When Yahoo and Yelp got together, no one expected that they would lose years of positive reviews from their Yahoo local listings. Although, the agreement did specifically state that Yelp reviews would be used on Yahoo local listings. However, the agreement went forward and virtually overnight, some local businesses lost their complete history of local reviews.

Now, when someone comments or reviews a restaurant, dry cleaner, flooring store or a law firm, the review is posted in Yelp, obliterating all previous Yahoo local listings. In other words, the newest listing is the only one people will see.

Yahoo still shows reviews on a Yahoo local listing until a lawyer or law firm get a new Yelp review. Once that happens, the Yelp review replaces the Yahoo review(s). This appears to be a disturbing turn of events for many business owners, as statistics show people need to read up to ten reviews before they trust anything written on the Internet.

In fact, a 2012 Local Consumer Review Survey indicates that roughly 72 percent of participants stated they trust online reviews nearly as much as personal recommendations. Fifty-two percent said positive online reviews made them more motivated to visit local businesses. Losing years of reviews may be a devastating blow to a legal office counting on them to refer clients to their firm. The same thing is happening on Bing as well, since Yelp and Bing got together in 2012 and Yelp reviews now override Bing local listings.

Yahoo was “the” search leader at one time and was first to offer interactive mapping. Google knocked them out of the mapping technology race. It appears Yahoo is attempting to become more relevant in their search functions.