Yelp held to ransom by Google in pricing tiff
Yelp chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman, has attacked Google’s practice of using its local user reviews on its Places page without remuneration.
The dispute, which has been rumbling for years, has seen Google affirm that they were prepared to remove the reviews – but only if Yelp removed themselves from its search index.
But speaking to the Telegraph Stoppleman said: “…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…”
Referring to the impasse a Google spokesperson would say only that their sole aim with local search was to “help Google users find the local information they’re looking for online”.
Looking to the future Stoppelman suggested that Yelp may be the latest digital company to launch an Initial Public Offer. He said: “We are getting to the size where very few companies can afford to buy us. Our annual revenues are getting to the point where we can be a public company…. from our perspective that would be a hell of a lot more fun than selling Yelp.”
Yelp is in the process of being sued itself over its trust filter, which has allegedly linked good reviews to paid advertising.