Google To Yelp: Give Us Your Reviews Or We Won't Rank Your Pages

Mar 2, 2011 - 8:45 am 17 by
Filed Under Local Search

click for full sizeThe Telegraph reports Google has given Yelp an ultimatum, either give us your reviews or we will stop listing you in our search engine.

Yelp's CEO said:

We are unhappy with the way Google uses our users' review on its Places page. However, there is no solution to the problem... Google's position is that we can take ourselves out of its search index if we don’t want them to use our reviews on Places... But that is not an option for us, and other sites like us - such as TripAdvisor – as we get a large volume of our traffic via Google search... We just don't get any value out of our reviews appearing on Google places and haven't been given an option other than to remove ourselves from search, how to improve this situation.

This is nothing new, Yelp and Google have been arguing about this for a long time. There were also rumors that Google would buy Yelp, but clearly, that never happened. Yelp also had some controversy around their review process, ultimately leading to revamping those policies.

In any event, Google told the Telegraph:

We can't comment on conversations with partners, but as we've said before, our goal with local search is to help Google users find the local information they're looking for online. Each day we send millions of customer referrals to local businesses and third party websites, such as review sites, through local search. The overwhelming feedback we get from users, business owners and website owners is that they value the answers and traffic they receive from local search.

As you can imagine, SEOs and Webmasters can relate.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
Google Core Update Rumbling, Manual Actions FAQs, Core Web Vitals Updates, AI, Bing, Ads & More - YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Google Updates

Google Urges Patience As The March 2024 Core Update Continues To Rollout

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google

Official: Google Replaces Perspective Filter With Forums Filter

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google Maps

Google Business Profiles Now Offers Additional Review After Appeal Is Denied

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

EU Searchers Complaining About Google Maps Features Changes Related To DMA

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:21 am
Google

Google Showing Fewer Sitelinks Within Search

Mar 18, 2024 - 7:11 am
Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: March 15, 2024

Mar 15, 2024 - 4:00 pm
Previous Story: Google's Custom 404 Page Robot