Yelp

Directory service and online review forum

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April 2024 Yelp released Yelp Assistant, an AI chatbot to help users find professionals, and introduced an API for developers to search Yelp data.
June 1 2023 Yelp closed its offices in Phoenix, Arizona and Hamburg, Germany due to low utilization, following previous closures of New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. offices.
April 2023 Yelp introduced Yelp Guaranteed, offering up to $2,500 refund, improved search features with AI, and added video review option.
April 2022 Vice published an article exposing how some Yelp Elite reviewers were misusing their status to sell reviews, raising concerns about the platform's review integrity.
September 2021 Yelp announced relocation of its corporate headquarters to a smaller space at 350 Mission Street, to be subleased from Salesforce.
August 2021 Yelp added a feature to filter businesses based on their COVID precautions.
January 2021 Users could provide detailed feedback on businesses' health and safety measures through the COVID-19 section.
2020 Business Insider conducted an investigative report questioning Yelp's internal culture, ethics, and business practices.
June 2020 Yelp launched a COVID-19 section enabling businesses to update their health and safety measures.
June 5 2020 Yelp launched a tool to identify and search for black-owned businesses, with over 2.5 million searches between May 25 and July 10.
April 9 2020 Due to COVID-19 pandemic impacts, Yelp announced layoffs of 1,000 employees, furloughed about 1,100 employees, reduced hours, cut executive pay, and stopped paying the CEO for the rest of 2020.
2019 A documentary film 'Billion Dollar Bully' was released, documenting Yelp's alleged business practices.
December 2019 Yelp won a court case challenging the company's explanation of how its review recommendation software worked, with the court ruling finding no evidence of nefarious actions.
2018 In the Hassell v. Bird case, the California Supreme Court narrowly ruled (4-3) that a business cannot force Yelp to remove a review, even if the review is defamatory.
August 2017 Yelp sold Eat24 to Grubhub for $287.5 million, creating a partnership to integrate Grubhub delivery into restaurant Yelp profiles.
April 2017 A Norfolk, Massachusetts jury awarded a jewelry store over $34,000 after determining a competitor's employee filed a false negative Yelp review causing emotional distress.
April 2017 Yelp acquired Wi-Fi marketing company Turnstyle Analytics for $20 million.
March 2017 Yelp acquired the restaurant reservation app Nowait for $40 million.
February 14 2017 Yelp launched Yelp Questions and Answers, a feature allowing users to ask venue-specific questions about businesses.
2016 Yelp started a 7-10% cash-back program at some US restaurants through a partnership with Empyr.
November 2 2016 Yelp announced a drastic scaling back of international operations, resulting in termination of employees across 30+ international markets.
2015 The Federal Trade Commission completed a second examination of Yelp's practices and did not pursue action against the company.
2015 Yelp introduced a 'Public Services & Government' section and began experimenting with consumer alerts about restaurant hygiene scores in San Francisco.
February 2015 Yelp announced the acquisition of Eat24, an online food-ordering service, for $134 million.
2014 A Harvard study found that the percentage of fake reviews on Yelp had increased to 20%.
2014 Yelp released a mobile app for business owners to respond to reviews and manage their profiles.
2014 Yelp became profitable for the first time.
December 2014 A court denied an effort to dismiss Yelp's lawsuit against a lawyer alleged to be part of a group of law firms exchanging Yelp reviews.
October 2014 Yelp collaborated with Hipmunk to add hotel booking features.
September 2014 The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the dismissal of the lawsuit, finding that potential review manipulation would not legally constitute extortion.
March 2014 Yelp added features for ordering and scheduling manicures, flower deliveries, golf games, and legal consultations.
2013 Yelp added features for food ordering, delivery, hygiene inspection scores, and spa appointment booking.
2013 Yelp acquired online reservation startup SeatMe for $12.7 million in cash and stock.
2013 CEO Jeremy Stoppelman reduced his salary to $1.
September 2013 Yelp cooperated with Operation Clean Turf, a sting operation by the New York Attorney General that uncovered 19 astroturfing operations.
August 2013 Yelp launched town hall style meetings in 22 major American cities to address concerns from local business owners about review practices.
June 2013 Yelp filed a lawsuit against BuyYelpReview/AdBlaze for allegedly writing fake reviews for pay.
2012 Yelp acquired its largest European rival, Qype, for $50 million.
October 2012 Yelp placed a 90-day 'consumer alert' on 150 business listings believed to have paid for reviews, with an alert reading 'We caught someone red-handed trying to buy reviews for this business'.
September 2012 Yelp's content was integrated into Apple's Siri and iOS 6 mapping and directions app.
March 2 2012 Yelp's stock began public trading on the New York Stock Exchange after filing for an initial public offering (IPO) in November 2011.
2011 San Francisco U.S. District Judge Edward Chen dismissed the class-action lawsuit, stating that reviews were protected by the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
2010 Yelp ceased its 'featured review' practice in response to criticism about allowing advertising partners to manipulate review listings.
2010 Check-in features were added to the Yelp platform, enabling users to check in at various businesses.
2010 Yelp reached $30 million in revenue and published approximately 4.5 million crowd-sourced reviews.
June 2010 Yelp Reservations feature was initially added, allowing users to make restaurant reservations directly through the platform.
March 2010 Nine additional businesses joined the initial class-action lawsuit, and two similar lawsuits were also filed against Yelp.
February 2010 A class-action lawsuit was filed against Yelp alleging extortion by asking a Long Beach veterinary hospital to pay $300 monthly for advertising services that would suppress or delete negative customer reviews.

This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Yelp, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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