Yelp.Com Also Launches Its 'Check-In Deals' To Its Website

Mobile check-in have been the most up-coming trend of this year, with exclusive services dedicated to this trend like Foursquare and Gowalla start gaining popularity, the already dominating websites like Facebook add their own services like Places and Deals. So, from now onwards Yelp users will also be among those who get advantageous deals from local businesses, in return for ‘checking in’ at places they visit.

It is also rumored that Google is ready to buy a company for anything between $2.5bn and $3bn, which lets allows other websites of different businesses to advertise own deals, and if enough people sign up for the particular deal, it gets available for all the members. According to the New York Post reported, Google’s deal with this company, titled Groupon, will be settled anytime “in the next month”.

Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons founded Yelp in 2004, when both were software engineers at PayPal. It is since then that it starting being the leading in the local business listings site in the US and is also growing its popularity in the UK as well. Yelp has already been offering its ‘check in’ tool since January but was not until now that it allowed other businesses to get registered be able to reward their customers. The director of consumer and mobile products at Yelp, Eric Singley, spoke of this update in these words: “The gaming elements of check in services probably don’t appeal to everybody,” and went on saying that. “Check in offers will help change the perception of these services.”

Singley proudly reported that Yelp check ins are increasing in use, on average, by 50 per cent each month. The site also offers other useful tools, like some which allow registered local business owners to also see how often their most regular customers are visiting the website. Google also made an offer to Yelp, last year when it was reportedly prepared and made an offer of $500m. It is assumed that Yelp turned down the offer, although neither company ever made any comment on the rumors at hand.