were true — would cause Yelp to lose the trust of its users and advertisers.
But from several conversations I’ve had at conferences over the past two weeks, that trust is on shaky ground with some. This isn’t the first time Yelp’s been accused of taking money to remove negative reviews (see Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0 from last year), and some are wondering if the phrase “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is appropriate.
One suspects that, as long as Yelp offers a way for business owners to manipulate reviews in exchange for advertising (see #5 above), they’ll continue to run the risk of lawsuits — no matter if the lawsuits are justified or just the result of misunderstanding.
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9 Comment(s)
By George Revutsky on Mar 11, 2010 | Reply
Matt –
Great (and balanced) post.
Yelp needs to consider tweaking their model and materials to expressly say “if you advertise with us, we will NOT remove negative listings. However, advertising will broaden where your business appears on our site, and also allows you to highlight a positive listing of your choice.”
The fact is, if a negative listing is at the top, and by advertising, you can displace it as the first listing, you are doing 2 things:
1) in effect you are demoting (but not removing) the negative listing
2) Google Universal search often lists the first Yelp review for a business in the first page of its SERPS. So you are also doing some major Online Reputation management by advertising on Yelp.
Does the above cross the line into extortion? I guess it depends on a) whether the Yelp salesperson knows how to properly explain it without scaring the bejeezus our of the SMB owner, and b) whether the Yelp algorithm gives “bad review hiding or retiring” advantage to advertisers.
That’s all I got at this hour…
By Michael David on Mar 11, 2010 | Reply
Matt, another great post. That “pick your favorite review” feature got Yelp in hot water recently–they have been sued over that one, the allegation being that they are allowing false, negative reviews and then “selling” (extorting) the right to bury the reviews back to advertisers.
I got pitched on this Yelp program, and I was unimpressed. They try to get 3 or 4 hundred a month and guarantee a certain number of impressions–but they guarantee no clicks. I don’t know if they have changed that model. But compared to Google Local, it’s not worth much IMHO
By Justin M. on Mar 11, 2010 | Reply
Does anybody know about how much Yelp charges monthly for this service?
By Drew on Mar 11, 2010 | Reply
Matt – Good article. Really balanced all around, and I like the tone. IMHO, it’s annoying to read something that swings all positive or negative.
George – I agree that there’s an issue in language here. As a yelp user for years, my intuition has picked up on what’s happening. One thing to note is that the review they move to the top is the review they quote in their ads.. it might be a technical difficulty to halt it. But I’ve also seen coupons as ads, so maybe not?
By Matt McGee on Mar 11, 2010 | Reply
Justin – I think their web site says between $300 and $1,000 per month on average.
By Sandip Jariwala on Mar 11, 2010 | Reply
I get a call every month from them asking me to list my business on yelp. But the fees are quiet steep and I think I can spend that money elsewhere and get better SEO results. I would sign up if the fees were reasonable, say around $100 per month.
By Justin M. on Mar 12, 2010 | Reply
Yikes! That’s up there…
Thanks for the info.
By DebDiGregorio on Mar 12, 2010 | Reply
Yelp, I simply don’t trust them. No large online entity has been able to crack the local code yet. They just can’t scale to the needs of SMBs. More here http://www.camares.com/blog/smb-web-btwn-rock-and-hard-place-pt-2-yelp-extortion
By Sudeep Sakalle on Apr 6, 2010 | Reply
I completely agree, I have registered on Yelp last month and have got 3-6 leads from it. I live close to industrial area ( Rainham, London ) and it is very effective for me and my clients to have some local available for a quick fix to hardware or software solution then calling someone from miles apart. Yelp defiantly provide good “Visibility” but really not a replacement of SEO.
Sudeep Sakalle
Director, Infovinity Systems Limited
Rainham, UK