This results from a kerfuffle between Yelp and Google over the usage of reviews and other data from Yelp by Google within its Google Places listing. There’s a long history between the two companies of one using the other’s content, that one stopping using that content, one trying to purchase the other, and the other walking away from purchase negotiations.

Yelp’s current stance seems to be that they want to be paid if Google uses their content. Google isn’t all that interesting in paying.

Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman has stated that they’re fine with being excluded from Google Places. I suspect they see most of their traffic coming from their smart-phone apps, which include the powerful, useful, and very cool Yelp Monocle.

If Google limits them to the increasingly-irrelevant-for-local-queries organic results, then that works for them.

For several years now, the recipe for business success online has been to worship at the Google altar. Now yet another major playing in local marketing has pushed Google away.