Posts Tagged ‘Yelp’

Click on the image for a big version, suitable for framing.

My colleague Kris wrote a fine post a couple of weeks ago on the importance of online reviews for local business, and how to get them. Following that post, we did a little research to figure out how reviews get passed around between major local search sites in the US. This graphic illustrates some of our findings. If an arrow is pointing from one site to another, it means reviews from the source site are showing up on the destination site. An arrow with a dotted line means we found very inconsistent results, i.e. reviews from the source site might show up on the destination site, but often don’t. We sampled a variety of business categories around the country in our research, but may well have missed some relationships. The number in parenthesis next to the site name is our estimate of monthly visits to the site. Some of these are taken straight from Compete.com, but some required a little more figuring. More on estimation below.

A Few Interesting Relationships

While researching, we noticed a few interesting relationships:

• AOL recently started showing Mapquest results for local category and business name searches in their search engine.
• While Google gathers review content from many sites, Citysearch, Yelp, Insider Pages and Judy’s Book tend to be more visible than other sites mentioned here.
• Insider Pages and Citysearch (both owned by IAC) almost behave like two front ends to the same source data. Most content is shared back and forth between the two, and almost all sites that show Citysearch reviews also show Insider Pages reviews.

How We Estimated Visits

We thought it would be useful to include traffic estimates in our diagram, but take them with a good sized grain of salt. Measurement of web traffic is an inexact science in any circumstance, and becomes even more difficult when you are trying to understand the local intent of searchers on a general search site like www.Google.com. For Yahoo, Bing and Google, we estimated that 10% of general search traffic has local, commercial intent. We also added 10% of AOL search traffic to Mapquest, since Mapquest results are shown for local results on AOL. You can see the logic behind using 10% in our “What Percentage of Search is Local?” post, but it’s just a ballpark. In any case, we believe industry estimates often underrepresent how much local search is happening on the big search engines.

There is also some difference between the nature of local search happening on the sites we included. For example, people going to Mapquest are less likely to be looking for a new dry cleaner, and more likely to be finding directions on a map. Conversely, people going to Yelp are a prime target for influencing – the site is all about helping people make commercial decisions. So again, take volume numbers with a grain of salt.

If We Were To Pick Three…

…that are more important than the rest, we’d say Citysearch, Yelp and Yahoo Local. Citysearch is  a slam dunk – their reviews show up on almost every site, and get prominent placement on many. Yelp is our second choice because the Yelp community is very active and reviews are all that matters on Yelp. Yelp reviews also get good placement on Google Place Pages and get syndicated to a number of smaller sites that are not on this chart. Yahoo Local is important because 3rd party reviews are ghettoized on Yahoo. You have to click the “web reviews” tab to see them, and the star rating displayed in Yahoo search results is based on Yahoo reviews.

Google is also putting more emphasis on reviews in their results. For the time being Citysearch and Yelp will have you covered in Google, but once Google gets enough review content, they may start to favor their own reviews.

Niche Sites

We looked at major local search sites serving the US market, and a few smaller properties that are influential in the review space. When encouraging reviews for your business, you should also look for sites that are specific to your vertical or location, as these can be important to your target customer. For example, Urbanspoon and Opentable are important restaurant review sites, and Tripadvisor is very important for travel. To find sites in your niche, search for your business category in Google Maps, and see where your competitors are getting reviews.

Do you have experience with web reviews? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

With Internet trends, it can be hard to tell when hype is merited and when it isn’t. Below is my attempt to answer this question for some sites of interest to local businesses. The metric traffic-to-hype ratio measures the proportion of actual traffic to how often a site gets talked about. A high ratio means there’s more steak than sizzle, a low ratio means there’s more sizzle than steak.

Site	Traffic (Visits)	Hype (Search Results)	Traffic-to-Hype Ratio
Superpages.com	16,337,246	1,060,000	15.4
Yellowpages.com	26,251,009	2,420,000	10.8
YouTube.com	979,452,576	97,000,000	10.1
Yelp.com	17,780,118	1,850,000	9.6
Facebook.com	3,416,501,818	580,000,000	5.9
MerchantCircle.com	9,476,096	2,170,000	4.4
CitySearch.com	8,979,637	2,400,000	3.7
LinkedIn.com	54,352,892	38,000,000	1.4
Foursquare.com	2,381,538	2,380,000	1.0
Twitter.com	212,714,166	541,000,000	0.4

So what?

