Have you been doubting Yelp? It's certainly got its fair share of competition in the check in and review spaces, but despite some hiccups related to its review practices, Yelp is growing at a rapid clip.

Yelp released some growth statistics yesterday on Twitter (status) and while the 41 million monthly visitors is certainly impressive it is the number of reviews (15 million and counting) that makes Yelp an increasingly important player.

Another interesting point derived from the information released is that half of all reviews on Yelp fall into the restaurants (26%) and shopping (24%) categories. Beauty and fitness (9%), Arts-Entertainment-Events (8%) and Home & Local Services (8%) account for half of the remaining reviewed businesses.

Some interesting demographic information is also included - 82% are under 50 years old, 68% have either a college education or attended graduate school and over 50% earn over $60K.

If you're a business owner (of the brick and mortar variety) you should definitely consider promoting that business on Yelp.