The Yelp Bully

It’s always fun to pick on Yelp.

Call me the Yelp Bully.

Kidding.

Not as a bully, but more like the voice of reason.

Mainly seeing so many businesses pay for over-priced advertising over the years.

Breaks my heart!

This is not just about saying…

“Advertising on Yelp doesn’t work.”

It could work. But, it’s over-priced based on the facts.

Here are the facts…

Yelp’s stock just dropped 20%.

An excerpt from a “Motley Fool” interview…

“…total user base has essentially plateaued. They have 84 million desktop users; they have 73 million mobile users. That’s bounced around quarter to quarter, but it hasn’t really grown significantly. The main way the company generates revenue now is through what it calls local advertising accounts. Essentially, it has 139,000 small or local businesses that will pay for advertising in some shape or form on Yelp’s platform. To give some context, that’s out of 3.4 million claimed business locations, which essentially means there are about 3.5 million business owner accounts on Yelp.”

The total user-base is just not enough to support the type of $ their sales-guys/girls hound us for.

Just not enough eye-balls looking at Yelp.

I have let the genie out of the bottle on Yelp over the years.

This may have to be last Yelp article for a while!

To revisit my strong, rigid and don’t question it  – advice on Yelp…

• Be careful. Simply claim your free listing so you can get the reviews and the back-link.
• Don’t sign a long contract with them. If… you can…
• Get Yelp to agree to a short-term trial at a discount and track the results.
• Remember, you may need nothing beyond the free listing.

And finally…

That ad spend can be used much more effectively on Google and Facebook.