Yelp Official Blog

Lettuce Suggest...

So, I have some suggestions for you.  Give me a letter, any letter.  "R" you say?  Fantastic.  Can I interest you in some "restaurants"?  How about some "ramen"?  Perhaps a "rooftop bar," "roller skating," or the "R&G Lounge"?  What am I blabbering on about?  It's the snazzy new Yelp feature, Search Suggest!  When you're searching on yelp.com, this zippy little update will help you find what you're looking for a whole lot faster.  

As you type in your search keywords a drop down will appear which will suggest business names, popular search queries and categories. It's a subtle but powerful feature that we've been working on for a while.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make an appointment with "Karmakanix". Or was it "KarMechanix" or "KarMechanics"?  Eh, Yelp will figure it out.

Mobile Mania Part Tres: Yelp, Now with 100% More Palm Pre!

That's right, Yelp for Palm® Pre™ is the latest addition to our growing library of mobile apps that keeps you dialed into the best local businesses while you are on the go.

With the Yelp for Palm Pre app, you can:

• Use location aware technology to find bars, restaurants, drugstores, etc. nearby
• Read reviews for a business, browse photos, and map its location
• Text business information to friends or save it for later in your Contacts. (these are a little something just for you Palm Pre owners out there!)

  

Like all new Yelp mobile apps, we like to release the basics as fast as we can, and then make it awesome with all the bells and whistles over time.

So if you're in the US or Canada and have a Palm Pre, fire up the App Catalog and get you some Yelp! 

And of course, a huge shout out to the Yelp mobile team for achieving the hat-trick with three app releases in the last two weeks. 

Mobile Mania Part Deux: Yelp for iPhone - This one's for my homies.

When we first created the Yelp iPhone application a year ago, we focused primarily on creating a useful tool for finding great local businesses. The second generation was geared towards allowing you, our loyal Yelpers, to contribute from wherever you might be. This time around we've gone above and beyond: the newest iteration of Yelp's iPhone application launched today, and it is delivering iPhone users even more community-focused aspects of Yelp! 

Yes, that includes the ability to engage in Talk, Complimenting and Useful, Funny, Cool (UFC) voting from your iPhone. 

But we didn't stop there. We're taking our wildly popular Sales and Offers Near You feature to the streets; now you can hear about everything from a Happy Hour to a haircut in your hometown while on the go, and make the most of your money (American, Canadian, Pound Sterling or Euro!). Business Owners, this is also a great mobile means for you to attract new customers in the door (just claim your free business page at http://www.yelp.com/business to get started!)

And to make sure you didn't get lost on your way to all these great businesses, we rounded off this release by leveraging the 3.0 features of the iPhone: we are pleased to introduce Moveable Maps! Now you can move around Google maps on searches, as well as narrow in their search results.

Because we like you.

So what are you waiting for? You can download the app on your iPhone directly or via the iTunes App Store.  There's so much out there to see and do when you look at the world through the Yelp lens.

UPDATED: You like us. You really like us!

UPDATED: We totally missed that there was a video, too! Check Yelp out in action with Time's Shea Hess at the 50 second mark.

What better way to get over a case of the Mondays than to be named one of Time Magazine's Best 50 Websites!

We've been pretty busy over the past year from our numerous mobile announcements, including last week's Yelp for Blackberry app to Public Comments for business owners and all the bumpin Yelp parties throughout the US, Canada, UK and Ireland! And don't forget my favorite, Sales and Offers Near You (helloooo Happy Hour!)

You can see all we've been up to for the past 5 years (phew!) below and suffice it to say we're excited to continue to make Yelp your de facto destination to connect with great local businesses whether on your computer, mobile, or just rockin around town.

Thank you Time Magazine, but more importantly, thank you all for helping us make Yelp what it is today. Yelp on!

Did someone ask for a Blackberry Yelp app?

Because I might have one right here.

Today, Yelp released the second member of our mobile app family: the oft-asked about Blackberry Yelp app is here and ready for downloading!  Want it?  Just visit yelp.com from your BlackBerry and you'll see a link to get the app at the top of the page.

The Blackberry Yelp app uses location-aware technology to determine your current location and then lets you search for nearby businesses, read reviews and access a moveable Bing map that enables you to easily zoom in/out on a location and redefine your search based on that geographic area. And yes, the Blackberry Yelp app works in the US, Canada, UK and Ireland or in other words, everywhere Yelp is available!

And now a word from YOU: Researching and Choosing a Business

Rounding out the results from our reader survey, we thought we'd share how your fellow Yelpers use the site to find a new business. We found that on the whole, people who use Yelp do a fair amount of research when looking to find a new business:

• 43% are turning to Yelp 3 or more times a week to find a local business
• 31% check out 5 or more businesses before making a spending decision
• 50% read between 4-10 reviews when looking at a business page
• 13% click through to read the second page of reviews

And thanks to all the great reviews posted on Yelp, 40% of you have found more than 10 "hidden gems" in your city. Layer on another 25% who say they've found between 6-10 hidden gems in their city and we're convinced we have the makings for an urban treasure hunt.

Got any more feedback for us? Let us know at feedback@yelp.com.

And now a word from YOU: Who Do You Trust?

Part two of our reader survey results takes a look at where and to whom consumers turn to when they need recommendations about great local businesses.

A whopping 94% of respondents turn to Yelp first to make a purchasing decision. Contrast that to the 43% who indicated they'd consult a friend and the mere 2% who would turn to the Yellow pages.

But why turn just to Yelp? It seems the community aspect of Yelp, where people share information about themselves and get to evaluate their fellow reviewers, plays an important part. Indeed, 80% noted they prefer Yelp because it emphasizes reviews from trusted members of the community.

What was especially interesting to us was that 96% of respondents agreed that Yelp provides them with a snapshot of consumer opinions for a range of businesses and services they normally wouldn't have access to. That includes where to take your Friday night date, yes, but also where to go for a breast exam or the most reliable mechanic to check your brakes.

This is all good news to us since this is problem we set out to solve when we created the site in the first place.

On Friday: How Do You Find a Business?

The results are in!

You may have remembered in the past few weeks, we sent out a reader survey to find out what the 24 million people who used Yelp in July thought about the site. While not all 24 million of you responded (Ahem. You know who you are), we did hear back from more than 1,000 Yelpers. Of course, while we recognize this isn't the most scientific survey, there were a few nuggets that we plan to share over the course of the week including:

Who are Yelpers?
Who Do You Trust?
How Do You Research and Choose a Business?

Building on the recently released Nielsen Survey we think you'll be surprised at some of the results. And so, to get us started...

And now a word from YOU: the "Yelper stimulus effect"

A question we get asked a lot is, "So just who are these Yelpers?" Going by the numbers, we'd say they are a highly educated lot -- 88% of our users have a college degree or higher -- who patronize quite a few local businesses each week, as evidenced by their social activity:

72% go out for entertainment (show, movie or museum) at least
1-2 times per week
47% are hitting a bar or club between 1-2 times per week; an additional 11% are out at a bar or club 3-4 times per week

When asked how often they eat a meal out or order take out we found that nearly 60% are dining out more than 3 times per week. Looking at the break out, 15% of Yelpers are dining out 5-7 times per week!

                                                                                                                                              

But don't just take our word for it. You wanna meet them? Check out a Yelp Event in any one of 28 cities throughout the U.S., Canada and the UK. From cupcake crawls in Toronto to Stylexplosions in Austin, we guarantee Yelpers know how to have a good time, and support their community while they're at it.

Up next: Who Do You Trust?