Jennifer Lind

Yelp is a great local search site, that is really focused on customer reviews. As a Yelp user, you can connect with friends, become part of the Yelp Elite Squad, have a local conversation, tag your favorite reviewers, add bookmarks, and add a list of favorite businesses. You can also use Yelp on your mobile devise to find businesses on the go.

Yelp has strict guidelines for writing reviews and gate keeping which advertisers they allow to post on the site. This is very appealing to users because they know that reviews are being written by real people and not managed by the business owner who asked friends and family to post a review.

Yelp will remind you of Citysearch, but is more trustworthy because of their strict advertising policies. Yelp also has a better layout and has a more personal look and feel, with pictures of the reviewer and better descriptions on the lookup page.

Advertising on Yelp

As a local business owner, all you need to do is claim your business. You can then see how many people are viewing your profile and update your business information. Also, since very few businesses are promoting on Yelp, you have a good opportunity to make your business really stand out. More info on Yelp for Businesses.

Yelp has some options for sponsored listings, which allows you to add a large image slide show or announcements. This will also move your listing to the top of the page under your relevant category.

Yelp Syndication

Yelp is prominent on many social networking sites, including Facebook and Squidoo.

Info on Yelp’s Facebook syndication:

Facebook has recently launched a new feature called Beacon which allows Facebook to request information you might want to share with your Facebook friends from sites like Yelp. If you are actively logged into Facebook, your Yelp reviews can be shared with your Facebook friends automagically.