14 DAY TRIAL // Yelp has been clamoring about Google's use of its reviews in Places for quite a while now. Now it's doing it again, saying that Google has issued an ultimatum of sorts, either allow its content to be used in Places or remove itself from all Google searches. That seems rather harsh on the face of it, but it's not as bad as it looks, Google simply considers Places to be part of search.
The problem, as Yelp sees it, is that Google is using its content to populate Places, which Yelp categorizes as a competitor. What's more it refuses to remove Yelp content from Places, despite requests to do so. To make things even worse, it's strong-arming Yelp by tying regular search with Places.
"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," Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told the Telegraph.
"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," he added.
But it doesn't really add up. Google uses reviews from Yelp and other third-parties as well as the ones users posted on Places. Third-party reviews are limited to a few lines and users have to click on the link and visit the Yelp site to see it in full.
At the same time, Yelp says that regular search traffic is indispensable for the service and removing itself from search is not an option. But the additional traffic it gets from Places is somehow not a good thing.
Removing Yelp content from Places is not going to stop anyone from using the Google service. However, it is going to prevent people from finding Yelp via Google Places.
Still, Google could grant Yelp its request. After all, the move is likely to hurt Yelp more than it does Google. And the fact that the two companies have reached an agreement, even if reluctantly, indicates that Yelp knows that.