Posts tagged Yelp
Angie’s List Bets Wall St. Its Paid Membership Model Will Beat Yelp
Nov 18th
This week two tech companies built on user-generated reviews but with very different goals made financial news. Yesterday, Yelp, the local recommendation site, filed its first major step toward going public. It wants to raise $100 million in an IPO. Angie’s List, which provides consumer reviews of services providers such as dentists and electricians, officially went public this past Wednesday. Its stock rose 33% and at the end of the day, the company was valued at $801.7 million.
Both Angie’s List and Yelp offer user-generated reviews, but there’s a key difference. Yelp had 61 million unique visitors as of the end of Q3 2011 and 22.4 million reviews. Angie’s List is much smaller, but it has more than one million paying members.
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For Yelp, mobile is the key. It is banking on consumer location data, which gives the company further insight into its users, and can offer advertising options to local businesses based on that. Seventy-one percent of Yelp’s revenue comes from local advertising, 21 percent is from brand advertising and eight percent from “other services.” It relies heavily on Google for traffic, which is unfortunate, considering the fact that Google Maps just added a My Places tab so users can see reviews and other recommendations based on places they’ve already shared.
Angie’s List is focused on consumer reviews for home and service providers. The majority of Yelp’s reviews are for shopping and restaurants. The two companies are not actually direct competitors. Here’s a breakdown of Yelp’s review types from its S-1 filing.
Angie’s List focuses on home and local services, auto and health, which only make up 19% of Yelp’s reviews.
Compared to Groupon’s flashy daily deals and blinged out cat, Angie’s List feels pretty boring. Nothing is delivered daily. And more importantly, there is no cat. Plus, Angie’s List began in 1995, and is not part of a consumer’s daily experience. The year 2010 brought a $27.2 million net loss on sales of $59 million. In the first nine months of 2011, it did bring in $62.6 million, but it still lost $43.2 million.
Angie’s List didn’t begin as a tech start-up. It started as a phone-in service, and went to the Web in 1999. Angie’s List offers free memberships to attract new users and reviews, and then, after two years of membership, that market converts to a paid member-base and Angie’s List cashes in. The site passed the one million membership mark in October 2011.
Consumers value things they pay for. Angie’s List members pay for their content. Yelp’s unique visitors and review writers do not. Angie isn’t the cool kid in the room, but her paid membership business model might just work.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Google Maps Turns the Screws on Yelp with My Places
Nov 15th
Google took further steps against Yelp today, adding features to the My Places tab on Google Maps. Businesses you’ve rated with Google Places are now highlighted on your maps, displaying your rating and showing other personalized recommendations based on places you’ve already shared. The highlights are available on the desktop and Google Maps for Android.
These new features push forward Google’s efforts to be a one-stop-shop for mobile, location-based searches. From finding the restaurant to walking in the door, Google is building applications to compel smartphone users to use Google and only Google to find, shop and eat at local businesses.
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In July, Google Places made its move and started pushing Yelp around on Google search result pages for restaurants and businesses, which feed into Yelp’s core business. In September, the CEO of Yelp testified before the Senate that Google’s practices around local businesses are anti-competitive.
Chairman Eric Schmidt replied that Google has plenty of competition, including from Yelp, thanks to its partnership with Apple. Siri, the new AI voice assistant on the iPhone 4S, bypasses Google for searches for local businesses, going straight to Yelp results. Apple is also buying companies who compete with other aspects of Google’s local search business, including 3D mapping companies.
In the meantime, Google has acquired Zagat, publisher of restaurant reviews, in order to shore up the quality of its local business content. It has also seized control of the content of local business listings to ensure the quality of its search results.
What Web services do you use to find stuff to do in your area?
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Judge Throws Out Class Action Lawsuit Against Yelp
Oct 26th
Yelp is off the hook, again. A judge has thrown out a class action lawsuit filed against Yelp that alleged the company tried to extort small businesses by promising to remove negative reviews in exchange for money. As we reported when the suit was first filed in February 2010, the plaintiffs…
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Why Siri + Yelp = Useless Google Maps On The iPhone 4S by @dannysullivan
Oct 15th
It sounds great. Speak into Siri about some local need, get nice results from Yelp’s reviews. In reality, it’s pretty easy instead to end up stuck with only a phone number and directions from Google Maps.
From Siri To Yelp To Google Maps
Consider this example, which illustrates the situation I’ve…
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Yelp Hopes to Serve Grilled Google: Antitrust Hearing Today
Sep 21st
This afternoon, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt is expected to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing, which is appropriately titled “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition,” will investigate whether Google has abused its monopolistic market dominance in the search and online marketing sector. During the hearing, the committee will question Eric Schmidt, Nextag CEO Jeff Katz, and Yelp co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman.
Stoppelman is claiming that Google is abusing its power by misusing Yelp content and favoring inferior Google products over competing products. He released the following statement on the Yelp blog yesterday:
“Although Google had previously acknowledged that it needed a license to use Yelp’s content, it was now using it without permission to prop up its own, less effective product. In some instances, Google even presented this content to its users as if it were its own.”
During the hearing, Stoppelman will recount the “impossible choice” Google provided: Yelp could either allow Google to use Yelp’s content for Google Places or remove Yelp from the search index. He will argue that this “false choice” left Yelp with no choice at all.
In addition, Stoppelman claims that by design it is impossible for Google’s competitors to outrank Google’s products on some search queries. He claims these instances are not due to algorithmic factors, but, instead, are due to Google’s insatiable hunger for more search revenue. Stoppelman will argue that this hearing is vitally important and that it will decide if innovation and new ideas are able to fairly compete against large businesses and monopolistic powers.
Schmidt will undoubtedly state that Google is attempting to provide end-users with the most relevant search results. In addition, Google executive chairman will argue that Stoppelman’s accusations of ranking by design in lieu of algorithmic factors are false. In addition, Google will likely claim that competition is alive and well and assert that the search giant has no desire to monopolize innovation.
Although the outcome of this hearing remains unknown, it is certain to shape both innovation and the technology development in the near future.
[Sources Include: Yelp! Blog & Senate Judiciary Committee]
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Yelp Hopes to Serve Grilled Google: Antitrust Hearing Today
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Google, Yelp, Others To Appear At Antirust Hearing Wednesday
Sep 16th
Next week on Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights will hold antitrust-related hearings on Google. This is a proceeding separate from but broadly related to the wide-ranging FTC antitrust investigation. The title of the hearing…
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Google City Sites May Compete With Yelp, Online Yellow Pages
Jun 14th
Yesterday David Mihm was pointing out on Twitter that Google had created a number of new city sites or portals. They appear to be the phoenix rising out of the ashes of Hotpot. As I wrote yesterday on my own blog, this is Google’s effort to bring a number of initiatives together in a single…
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