Yelp Ratings Virtually Showing Up on Your Door

So, If you are thinking you can avoid those Ratings and Reviews, think again, they are now showing up literally on your front door. John Jantsch penned an article over on his blog titled Yelp, Changing the Local Game Some More

The image below is a screengrab from my iPhone as I am pointing it down a street. The phone is using an augmented reality feature of the  Yelp! iPhone app called Monocle. What your seeing is that as I point the camera at a location Yelp! reviews pop on the screen. I can click through or simply choose to skip that shop I was going to go into based on the slew of two star reviews. If this image doesn’t get your attention that reviews on sites like Google Maps and Yelp! are important then nothing will.

Yelp! also added a “check in” feature so people using the app can note when they visit a location. At some point this information will become very valuable and expect Yelp! to build advertising opportunities around check ins – on your 10th visit to a coffee shop you get a free drink coupon, for example. This could be bad news for location games  Foursquare and Gowalla.

So How Do You Feel About That

So, now anyone can see those reviews and ratings pasted virtually on your property, building and place of business. And, You can’t remove them or do much about it. How does that make you feel. If you have a crappy business model, I would guess you are worried.

But what about the shop thats is doing it right, be it an apartment community, a restaurant, a baker or an auto mechanic, this is like having virtual customer testimonials. Take advantage, get involved with Yelp, start to build your Digital Footprint, Why would you wait any longer?

ApartmentFinder.com has recently launched a new cool social media integration feature where any of their advertisers can have their Yelp reviews displayed on their property details pages.

Talk Directly to the Top Gun at Yelp

In an effort to dispel some of the fears Geoff Donaker, the COO at Yelp, has agreed to participate in a joint webinar with NCI on February 5th  for anyone to hear directly from Geoff and the team at Yelp about how their product works and their understanding of how rental prospects use their site

This webinar is FREE, and you can sign up here, Don’t miss this one friends. We are expecting a big turnout for the event and most importantly to see what kind of questions our industry has for the guys at Yelp.