At a recent meeting at Yahoo, in which the company sought to correct the impression that it was “done” in search, I asked about the status of Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Local.
Yahoo! was originally the innovator in these areas but eventually ceded them to Google and Microsoft amid internal turmoil and budget decisions. During that meeting Yahoo! said it recognized the importance of these areas and would be reinvesting (especially given their importance in mobile).
At SMX West yesterday I moderated the “Ask the Local Search Engines” panel. That panel was supposed to feature Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. But Yahoo! pulled its speaker citing scheduling conflicts. I was totally amazed that the company didn’t provide a substitute speaker. At the very last minute I got Yelp to come in.
The session was great — the Q&A was 45 minutes — and Yelp’s presence gave the conversation some interesting new energy and direction, about reviews and the challenges on the SMB side as well as the publisher side of managing the process. It also struck me that the unexpected change was symbolic of Yelp’s rise and Yahoo!’s unfortunate decline in the local space.
Yelp is now more important than Yahoo! Local to businesses and consumers.
I hope that Yahoo! does reinvest and makes Yahoo! Local more prominent again, however I’m not holding my breath.
Screenwerk 
March 3, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Greg,
I’m with you. I hope Yahoo! regains prominence in this arena. Whether warranted or not, Yahoo! has had much less of the concern regarding best-interest of the advertiser.
Will
March 3, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Completely agree with Greg regarding his surprise for the lack of a substitute speaker. We are literally NEXT DOOR to their operation.
Although Greg, let’s plug in someone from Internet Yellow Pages next time too…. 🙂
March 3, 2010 at 6:20 pm
Unless Yahoo gets a clue and provides something as useful as say, the Yelp iPhone App in the mobile/local arena – its not gonna happen. Its easy to hate Yelp from their business side, sure – but the people who are driving the traffic are doing so because its such an awesome community to be a part of. Yahoo has given us nothing to be excited about.
March 3, 2010 at 6:27 pm
@WIll – if Yahoo can do ANYTHING good in the future I’d be happy.
I really do hope they can regain prominence in local – the built up site explorer to be at least usable but their whole deal with the devil (aka bing/m$ft) is questionable and is still a guessing game as to how that’s going to affect the atmosphere.
March 3, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Dennis:
I didn’t make the decision re who to have on this panel other than Yelp. Originally it was supposed to be limited to the “big three.” There were a ton of others who sent me emails about being on . . .
Agree that there are lots of others in the local space who can/could add value.
March 4, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Greg. Definitely enjoyed the session.
March 3, 2010 at 11:38 pm
[…] Yelp Replaces Yahoo! Local, gesterling.wordpress.com […]
March 4, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Yeah, I am surprised how strong Yelp (and a host of similar sites) became in such a short time and but what really seems interesting is that extortion scheme their involved in now.
December 15, 2011 at 2:19 pm
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December 2, 2012 at 1:52 am
I have had many people recently ask about Yelp’s success rates. Does anyone know statistics on yelps ability to improve the sales of attorneys?