Yelp Might Be Dying

We often stress about the need to attract positive reviews from your customers and clients. After all, reviews affect your Local SEO rankings in search engines. One particular local reviews service—Yelp—is facing a gloomy future due to a lack of advertising revenue. Jezebel examines the current dilemma Yelp is facing.

Yelp’s Stock Earnings Call

Earnings calls give investors a peek into where the company is heading. If the company expects to grow, investors may buy more company stocks. If the company expects to recede, investors may dump their stock holdings. There’s one thing they don’t want to hear: The company is losing advertisers. That’s a sign the company will recede.

Yelp’s latest earnings call was pretty dismal

Emily Alford of Jezebel writes, “According to Eater, Yelp’s latest earnings call was pretty dismal due to the company’s inability to draw advertisers, which has resulted in a 30% stock plunge. A few years ago, restaurants lived and died by their Yelp reviews, but in the Instagram era, when potential diners can see the food for themselves pretty easily, Yelp matters less and less. Google reviews are also becoming more popular than Yelp reviews, and restaurateurs are taking notice.”

A 30% drop in stock price is more significant than a simple correction (generally a 10% drop in stock price). The loss of advertising revenue isn’t the only significant reason for the company’s troubles. Companies are also beginning to get fed up with Yelp.

Business Owners Versus Yelp

Nobody likes an unethical company and some business owners have felt Yelp fits the criteria. Emily Alford continues, “Many business owners say that Yelp has extorted them by creating a pay to play environment in which the company threatened to remove positive reviews if restaurants refused to buy ads or even offered to remove negative reviews for a price. The company has faced multiple lawsuits, though the Federal Trade Commission sided with Yelp and the suits were eventually dismissed.”

This practice is very bad for Yelp. Even more surprising: The FTC has sided with the company. That doesn’t give businesses much of an option, except to spend more time on other review platforms.

As mentioned before, these other platforms are Instagram and Google reviews. The great thing about Google reviews is that a searcher sees your Google reviews when you show up in search results. Because of this, it’s a smart move to foster positive reviews directly on Google.

Find out who your happiest customers and clients are. They are the ones whose to reviews you want. If you focus on them, you’ll obtain a higher average review score over time which will positively impact your overall rankings in Local search.

Featured photo by Wikimedia

Frustrated business owner photo by Moose Photos on Pexels