My sister-in-law was in town recently and saw an app on my phone for Yelp.  I was surprised when she asked what it was. Perhaps many of you out there aren’t as familiar with Yelp, so I figured this would be a good blog topic this week.

In Yelp’s own words, they “help people find great local businesses like dentists, hair stylists and mechanics."

Yelp lists businesses in the area, and those businesses are encouraged to update their own profiles. Regular folks like you and me are encouraged to list reviews of the businesses to help others determine which of these businesses are worthy of our patronage.

Yelp claims over 61 million unique users with over 22 million local reviews. All in all, not a bad place to take a gander when debating who’s going to get your business today, especially if you’re trying something new.

While they’ve taken some flak for introducing ads and deals to their model,  thus prompting favoritism claims (Yelp is adament that they remain neutral), as I’ve made clear numerous times in the past, I’ll take a deal any way I can get it.

Yelp’s deals are similar to the deals you see on all of the daily sites, but they last a lot longer than a day or two in most cases.

To see all of the deals in your area, go to http://www.yelp.com/dc and put in your city in the “near” box. Then hit the “show filters” link and click the “offering a deal” box to see a full listing of deals. Punching in “Washington, DC” shows there are 161 deals in the area currently.

As some of you have pointed out to me in past blogs, just because a site offers deals, doesn’t mean the deals are great, or for that matter, the businesses are up to snuff.

Circling back to the original premise of Yelp, go ahead and peruse the reviews of the businesses offering deals and determine if these are places you’d like to visit.

As always, I’d love to hear your feedback on your experience with Yelp. And if you have any other topics you’d like me to cover in future blogs, please let me know.
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Tim aggregates DC-area deals on a per-city basis daily at www.TIMS.US, featuring daily deals, current promotions, regular promotions, introductory offers, daily specials, discounts, coupons, email club offers, Facebook offers, Twitter offers, Foursquare offers, and more.