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What a Difference a Year Makes



By now, you should have survived ringing in 2010 and said your fond farewells to 2009. The past year has marked an incredible growth period for Yelp and by the numbers alone we saw:

  • ~60% growth in traffic from 16 million unique visitors in December 2008 to a whopping 26 million in December 2009.
  • We also rounded out 2009 with ~2x the content and now stand at more than 8 million reviews worldwide; up from ~4 million the previous year.
  • Mobile also proved to be a significant focus for us and Yelpers can now use Yelp from 5 mobile platforms including Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Palm Pre and WAP.
  • We rolled out Yelp Communities in 8 cities coast to coast and in between from Honolulu to Toronto.
  • And as always, small business owner education remains one of our top priorities as it was in 2009. In fact, we’ve seen a massive amount of engagement with over 200,000 offers and special announcements uploaded via our free suite of tools: Yelp for Business Owners.

Additionally, we launched features that put the “fun” in functional, including Public Comments for Business Owners; Facebook and Twitter Connect; Search Suggestions; Community Yelp promotions from eating and drinking to sweating and giving. We worked hard to provide more transparency on your biggest questions including our Review Filter and why soliciting reviews is a no-no. Oh yeah, we also launched in a few countries including the UK and Ireland.

It’s been an exciting year to say the least, and you better believe you can expect even more great things from us in the coming months!

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