I don't disagree with your diagnosis of the prevalence of armchair CEOing around here, but Yelp is indeed concerned about Google.
Yelp and a couple other companies forced in Google to a Congressional hearing where senators attacked Google over having too much power over other sites. Yelp gets a SIGNIFICANT amount of its traffic from google searches. So if Google arbitrarily decided to promote its own restaurant reviews from Zagat after a user search, this would crush Yelp's traffic.
You mean, like how every other website on the planet is dependent on Google? Yes, that is true. Just like Ford/Toyota/etc are dependent on BP/Exxon/etc.
That analogy doesn't really work. If BP or Exxon refuses to support Ford's vehicle, there are other people to supply the fuel. If Google drops Yelp's ranking, there is no other search engine who is going to fulfill that traffic source that was just yanked from Yelp.
But yes, I agree that it's a problem that most websites face, not just Yelp.
No, I think the gp is referencing the fact that 75 (seriously, 75!!!) percent of yelps traffic comes in from google [1]. You have to view that as basically a failure of the company and the brand. Instead of going to yelp for a review, people just search in google. This also obviously leaves them enormously exposed to changes in Google's algorithms, whether intended to affect yelp or not. (Cue the google employees with their usual church and state / separation of search from other product lines story. Sorry, not buying it. And even if it's true now, some day a beancounter will win and it won't be.)
There are lots of companies that are far more of a destination than yelp -- the obvious contrast is facebook. I'd bet very little of their traffic is google search driven. Weaning themselves from dependence on Google should be one of the top goals for any web company.
This isn't really fair. In Chrome DNS has practically been replaced by google search, and it's great.
Instead of typing yelp.com (or was it yelp.net? www.yelp.biz? http://www.yelp.info?) I can just type "yelp" and get where I'm going without having to remember the exact url and without getting an annoying error page if I make a typo. I suspect for many users even in other browsers the search box gets much more use than the URL box.
To be fair, while they might right now be reliant on Google for 75% of their traffic, they aren't resting on their laurels. Consider Apple and Siri's use of Yelp. With Apple moving away from Google as much as possible, speciality services like Yelp will become more valuable.
google was offering much less than what Microsoft was bringing to the table ($700M) - and they turned that down too. I think if Google up their bid (at least trying to match Microsoft's) Yelp might have gone for it just because it was Google. http://news.accuracast.com/internet-7471/yelp-turned-down-mi...
I think Google should have just paid more and buy Yelp rather than Zagat.
I've never once encountered a Zagat-related complaint. They seem to have high standards and their ratings have been trustworthy for me for years. Yelp on the other hand.. it's just a big yellowpages where even my own reviews go missing time to time.
