17 Terrific Yelp Demographics

3 out of 4 people trust online reviews when trying out a new brand, restaurant, or product. This percentage is almost equal to how many people trust the word-of-mouth recommendations from their family. That’s why Yelp is a growing community of people who are providing quality feedback about their experiences.

As of Q3 2015, Yelp is averaging 89 million monthly mobile unique visitors.

Founded in 2004, the growth that this site has experienced in the last 3 years as been massive. Only monthly desktop users have seen a recent dip in usage since 2012, but even that is negligible considering today’s figures are 19 million monthly visitors higher than 3 years ago. Yelp’s ability to target their core demographics is directly linked to this recent success.

The Core Demographics of Yelp

• Men prefer to use Yelp more than women, with nearly 30% of men who regularly use the site leaving at least one review. Women are 50% less likely to leave a review if they use the site regularly.
• People in urban areas are 2x more likely to use Yelp to select a business compared to users in suburban or rural areas.
• 71% of searches on Yelp came from mobile devices across the globe.

Urban individuals are more likely to use Yelp simply because they have more options available to them. There’s also a greater chance that multiple reviews have been posted about a business. In rural areas, there is a good chance that a business isn’t even listed on the site. If it is, then it may not be claimed as of yet. If there are reviews, there may only be one or two. This limited information makes it difficult to make an informed decision. As for why men use Yelp more often, it may simply be a reflection of a desire to share data like one would at the watercooler.

Who Is The Average Yelp Previewer?

• In the US, 41.9% of Yelp users are in the 18-34 age demographic. More than 37% are 35-54 years of age, with 19.9% being over the age of 55.
• 60.2% of Yelp users have at least some level of college education. Another 19.4% of Yelp users have either attended grad school or have received a degree higher than a bachelor’s degree.
• 38% of Yelp users have an annual household income above $100k. This is 4 percentage points higher than Yelps users with an income of $50k or below.
• 23%. This is the percentage of reviews that are related to shopping and the leading reviewed business category on Yelp. Restaurants come in second at 19%.
• The percentage of reviews on Yelp that recommend the business: 71%.
• Only 7% of the reviews on Yelp have been removed because of questionable content from the reviewer.
• 43% of the reviews left by Yelp users are 5 star reviews. Just 14% of reviews give the business 1 star.
• More than 26,000 reviews are published every minute by all of Yelp’s core demographics.

Yelp has successfully targeted mobile users and the growth curve of visitors is evidence of this. For the first 4 years of its existence, this review site barely registered on the radar of mobile users. Beginning in 2010, however, with better targeting of this demographic, visitor growth began to multiply. The only reason why desktop use may be going lower, in fact, is because more people have converted over to mobile users. Combined Yelp sees over 150 million unique monthly visitors, with more than half of all content coming from mobile users.

How Yelp Continues to Grow

• Yelp is able to provide over 200,000 users every day with directions to local businesses.
• It is estimated that another 200,000 calls are generated daily to local businesses through reviewer generated content.
• More than 10,000 food orders are created through Yelp every week and this figure continues to grow.
• 80,000. That’s the average number of deals that are live on Yelp at any given time.
• 98% of Yelp users have made a purchase at a business they discovered on the site.

Yelp has managed to naturally evolve its business model to incorporate more than just reviews. They have become a one-stop shopping spot for people who are looking for a dependable business that is close to them. Is it any wonder that there have reportedly been offers to purchase Yelp for $1 billion in the past? Now Yelp is available in more than two dozen countries and continues to expand. Revenues have grown at a 60% pace in some year-to-year quarters. This is because Yelp knows what its core demographics want and finds a way to provide it.