Yelp now lets businesses have a say too

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Some looking for Los Angeles-area bars on Yelp, the popular review site, might be a little confused when reading the entry for the Dresden Room Restaurant, which constantly refers to ‘Marty and Elaine.’ Who are these Marty and Elaine characters, you might ask, and why do reviewers keep talking about them?

Starting Thursday, Yelp is giving businesses a chance to explain themselves. The site, which had about 15 million unique visitors in the last month, is launching an ‘About this Business’ section of the site. The section will allow businesses to tell readers a little bit about themselves, including their company history and specialties. Users can access the site by clicking on a tab next to the reviews.

The feature will be a boon for small businesses that don’t have their own websites but want to give potential customers more information about themselves, said Jeremy Stoppelman, chief executive of San Francisco-based Yelp. ‘It’s about setting expectations in your own words, identifying the customers you’re trying to reach,’ he said. ‘That can help bring in the right customers.’

A motorcycle bar can be branded by reviewers as a dive bar and lose stars, for instance. But if it calls itself a motorcycle bar from the get-go, reviewers might have a different perspective.

Bad reviews can do a lot of damage on Yelp because business owners are powerless to do anything about them. As one business owner wrote on the review page for Yelp itself:

Yelp has a feature that allows business owners to contact reviewers individually, but they have not had a public place on Yelp to describe themselves and address customers until now. ‘We’ve had this progression of adding features with the goal of creating a positive connection,’ Stoppelman said.

-- Alana Semuels