Yelp has yet another industry heavyweight to contend with in the local search market: Facebook. Now the social media giant is peddling a new feature called Facebook Professional Services.
After growing into a trusted resource for small businesses, Facebook is now sorting local organizations and services into directories. Facebook Spokesman Mike Manning, on a note to USA Today, acknowledged the soft launch of Professional Services, which is live now.
"We're in the early stages of testing a way for people to easily find more Pages for the services they're interested in," said Manning.
When news of Facebook's services site quietly got out, Yelp's shares fell by about nine percent on Tuesday.
Users can select from over 80 categories of services, ranging from nail care and tattoos to financial planning and mortgage brokers. Selecting one of the categories takes the user to a listing of related companies and services in the area.
There are no filters to refine the search just yet, but the site's search filled are stuffed with keywords and is awaiting predictions about what terms a user is searching.
Like Amazon's Home Services site and Yelp's bread and butter, Facebook Professional Services is founded on user reviews and ratings. The ratings and links to the reviews are display prominently on a card for each business in a given category.
What Facebook's Professional Services site really has going for it is that blue ribbon at the top of the pages, the one that'll keep users up to date with new message alerts and other notifications from the social network.
People around the world spend at least 20 minutes on Facebook each day, with Americans doing twice that amount of time, according to Needham Research. With this new feature, Facebook users who need to look for a lawn care service or pet grooming, for instance, don't have to leave the social network to do so.
"If time is money, then the Facebook.com site represents the most valuable Internet property on the web today," stated Needham Research about the amount of time people spend on the site.
