Yelp Trying to infiltrate Local Garage Door Repair Search

 As congress investigates Google and its near monopoly over its competitors, Yelp has decided to seize an opportunity to fill in the gaps that Google is leaving open. Yelp has accused Google of giving itself self-preference in search results, especially where local SERP is concerned. A Federal Trade Commission decided in 2013 that there wasn't enough evidence to state that Yelp's claims were true, but Yelp maintains that this decision is not believed to be true.

Yelp Using Google's Failure to Their Benefit

By paying off the competition, Google managed to become the most used search engine on the modern Internet and is the main site people head to when looking up businesses, such as garage door repair companies. More often than not, Google dilutes its search results with fake garage door companies and does a poor job of getting rid of this problem, even though they claim they have taken steps to eliminated issues with Google maps and fraudulent virtual properties. Many local small businesses have suffered because of this, including garage door repair services while customers have a hard time finding reliable, reputable businesses when they search online and choose the top result that shows up in Google search, as they are led to believe that this is the most relevant.

Fraudulent companies can create fake listings for businesses such as locksmiths, water damage technicians, contractors, lawyers, garage door repair services and more. Certain lead companies like Yelp were also involved by populating search results with fake listings. Google claims to have taken down these false listings, but without changing the actual listing and advertising process, scammers can simply go through the process again and create new listings. Yelp works similarly by allowing anyone at all to create these listings, which will then appear in search results.

How Yelp’s on Your Budget

Consumers and businesses alike starting to realize that Yelp is no longer a platform that can be trusted when searching for reputable businesses. Instead, they are just a lead generating company that is concerned with generating growth and shareholders returns.

Yelp's CPC algorithm not only allows fake garage door repair, installation and contracting businesses to place ads, but the algorithm also displays businesses that don’t match up to your industry. This means that the amount you pay for your ads, which is based on the competition, ends up costing a lot more, since you need to compete with fake businesses and business that don’t necessarily related to your industry. This benefits Yelp whether they are legit businesses or not, because the more businesses that buy ads, the more money Yelp can charge them for placing ads. While business owners get a monthly bill for their ads, the more competition to be found in an industry, the more they will end up paying, and the more they'll need to increase their budget. This will increase the revenue for Yelp while costing small business owners more money, ultimately only benefiting Yelp.

The Effects on Small Businesses and Garage Door Repair Companies

If Yelp would succeed to appear at the top of Google's local search for small businesses, there are many downsides. For one, businesses lose out on local traffic, which of course means losing customers. This can cause price increase for garage door services to homeowners, can hurt the bottom line of a business and cause them to work even more to find ways to connect with and market to their customers. Having competition against dozens or sometimes even hundreds of fake businesses make this even harder to do. Local garage door companies tend to pay more and more as time goes on just to advertise in hopes of being seen. On top of this, business owners must pay good deal of money each month to Yelp to keep ads listed. If Yelp ends up getting even more exposure, local businesses will end up having to pay even more.

In Conclusion

It is clear to see why Yelp should not be allowed to infiltrating local search: its platform is designed to bring in profit without even trying to help local businesses and consumers. While Google is also designed to bring in profits, using some Google features is free when seeking online exposure. As Yelp is trying to get federal regulators to investigate Google and try to change the way that they show their search results, they do this not for any noble reason. It is solely to increase their profits without any regard for the consumers or businesses they are purported to be helping.