I ran these numbers mostly to satisfy my own curiosity. At Two Octobers, we help businesses get found, and we like to focus on what will drive real results. Sheer volume of traffic is certainly a part of that, but there is also merit to looking for under-recognized opportunities. Anecdotally, I find that the ratio of marketers to non-marketers on Twitter is very high. Given the traffic-to-hype ratio of Twitter, that should come as no surprise. It may still be worth marketing on Twitter, but you will have to work pretty hard to stand out. Yelp, on the other hand, isn’t getting a lot of hype but it is getting decent usage, so you should be able to stand out with less effort. And the very unsexy Internet yellow pages also get good traffic and very little hype.

I also think the YouTube number is interesting – YouTube gets a lot of hype, but it also gets A LOT of usage. I’m going to be thinking more about how to leverage YouTube for local businesses after writing this post.

Where does the data come from?

The visits numbers come from Compete.com September 2010 U.S. visit statistics. Search results are based on a Google query for the site name without the “.com”, excluding results on the site itself. The search results were also filtered to only show pages that were indexed in September, 2010.

example of Google search query

The traffic-to-hype ratio is simply the ratio of the two. I recognize that there are some flaws to this methodology, for example most of these sites also have mobile applications that aren’t represented in the Compete statistics. Twitter and Foursquare in particular are affected by this problem. But all have web interfaces that account for a significant percentage of usage and I don’t know of a good source to account for application visits. If you do, please let me know!

And I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments below.

In putting together this list, we looked at a variety of factors, including overall traffic, domain authority, share of local search and depth of listing content in compiling the list. All of these sites also have paid advertising options, but first you should take advantage of what they have to offer for free. Note that in most cases, you will need to be able to verify a phone number and/or a physical address to add your listing. We have included traffic figures for each site, using Compete.com December, 2010 data.

1. Google Places

By adding your business to Google Places, you show up on Google Maps and Google local results. This is one of the most important things a local business can do to get found on the web. Here are a few reasons why:

• Google Maps is a hugely popular mapping application.
• Google Place Page results show up on Google.com for most local searches.
• Google Maps is one of the most popular applications on smartphones.

Compete puts monthly visits for maps.google.com at 58M, but Google.com and mobile are probably the bigger traffic drivers. If we conservatively estimate that 10% of search on www.Google.com is local, that amounts to over 300M locally-oriented visits per month. I don’t know of a good source for usage data for the mobile Google Maps application – please let me know if you do.

To add your listing: Google Places. And while claiming your Place Page is a good start, you should also invest the time in optimizing your page so that you rank well for your categories.  Here’s an article with some pointers on Place Page optimization: To-Do List: Creating a Fabulous Google Place Page

2. Facebook Fan Page

Apart from being the most visited site on the internet, over 1.5 million businesses have created fan pages on the network, and 20 million people become fans of pages every day (source). Facebook is a long way from being the first place where consumers search for businesses, but it has quickly become the most likely place for consumers to connect with local businesses online. According to Compete, Facebook received almost 3.5 billion visits in December, 2010, though little of this constitutes local business search traffic.
To create a page you must be logged in to your personal account. People who follow your page won’t be able to see your private information, FB just doesn’t allow people to anonymously create pages. Also, once you’ve created it, you can add other administrators to the page.  Create a Facebook Page. And here are some suggestions for how to engage with prospects and get people interested in your business: Great Content for Facebook Business Pages

Facebook users can also check in to locations, and Facebook has their own version of place pages as part of this functionality. You need to claim or create a place page in addition to creating a business page, and then link it to your business page. Here are instructions for doing this.

