Yelp.com debuts in Hong Kong

American reviews site Yelp.com debuts in Hong Kong in traditional Chinese and English today.Its site with free tools for business owners, biz.yelp.com.hk, has also gone live in traditional Chinese.In over 20 countries, the site reviews anything from swimming pools to garages to restaurants, with an average of 138 million unique visitors in the second quarter of this year.Hong Kong is the third location in Asia where the company has established its site.Unlike in six of the company's most developed markets such as the US and Canada, ad spaces are not available on the Hong Kong site.Instead, the site's expansion into Hong Kong is funded by revenue earned from these six markets.The site is also available in the form of a mobile app, reflecting the fact that 60% of Yelp searches are done on mobile."When we expand to a new market, we look at factors such as GDP, mobile penetration, Internet accessibility and user feedback," Miriam Warren, vice president of new markets at Yelp, said."Hong Kong has a high density of SMEs and has been a city for which visiting Yelpers have been asking for reviews."She predicts that food and beverage will be the fastest growing category of reviews for Hong Kong, which brings Openrice.com - a potential competitor - into the equation.In response to the question of how the site will compete with Openrice.com, which has an enormous user base in Hong Kong, Warren said, "In many of our markets, we believe the difference between Yelp and other local review sites is that it reviews a range of things such as parks and dentists, not just restaurants and bars."Here are some ways in which the site markets itself in new markets.BadgesThe site offers check-ins for businesses visited by the user and badges reflecting the businesses you frequent such as a Barify badge if you drink a lot.This encourages people to check into businesses on Yelp and generate conversation among friends on the site about what kind of badges users are able to accumulate.There is an exclusive Hong Kong badge that can be obtained when the user checks in anywhere in the city.Yelp Elite SquadIn every city, Yelp hires one community manager responsible for any sort of marketing they see fit for the local market, including guerrilla marketing campaigns, as well as starting the Yelp Elite Squad.The squad is made up of the most active and prolific members who write the most and the best reviews on the site.It could be seen as a form of loyalty marketing for loyal users of the site since squad members receive an elite badget, become part of a global squad club, and have access to an exclusive calendar of events and parties organised by the local community manager.But before the Hong Kong site accumulates elite squad members, the squad serves as a motivator for users to write more and better quality reviews.Ensuring that reviews are genuinely usefulWhat draws people to a reviews site is its content.  While in a traditional media platform, the operators can control the content itself, with user-generated content like reviews, the site can only install a system of checks and balances to ensure the reviews are genuinely useful to keep visitors coming.Yelp uses software to analyse the context of a review and assess whether or not it is useful and helpful.  For example, the system would weed out reviews written by a business owner's competitor, or other fake or uninformative reviews.The logic goes like this: if the user uses a real name and photograph, is willing to share more information about themselves and has written many reviews, their reviews are more likely to be real and truthful.A quality review might also go into details such as what would be the best time of day to frequent a business, who you could bring, the best product or service they have experienced and photographs.The software then puts recommended reviews at the top of the business' page and the rest at the bottom.Around a quarter of reviews are not recommended by the site.Convince business owners that negative reviews serve as a wealth of customer feedbackA thorny issue is when companies get negative reviews, particularly in markets where Yelp takes ad placements. What does Yelp do when it faces pressure to hide or remove negative reviews?Warren says the company stands firm on making sure that all reviews, positive or negative, remain visible on the site."We will not take down a review just because someone doesn't like it," she said."A series of negative reviews is free criticism - if it's a pattern, maybe there's something you need to change about the way you do business with your customers."As 79% of the reviews on Yelp are positive, Warren says from the perspective of the user, most of the reviews they usually see on a business' page are positive.