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These managers can then promote the best reviewers into the 'Yelp Elite Squad' where they might be invited to meet with other Yelp reviewers and also have their profiles and reviews featured.
Once the site is populated by local reviews and people start to use it, Yelp monetises the model by selling advertising to featured businesses.
Jeremy Stoppelman, the co-founder and chairman of Yelp, who owns 11.1 per cent of the company, is in Australia for the launch of the local version of the site, and said that although the company has signed a deal with Sensis in Australia to manage its advertising, it won't start selling space on the local sites just yet.
Although the initial focus is on populating the Melbourne and Sydney sites, there are already some reviews on the site for other cities such as Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. There are some wrinkles though as the two reviews on the Canberra site at time of writing are for Sydney's airport terminal.
The arrangement with Sensis is the first time the company has outsourced advertising sales. 'It simplifies things for us and makes sense to give it a go,' he said.
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At present Yelp has only sold advertising on its North American sites and Mr Stoppelman declined to say when the company might start selling advertisements on the Australian Yelp sites, although Sensis announced it would start selling Yelp space in 2012.
Advertising is going to be critical to the financial sustainability of the enterprise, and Yelp is also working out how to drive advertising revenues from the mobile sites. Yelp has a free Phone, iPad and Android app which are all available for Australians to download.
According to Mr Stoppelman 40 per cent of all search traffic is now coming from mobiles with 5 million unique visitors a month from mobile devices during the third quarter.
According to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month ahead of a planned public offering through which it hopes to raise $US100 million, the company said that in the nine months to the end of September it achieved revenues of $US58.4 million. Established in 2004 the company, which has about 900 employees worldwide, recorded a net loss of $US7.6 million for the nine months to September and has a $US32 million deficit to service.
It notes in the SEC report its heavy reliance on Google which still accounts for around 50 per cent of the traffic to Yelp. That makes the company somewhat hostage to Google and it has already noted that Google has removed links to Yelp from some of its search products, instead promoting Google services.
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Asked about future innovation Mr Stoppelman said that he expected voice would become a service on the phone, and pointed to Apple's launch of Siri which integrates Yelp content.
Over time Yelp reviews may become a little less metro-focussed he said, spreading out with reviews of the suburbs. The Sydney site launched this morning though is still firmly wedged in the city's environs and doesn't yet host any reviews for satellite suburbs such as Parramatta or Chatswood.
Despite the fledgling site's limitations it is heartening to know that the bar and restaurant your correspondent is headed for tonight have scored three and a half and four stars respectively.
