Yelp review growth has been in steady decline for many years. Annual % growth in Yelp review volume Data from Yelp 10Ks, 2014-2021 That being said, buried in that aggregate number are some disturbing issues. On the surface the 244 million reviews that Yelp highlighted in their presentation is an impressive number. There is only so much income Yelp can extract from businesses if their user base growth has stalled. If it depends on SEO, that becomes increasingly hard as Yelp's appearance in Google category search results seems to be on the decline. Yelp's mobile web traffic has continued to show strength but it is hard to imagine that will drive meaningful growth by itself. Their desktop search volume is low and declining, and their app seems to have stalled. But given their traffic slow down from 2017 on, it's hard to see exactly how Yelp can increase user growth above 2019 levels going forward. Obviously 20 traffic can't be used to predict much of anything. Regardless, Yelp's 2019 traffic only slightly exceeded its 2017 traffic. Imagine, you can now get directly from a Google SERP to a Yelp web result without having to either login or being forced to download an app. This could be partially be explained by Apple Maps' increasing uptake for discovery or by Yelp improving the mobile search user experience. This was largely driven by an increase in mobile web traffic. While 2019 desktop traffic continued to decline and their app-based traffic grew only slightly, Yelp saw a rebound to marginally above 2017 levels. Unique Visitors by Platform per Year Data from Yelp 10ks for the past 6 years This was despite Yelp's frequent haranguing of users to download their app with various interstitials and other annoying tactics. However in 2018 the rapid declines in desktop traffic outpaced modest growth in mobile web traffic and app traffic. Yelp traffic grew consistently though 2017. Stalled User Growth Paints a Cloudy Picture However, the strong sales and solid bottom line mask some headwinds that have long been lurking for Yelp: lower consumer traffic from the desktop, low uptake of the mobile app and decreasing growth in Yelp's review corpus. Yelp did this by adding new products and shedding a significant portion of their large, antiquated sales model and shifting more ad sales to self service and higher return multi-location brands. On the income and expense side, to Yelp's credit, the company weathered the pandemic well, reducing expenses and increasing income to pre-pandemic levels. Yelp typically highlights absolute numbers as opposed to trends What Yelp Did Right During COVID Their 10k for 2021 however contains both the back story and more nuance to understand Yelp's performance and there's both good and bad news in the numbers. The company's most recent presentation was no exception. Yelp's mandatory quarterly investor presentations tend to be happy talk and superficial.
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