Yelp, US Government Partner: Official Federal Pages Inbound

Yelp has announced that it partnered with the U.S. government, and that under the partnership, federal agencies will be able to claim Yelp pages and use them to solicit and monitor feedback. Whether that will result in any actual meaningful changes in government offices and airports where its receives low marks is doubtful, but regardless users now have another option to vent their complaints and, if they're feeling generous, leave a positive note the next time the TSA gets you through the line smoothly.

Yelp announced the new partnership on Tuesday, saying that it has been finalized and under it federal agencies and offices are free to lay claim to their own Yelp pages. Some pages already exist — in an unofficial capacity — for users to leave feedback, such as ones related to the TSA checkpoints in certain airports. With this partnership, we'll likely see the number of government-related pages increase.

This is a move on the government's part to increase its engagement with the population, but whether the feedback it receives on Yelp pages will change anything is yet to be seen. As stated, many government entities are already listed on the service, and though some of them have very low ratings, there's nothing indicating those ratings have influenced how those entities operate.

The partnership between the two, though finalized, won't be "fully implemented" for an unspecified number of months. This follows Yelp's partnership with ProPublica, something that will add things like survey data on consumer opinions and health care statistics to Yelp pages for "medical treatment facilities".

SOURCE: Yelp