eClick Performance Blog

Two months ago Matt McGee wrote an article title, “Are Yahoo and Yelp Dating?” in which he noted that Yahoo had given a nice bit of exposure to Yelp by using one of its listings as the primary example in their Open Search announcement. At the time he had speculated that Yelp had been chosen because of a perceived relationship between the two sites, which included a keyword rich link to Yahoo Local at the bottom of every business profile page on Yelp (see below). These links had been sighted as early as December 2007 and perhaps were related to Yelp’s participation in Open Search.

Frankly, I didn’t give the relationship much thought until the other week when SEOmoz posted an article about Yahoo’s relationship with Great Schools in which a large number of the Great Schools pages linked to Yahoo Real Estate, once again, with keyword rich anchor text. An update was immediately posted in which in which Rebecca summarizes her contact with a Yahoo Real Estate Product Manager who said the links were not paid but rather part of a partnership. According to the Product Manager, Great Schools sends a data feed to Yahoo that they partially display with a link back to Great Schools. I found an example of this on the Yahoo Local results, which got me to wondering that if this was the typical nature of Yahoo’s partnerships, where were their links back to Yelp?

Interestingly enough, Yahoo Local does link back to Yelp, and in a nearly identical fashion: keyword rich links on business profile pages pointing to category pages on Yelp.

In many instances the anchor text for the same business listing on both sites is eerily similar. So…why is this important? Yelp and Yahoo Local are DIRECT COMPETITORS and two of the biggest names in the local review space. They’re competitors and they’re cross-linking to one another to boost their rankings for the same keyphrases. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Here’s a quick example of what I mean: Penny’s Noodle Shop in Chicago has listings on both Yelp and Yahoo Local. The Yelp listing includes a link to Yahoo Local’s main page for Thai Restaurants in Chicago with the anchor text, “Chicago Thai Restaurants”. The Yahoo Local listing for Penny’s Noodle Shop includes a link to Yelp’s main page for Thai in Chicago with the anchor text, “Chicago Thai”. If you search Google for either “Chicago thai restaurant” or “Chicago thai” both Yahoo Local and Yelp are in the first page of results.

As I see it, there are really only two obvious reasons for this type of partnership.

1. In an attempt to dominate local results, Yahoo and Yelp have joined in a type of divide and conquer agreement where they seesaw off one another in hopes of taking the top spot and may the best site win.

2. Yahoo and Yelp are feeling one another out for a possible acquisition. TechCrunch reported in February that Yelp had secured $15 million in financing in it’s fourth round, with a rumored valuation of $200 million. This same TechCrunch article mentions Yahoo Local as one of Yelp’s leading competitors. Greg Sterling’s take on the new financing was that it meant an acquisition was “all-but inevitable” but that there might be scarcity of buyers in the YP or newspaper industry because of economic shifts.

So, you have a well-known company that at least one expert thinks will be acquired, but a high valuation and sluggish economy leaves few buyers in the running. But one of those buyers could very well be Yahoo.

It wouldn’t be an acquisition rumor these days without a logo mock-up, so I give you…Yelhoo.

P.S. If you’re on your way to register yelhoo.com, you’ll find that Yahoo beat you to it