Yelp Adds Health Scores

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.