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Business owners can stop banging their heads against a digital wall! Yelp announced today that its new feature set, which allows business owners to respond to user feedback on Yelp, is now live:



Courtesy of Yelp


This has big implications on two levels, one related to the basic usability of Yelp and the other related to Online Reputation Management for small businesses. If a user posts a negative comment and a business owner responds via Yelp’s new tools, that response will BOTH be posted on the Yelp.com review and arrive in the email inbox of the dissatisfied user. This represents the large departure with regard to the site’s basic usability.

From an Online Reputation Management perspective, Yelp may no longer be a potential liability. Even if a small business generates negative reviews or complaints on Yelp, business owners now have a public opportunity to address those concerns. Consumers love a tight response loop and acceptance of feedback, so business owners will now have a classic opportunity to turn negatives into positives. Why is this so powerful? Search engines love Yelp.com’s pages and they typically reside in high search engine results for business name queries.