Google’s Marissa Mayer a Yelp User

Here’s a Q&A interview between Yelp and Google’s Marissa Mayer. Here’s a generous excerpt where Mayer discusses Yelp itself:

Nish N: You’ve been dubbed the “high priestess of simplicity,” since your job revolves around keeping Google’s home page elegantly sparse while remaining highly functional. Any tips for our product team to change Yelp in one way?

Marissa M: The reason to keep things simple is because it makes it fast for the user — faster to load, faster to look at, read and understand. So, since speed is everything and I’m a self-professed search addict, I would make Yelp’s search a lot, LOT faster.

Nish N: Google is one of main ways people find out about Yelp. What would you say makes Yelp relevant?

Marissa M: I really like restaurant reviews on Yelp because not only do you get sense of the decor, the service, and the general quality of food, you get recommendations and observations on specific dishes from real customers. I find that I order better after I’ve read a Yelp review. Like, at Live Sushi in Potrero Hill in the city. It turns out that a few of their dishes are actually live. They have this amazing sea urchin presentation which actually comes out with the whole purple spines and the eggs are striped over the top and is the most dramatic meal I’ve ever had in SF. I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t read about it on Yelp. Those are the types of little tidbits you can get off a Yelp review that you can’t get off of other reviews.