Yelp Adds Health Scores

Allison Howen — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Would you eat at a restaurant that scored less than perfect on a 100-point health score? What would be your cut off; ninety, eighty? Thanks to a recent Yelp announcement, you may have to decide.

According to Yelp’s blog, the company worked with the cities of San Francisco and New York to include restaurant hygiene scores onto Yelp’s business pages. While the Health Scores can already be seen on some San Francisco business pages, similar scores will also be coming to restaurants in New York soon.

“This is huge news in itself, but perhaps the bigger news is what we’ve created to enable this new business attribute: a new open data standard – the ‘Local Inspector Value-entry Specification’ or, simply, LIVES,” states Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman in a blog post. “The LIVES standard was co-developed by Yelp and the technology departments of the cities of San Francisco and New York. The standard was created with the guidance and encouragement of the White House.”

With LIVES, local municipalities can display their hygiene inspection data as a business attribute on Yelp. Although San Francisco and New York will be the first cities to have this functionality, Yelp hopes that other cities will follow suit.

The Health Score is featured directly below the menu option on a restaurant’s business page. Moreover, consumers also have the ability to click on the score to discover additional inspection history data.

OpenTable Serves Up Free Mobile Sites

Allison Howen — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:00:00 GMT

A recent comScore study revealed that mobile phones and tablets now account for 1 in 8 U.S. Internet page views, further indicating that mobile is becoming an increasingly popular way for consumers to connect with businesses when they are away from their desktops.

This is especially true for consumers who are trying to find local businesses, such as places to eat, while on the go. Popular online reservation platform OpenTable has taken note of this trend, and is now offering a new service that optimizes its clients websites for mobile devices – for free.

The new service, powered by DudaMobile, is said to be easy to implement, while making a client’s website more user-friendly - without sacrificing the branding of the restaurant’s desktop website.

"More than ever diners are seeking information about restaurants and booking reservations on the go, yet the vast majority of restaurant websites are not designed for mobile use," said Matt Roberts, Chief Executive Officer of OpenTable. "Our goal is to make it easier for restaurants to reap the benefits from the shift toward mobile by removing the friction associated with creating and hosting mobile-friendly sites."

To further prove that mobile has made a huge impact in the restaurant industry, OpenTable claims that 28 percent of the 28 million diners that the company seated in North America booked their reservations on mobile devices in the second quarter of 2012. Additionally, OpenTable has seated more than 30 million diners through reservations booked on mobile devices since November 2008, which represents more than $1 billion in revenue for OpenTable’s restaurant clients.

OpenTable’s restaurant clients in the U.S., Canada and the UK can leverage this free service by claiming their mobile site through the OpenTable Restaurant Center before February 1, 2013.

'Net Features : restaurant

Yelp Adds Health Scores

OpenTable Serves Up Free Mobile Sites