Meredith's Husband 0:33

All right. Today we're going to talk about Yelp.

Meredith 0:36

Ooh.

Meredith's Husband 0:37

Yeah. One of your favorites. My Yeah. This I think is some news that you can use. This is going to be, every once in a while, some news comes out kind of in the industry that I think would be really worthwhile for small business owners to know. This is an example of that.

Meredith 0:52

Is there something called news you can use? Because that's a great title.

Meredith's Husband 0:56

There probably is.

Meredith 0:58

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 0:58

But I did I just came up with it. I'm like, oh, it's news that you can use. Anyway, this is this is news you can use. So first, if

Why Yelp Still Matters

Meredith's Husband 1:06

you're not familiar with Yelp, I'm just going to give a very brief intro here. Because I think Yelp is probably a lot more popular in urban areas. Like we're in Brooklyn, Yelp is very popular. If I had to guess, I would say in less urban, like rural areas, probably not very popular.

Meredith 1:22

I don't know.

Meredith's Husband 1:23

I don't know. But anyway, Yelp is it's like a a reviews website. Okay. So we go on Yelp. We, I just we used Yelp yesterday to find that cafe. Yelp has reviews of like local businesses. It's very popular, especially again in urban areas with restaurants, bars, things like that. If you're looking at gyms or you want you want online reviews of something, that's basically what it is. Okay, now for other small businesses too, like uh you have gotten leads by people finding you on Yelp. You have reviews for your business on Yelp. So a lot of times people will go, they'll do a search for children's photographers, family photographers, and they'll read reviews on Yelp. Now Yelp in that sense is I think of it as a necessary evil.

Meredith 2:10

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 2:10

Because Yelp, their business practices are, I would say, shady, but I don't think they're they're just shitty. They are a they're a really shitty.

Meredith 2:20

If you don't buy whatever they want and everything now costs money, I don't get any leads because I'd have to pay for them if people write to me. And they also hide reviews.

Meredith's Husband 2:32

So those, yeah, so exactly. The reviews that I mentioned, uh, they have a system

Hidden Reviews And Sales Pressure

Meredith's Husband 2:37

where they say, oh, these reviews, and they say, Oh, well, they're they're spam reviews, they're fake reviews. And so they they hide them, they don't show them on your profile. The problem is that they say that process of how they determine what is spam and what isn't, they say it's totally secretive, it's very black boxed, it's very above the board, which is bullshit.

Meredith 2:57

That is it's bullshit. The people who pay them have all the reviews shown, and the people who don't pay them and they go after businesses.

Meredith's Husband 3:07

Yes. So they yeah, because you rather aggressively. Yeah, you have a bunch of reviews that they don't show. Yeah, and Yelp says, Oh, they're from spam. They're there's spam, they're not they're not legitimate reviews. But if you go and look at who left those reviews, you can go and look actually see which of your reviews are hidden from other people. You can see who left those reviews, and they're from regular users of Yelp who have who have dozens of other reviews that are not marked as spam. But for you, and specifically, it's the a lot of the five-star reviews that Yelp has decided we're gonna hide those. And so Yelp uses that as leverage, essentially say, Oh, well, if you advertise with us, you can and they don't promise that they're gonna unhide your reviews, but they do.

Meredith 3:52

They do. I spent years challenging them.

Meredith's Husband 3:56

And then on top of that, something else they do is they have really aggressive sales tactics. Or they they they they used to. I remember you were getting calls.

Meredith 4:06

They still do.

Meredith's Husband 4:06

Yeah, you got calls like it seemed like every day.

Meredith 4:09

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 4:09

And like really aggressive salespeople.

Meredith 4:12

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 4:12

And this was back when, like, if somebody called you, you answered. Like, yes, this was like they called your business line, and if that line rings, you answer. That's how people and so back in the day, it was super annoying. They still do that, but like I said, a necessary evil. Because if you're in a city or an area where Yelp is popular, you do want to have reviews there.

Meredith 4:33

Yeah.

Meredith's Husband 4:33

Now, the news part of this that's the background. That was my brief introduction to Yelp. Right. Guess who just announced a partnership with Yelp?

Meredith 4:44

Google?

Meredith's Husband 4:45

No, think of other shitty companies. Shitty companies tend to work together. Yelp initially did have an agreement with Google and it went south, and Yelp is suing Google.

unknown 4:55

Okay.

Meredith's Husband 4:55

What is what are what are some high-profile, current, what I would consider shitty companies?

Meredith 5:01

I I don't know.

