Google, which has been on a buying spree for the past year, is in advanced talks to purchase Yelp for at least $500 million.

This is a smart move for Google in many ways. It had tried to usurp the world of local reviews earlier this year with its Place Pages– mini-sites that would [...]]]>

Google, which has been on a buying spree for the past year, is in advanced talks to purchase Yelp for at least $500 million.

This is a smart move for Google in many ways. It had tried to usurp the world of local reviews earlier this year with its Place Pages– mini-sites that would show up at the front of search results pages and provide you with everything from the establishment’s address, phone number, location via Google Map, and user reviews. It would appear that, rather than reinvent the wheel, Mountain View has decided to pick up Yelp while the price is still relatively low. Doing so allows Google’s engineering team to focus on other areas; this price tag is largely about the value of Yelp’s user content.

This move by Google definitely serves as a shot across the bow to Microsoft and (to a lesser extent) IAC, whose CitySearch directory has been dying on the vine for the past seven years. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds.

Yelp has raised about $30 million across its four rounds of venture capital, and TechCrunch estimates the company’s value at $200 million.

Congrats to everyone at Yelp!

Google In Discussions To Acquire Yelp For A Half Billion Dollars Or More.

Google launched a new product called Google Places last week, a mini-profile page for local business listings that aggregates  address, phone number, site URL, maps, directions, photos and reviews all on one page. The problem is that Google quietly began indexing these aggregator pages. The risk is that, because this content resides within [...]]]>

Google launched a new product called Google Places last week, a mini-profile page for local business listings that aggregates  address, phone number, site URL, maps, directions, photos and reviews all on one page. The problem is that Google quietly began indexing these aggregator pages. The risk is that, because this content resides within Google, it can prefer them in its search results pages over non-Google content (think: Yelp, CitySearch, YellowPages, etc.).

In a literal sense, your search for that restaurant and movie need never involve a non-Google page:

When you click on a pin for a local business or place of interest on Google Maps a bubble will open up, and if you click “more info” sometimes it will take you to the Google Places page. So far, so good. Google Places is simply making Google Maps better, right?

The concerns arise, however, back on Google’s main search page, where Google is indexing these Places pages. Since Google controls its own search index, it can push Google Places more prominently if it so desires. There isn’t a heck of a lot of evidence that Google is doing this yet, but the mere fact that Google is indexing these Places pages has the SEO world in a tizzy.

Google has since added disallow tags to these pages to remove them from its search index, and has confirmed that it did not intend for these pages to appear in organic search results. While reassuring, this shows just how vulnerable all sites have become on the decisions made within the Googleplex. It is in this context that the rise of alternate search engines like Microsoft’s Bing is a welcome sign that competition may be returning to search. If true, this can only benefit businesses who do not want their economic future determined solely by the actions of a single player.

via With Google Places, Concerns Rise That Google Just Wants To Link To Its Own Content .