3. Yellowpages.com/YP.com

AT&T owned Yellowpages.com rebranded as YP.com, and it’s not your parent’s yellow pages any more. Under pressure from the likes of Google and Yelp, YP.com has a fresh look and more social content and features. They also distribute listings to a number of syndication partners. Currently at 29 million visits per month.
Claim your listing

4. Superpages.com

Superpages also went through a significant redesign recently, but doesn’t seem to be keeping up with Yellowpages.com or the others. Their traffic figures indicate same, but they did have a nice uptick last Fall. They get 19 million local search visits a month.
Get your free listing now

5. Yelp

The review site Yelp is the most popular social site focused on local business search. Given its emphasis on social content and interaction, Yelp tends to do better than other directory sites when it comes to attracting younger, more social users. Currently at 18 million visits per month.
To add your listing: Yelp signup page

6. Citysearch

Citysearch.com has been holding steady for a number of years now in terms of on-site traffic, but they have been growing their network of distribution through syndication and the recently announced CityGrid blows their distribution opportunity wide-open. Currently at 9 million visits per month. Citysearch is also a powerhouse when it comes to review syndication.
To add your listing: add business – note that you must be logged in to a personal Citysearch account to see this page.

7. Yahoo! Local

As with many things Yahoo!, Yahoo! Local is holding steady, but not seeing the growth of Google or even Bing. But they still provide a very popular service, so worth making sure you are listed there. Local.Yahoo.com is currently at 17 million visits per month, and we estimate about 60 million more local search visits at search.Yahoo.com.
To add your listing: add a business page

8. Bing Local

Microsoft has long struggled behind Google and Yahoo! in the world of web search, but the tides have turned of late. Since Microsoft launched Bing.com last year, they have steadily been gaining search share. Bing local and maps operate under the www.Bing.com domain, which gets 654M visits per month. We estimate 65M of that to be local search.
To add your listing: Local Listing Center

9. LinkedIn

LinkedIn isn’t exactly a place where people go to look for local businesses, but it does offer rich business listing functionality, and the domain carries quite a bit of authority. LinkedIn has also been adding many useful features for businesses, such as the ability to announce promotions, share articles and blogs, and list open jobs. LinkedIn is very important for business-to-business exposure, since people will often browse from a personal profile to a business profile. Currently at 48 million visits per month, though very little of this is local search traffic. Add a company to LinkedIn

10. Localeze.com

Localeze is not a local search site itself, it is a back-end data provider to many other local search services. Create an account on Localeze

Honorable Mention – Universal Business Listing

Universal Business Listing’s basic submission service costs $75, but deserves mention here. UBL.org provides an automated submission service that gets your listing into Acxiom and InfoUSA, back-end data providers similar to Localeze. UBL also distributes business information to a number of other sites. All told, submitting to UBL will get your listing on to hundreds of sites and services, definitely worth the $75.

You’ll notice that both Localeze and UBL distribute listing data to some of the sites mentioned here – we still recommend that you claim them and enter all the information you can.

A Couple of Pointers When Creating/Updating Listings

• Be accurate and consistent. If you have a registered business name, use that as your business name in all cases. Some of these sites will verify your information with public business registration data, and consistency will help your search ranking.
• Fill out everything you can. More information helps you get found, and makes your listing more useful to searchers – remember, your goal is not just to have your listings show up, you want people to visit your business.

There are many benefits to getting your business listed on other web sites. Four important ones are:

• Links – links pointing to a web site are major factor in how that site ranks in search engines. I would say the most important factor, but linking is a complex and nuanced topic. Links are not all created equal. Where a link comes from is important. For example, a link from the home pages of nytimes.com is worth a lot more than a link on a page buried deep within a blog like this one. And some web sites put a “nofollow” attribute on links. This attribute is a way of telling search engines not to follow nor associate value with a link. However, there is still some SEO value in a nofollowed link, in particular because user behavior is also a factor in Google ranking. Matt Cutts of Google explains more about the value of nofollowed links here.
• Web site traffic – this one is kind of obvious, but your listing will include a link to your web site, which will result in more traffic. Many consumers like to visit a web site before visiting a business. If yours isn’t listed, you lose out.
• In-store traffic – consumers are using the internet more, and print yellow pages less.  According to one study, print accounts for less than a third of local business search. Listing your business on the web is now the best way to get people to walk in to or call your business.
• Citations – citations are references to your business that include your business name and some sort of geographic identifier, like a phone number or street address. Citations are one of the signals Google uses to determine ranking for local listings.

[note: this post was updated in January, 2011]