Meredith's Husband 5:02

Open AI. Chat GPT. So OpenAI just announced a partnership with Yelp.

Meredith 5:09

I don't what?

OpenAI Partners With Yelp

Meredith's Husband 5:11

So if you are searching for who is the best photography near me, I I would rephrase that if I were you. But if that's what you ask AI, what AI does is it goes out and it uses Google. But AI would like to use other sources. Ideally, it doesn't want to just rely on Google. Right. And so to get local reviews, they've they have similar partnerships, I believe, with Reddit.

Meredith 5:34

Uh-huh.

Meredith's Husband 5:35

Uh, which is great. I think Reddit is fantastic.

Meredith 5:37

Wait, who has the relationship with Reddit?

Meredith's Husband 5:40

OpenAI.

Meredith 5:41

Oh, okay.

Meredith's Husband 5:41

They do have access to Reddit information directly. So now they are going to have direct access to Yelp reviews. So when you ask Chat GPT, and this isn't happening yet, don't go out and try it, because it was literally just announced. But if you ask ChatGPT who are some who are the best family photographers near me, it is going to source information from Yelp.

Meredith 6:04

And Google, or is it prioritizing Yelp?

Meredith's Husband 6:07

It will probably never inform us of that.

Meredith 6:10

Right.

Meredith's Husband 6:10

It will hopefully still be using Google to some extent, but it's going to have direct direct access.

Meredith 6:16

Excuse me?

Meredith's Husband 6:17

Yeah, it's going to have direct access to reviews on Yelp. Wow. Which, if you're a small business owner, I think that's really important, unfortunately. Oh god. And if you're in an area where, if you're in like an urban area where it's popular, yeah, super. Dust off your Yelp profile.

unknown 6:36

Crap.

Meredith's Husband 6:37

If you're in a rural area where Yelp is not popular, this is kind of a big advantage, I think, right now, because you won't have many other people doing it. You're not going to have that many competitors on Yelp. So in either situation, I would say I would say that Yelp requires a little bit of attention right now. And who knows, who knows where this is going to go? This this agreement may go south as well.

Meredith 7:02

Right. Because Yelp now charges for leads,

What Changes For Local Search

Meredith 7:07

charges for clicks, and charges.

Meredith's Husband 7:10

You want to hear another shitty part? Is that that feature where you can um where you are looking at a Yelp review and you can request a proposal, like you ask for a quote or something. You're going to be able to do that right in Chat GPT. So that's shitty. You know, I don't know where this is going. Yes.

Meredith 7:31

Don't snooze on this news.

Meredith's Husband 7:33

Don't snooze on the news. You can lose.

Meredith 7:34

Or you lose.

Meredith's Husband 7:36

Oh, geez. This is like I was saying, a gem of a show.

Meredith 7:39

Um aren't you glad I'm back?

unknown 7:42

Oh, yeah.

Meredith's Husband 7:43

This relationship may go south, to be honest, because most of open AI's relationships go south at some point, either with their employee, like, yeah, they just they do. They all seem to do that. Yeah. But I don't know what this is going to be like in the interim. At some point in the future, I expect that if people ask, you know, who is a good family photography? God damn, don't ask it that way. Who is a good photographer? Who is a good family photographer near me? Chat GPT is going to give you results from Yelp.

Meredith 8:18

Interesting.

Meredith's Husband 8:19

Yeah. I hate to say it, but take a look at your Yelp profile.

Meredith 8:22

Oh. Agony.

Meredith's Husband 8:24

It's not, and I wish I'd give you more advice. It's not my area of special.

Meredith 8:27

No, no.

Meredith's Husband 8:28

If you if you want to have me research and cover it a little bit, follow the link below, drop a note, tell me like some more info on Yelp. I'll look into it. But off the top of my head, I I don't know the best practices.

Meredith 8:41

You know, if you want, you could just use my Yelp to use as an experiment.

Meredith's Husband 8:48

Well, if somebody writes in and asks me for to do research, then I will please write it. Cut to Meredith writing a message. Dear Meredith's husband.

Meredith 8:59

It's so important.

Meredith's Husband 9:00

This is what's

Request A Quote Inside ChatGPT

Meredith's Husband 9:01

your middle name? Oh wow. Didn't I just say something?

Meredith 9:05

Yes, you did. That's what I thought you were saying it for.

Meredith's Husband 9:07

I guess I probably was and didn't realize it.

Meredith 9:09

Probably. What's your middle name?

Meredith's Husband 9:11

My middle name is Danger.