Yelp is starting to include mobile activity in the analytics information it provides to local business that have claimed their listings. Here’s a mocked-up example of what that looks like:
Accordingly, here’s the new information that Yelp will be providing to business owners:
- How many people looked at their business page from their Yelp app
- How many people called their business from their Yelp app
- How many people generated directions to their business from their Yelp app, and finally,
- How many people “checked in” to their business via the Yelp app.
Yelp offered some additional mobile data as part of this news:
- 27% of searches on Yelp come from the iPhone (this doesn’t count the company’s other mobile apps)
- 2 million mobile monthly uniques overall
- Million people looked up “point to point” directions to local businesses on Yelp mobile
- 500K calls from mobile last month: “Every five seconds someone uses the Yelp app to call a local business.”
In terms of the overall percentage of search volume, Yelp is the most dramatic example of mobile’s impact that I’ve seen to date. Trulia and Zillow have reported 10% and 15% of usage coming from their mobile apps by comparison.
I asked about when usage of the Yelp mobile apps is heaviest. I was told that the patterns definitely “complement” PC usage — evenings and weekends. This is very consistent with lots of other data in the market. But if much of that 27% of search volume is truly concentrated on the weekend, usage must be massive.
There are all kinds of marketing and promotional implications for SMBs from Yelp’s mobile usage data. But most local business owners, right now, are only dimly aware of mobile marketing and why it might be valuable to them.
July 6th, 2010 at 1:21 pm
[...] Yelp started showing mobile activity and check-ins to SMBs who’d claimed their [...]