The short answer is: it's up to you. But, the long answer requires more thought.
If you don’t know, Yelp is an online review platform that functions like a mixture of yellow pages and Google business listings.
You set up a business listing so that people can find you, and acquire helpful business reviews known as Yelp reviews as a result. It functions as a way to get new and repeat customers.
Ultimately, Yelp is a good platform for restaurants and nightlife destinations, home and local service businesses, national and regional brands, and marketing and advertising agencies.
It’s a helpful platform for small businesses and those looking to have more presence online.
Having more presence online isn’t detrimental either. Rather, it’s a positive thing for your business and your pursuit of new customers.
However, there are a few things to consider with a Yelp account.
The benefits of a Yelp business profile
The biggest benefit you will find with Yelp is that, outside of Google, it’s the largest business review platform.
According to TechJury, more than 244 million reviews were posted to Yelp in 2021.
That’s a substantial amount of reviews.
Is it something you should be capturing?
It sure is.
If you don’t have an account, it’s an untapped platform that provides you valuable customer insight into your business.
Surprisingly, 97% of Yelp traffic uses the platform to make a purchase. Which means that the platform is highly trusted by its visitors.
Not to mention: Yelp sees more than 178 million platform visitors each month.
As a business owner, founder, marketer or entrepreneur, you know that's a lot of traffic that’s potentially being missed by your business page. The impact of online presence, especially in review aggregate spaces, is highly important to your bottom line.
Of course, like Google, you encounter both positive reviews and negative reviews on the platform. And, like Google, you can address them and work to improve your relations with your customers.
If you’d like to know how to deal with a negative review, check our guide for 9 tips on how to deal with negative reviews.
As we said earlier, Yelp functions as an online directory with many business listings. The site is more than a review site, it allows you to highlight key business information too.
This includes things such as your business name, phone number, website, social media links, and more.
Your Yelp page becomes a hub for customers to interact with and grow your business.
That all sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
But what about the downsides to Yelp?
The negatives of Yelp for business owners
For starters, Yelp is its own platform.
While having a high-ranking Yelp profile on the Yelp platform is nice, it does not impact your local search rankings the way that a Google Business Listing will.
The elephant in the room for Yelp is its lack of SEO impact.
While your listing does indeed see some SEO boost, it isn’t nearly as impactful as having a direct business listing on Google.
Having a Google listing allows you to appear in the Google Map Pack which means that you’re seeing a lot of web traffic to your listing.
In fact, according to Intergrowth, 86% of people look up the location of a business on Google Maps.
When you consider that against Google’s reported 89.3 billion site visits per month, that equates to a lot of people.
Yelp simply pales in comparison to Google’s monthly traffic.
A huge reason for that is that Google is a global platform, and Yelp is mostly an American-based website.
In fact, nearly 90% of Yelp's traffic is American.
If you’re a Canadian company, Yelp simply won’t be as beneficial for you as your Google Business Listing.
That begs the question: should you or should you not have a Yelp business account?
Is it worth it having a Yelp business page?
When you look at the numbers, it seems like a Yelp page might not make much of a difference for you outside of the United States.
Sure, Yelp is a good platform that provides some solid features for your business to take advantage of, such as a clean business listing and advertising opportunities.
That said, the lack of local SEO impact, and lower website traffic, makes it less influential for your business than getting a Google Business Listing.
As a business owner, founder, marketer or entrepreneur, you only have so much time in a day. If you have to choose between Google and Yelp, you should be choosing Google.
Managing multiple platforms can become a stressful experience. And, when time is money, it’s best to invest that time into an activity that has a greater guarantee of success.
So yes, both Yelp profiles and Google business profiles allow user reviews that lead to impactful customer feedback. But, the overall benefits of Google far outweigh those of Yelp.
Ultimately, whether or not you should get a Yelp account is up to you.
Yelp users are dedicated to their space as the platform almost functions like social media.
Being on the Yelp platform ensures that, if done successfully, you get thoughtful customer reviews that greatly boost your Yelp listing, which leads to an increase in potential customers.
But, there’s no way around it: Yelp is just a fancy business listing platform with nice features and a niche audience.
And, Google?
Is a search engine powerhouse that dominates website traffic leading to measurable results for local businesses.
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