Well this is interesting. We were just talking about how Yelp is growing like a weed, and seems to be unstoppable. We were also talking about how Yahoo is looking for a way out of its partnership with Microsoft, and wants to build its own search technology again.
Now, Yahoo and Yelp are reportedly joining forces to help Yahoo improve its local search results. According to the Wall Street Journal, the partnership was unveiled by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer at an employee meeting on Friday, and will see Yahoo incorporate Yelp listings and reviews of local businesses into its search engine. The feature will be rolled out to users within the coming weeks.
In other words, if your business is on Yelp, you’re about to see even more visibility for your reviews, whether they’re good or bad.
Last week, Yelp revealed that its cumulative reviews had grown 47% from the same time the previous year to 53 million, and that mobile engagement has been up dramatically since it added the ability to add reviews from the apps. Average unique monthly visitors grew 39% to 120 million.
It will be interesting to see if Yahoo makes similar partnerships for other types of search results, which could ultimately make it less dependent on Microsoft’s Bing. Search in general is already moving further away from pure organic results as the main point of focus. Look at how Google continues to push them down. And let’s not forget that Yahoo and Google aren’t exactly the bitter enemies you might think. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has even expressed interest in a partnership since Mayer took over as CEO.
Image via Yahoo