What just happened? Where’s Yelp?
Ten years ago, in John Battelle’s book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed our Culture, Battelle refers to Google as the global arbitrator of web search traffic—sort of like the traffic lights and wayfinding signs of the Internet.
Today, we see Google flexing their might. In rolling out a tiny algorithm-tweak on June 16, combined with a similar doorway-page update from May this year, Google has significantly pushed Yelp down in the fiercely competitive territory of Google natural search results—particularly, with what we in the search industry call “head terms.” (As opposed to more obscure three- or four-word “long tail” terms.)
Good News? Bad News?
This new development can be viewed as both good news and bad news, depending on how you’re listed in search results. If all your traffic comes through your Yelp listing in results which have likely been pushed down a bit, then the news is very bad.
However, if you have a well optimized website and tend towards having strong natural search positions, now you may be a position or two higher, and that is good news indeed.
Your Strategy (What This Means for You)
While the necessity to pay Yelp sales-reps may have suddenly become less urgent, it also removes one possible vector for page-domination strategies in Google search results. If you were relying on a listing or two from Yelp to keep pathways to your site on page one and pathways to your competitors buried on page two or more, then you have to find something to replace Yelp in your page-domination strategy.
If Yelp was keeping you down, this is cause for celebration. But beware, this new development in the natural search landscape may all be temporary. Google has been known to roll-out tests.
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