Better late than never. Yahoo now has implemented an online review feature that its competitions have had for a while.
On Wednesday, Yahoo officially announced its partnership with business review site Yelp. The move is seen to help the company boost its capabilities in terms of local searches. Google has been offering this feature to its users for years, using data from Google+ and Google Maps services. Meanwhile, Microsoft also has a partnership with Yelp for Bing.
"Now when you use Yahoo Search to look up a local business in the U.S. on your smartphone, tablet, or PC, you'll see user reviews, business information, and star ratings from Yelp. We've also added a new photo viewing experience to show high-quality photos from Yelp, other partners, and the businesses themselves," wrote Yahoo's senior director for product management Anand Chandrasekaran..
"At Yahoo, we're always looking to build great partnerships to provide a richer experience for our users. That's why we're especially fired up to add trusted user content from Yelp, bringing more business listings, more photos, and more reviews to the recently-refreshed Local Search and Yahoo Maps experiences. With information and photos for retail chains, mom and pop shops, spas, doctors and hospitals, restaurants, and more, Yelp is a welcome addition to our roster of local content partners," Yahoo added.
The information about Yahoo's partnership with Yelp was first leaked in February when chief executive Marissa Mayer first spoke about it during a meeting with employees. The collaboration between the companies is again seen by industry experts as a way for Yahoo to compete with Google and somehow veer away from Bing that essentially gives life to its search engine platform.
Likewise, the partnership was announced by Yelp's vice president for business development Mike Ghaffary on the company's official blog.
"With local searches making up about 25% of Yahoo's search traffic, the demand for reliable local information is high, and we're excited to make this experience even richer for Yahoo users. Across all categories of local business, from dog groomers and day spas to nightclubs and burger joints, trusted content from Yelp's vibrant community of locals will help Yahoo users decide where to spend their money," Ghaffary wrote.
Yelpers, as users of Yelp's are called, have created over 53 million reviews of local businesses. The review site has an average of roughly 120 million unique visitors a month during the fourth quarter of 2013 alone, giving one an idea how influential the platform can be. It posted earnings of $233 million in 2013.
Yahoo, following the lead of Mayer, is trying to build up momentum to bring back to life its search engine business and finally free itself from its search engine deal with Microsoft.
The company has also been trying to gain more control of its different platforms as it has started requiring users to create their own Yahoo IDs and has started banning the use of Facebook and Google credentials to log-in to its services.
With the addition of Yelp to its local searches, the search engine company aims that it will result to consumers saying "yahoo!" to the local business they found through Yahoo.
For those who might not be familiar how Yelp works, check out the video below:
