I’m headed to San Fran and wine country for a few days to celebrate my anniversary of 5 years this week.  Our project manager Janna suggested a great little italian restaraunt to check out, but when we called they will be closed for 2 weeks when we are there. Even though we were totally bummed, you have to respect their dedication to life balance and the fact they are so successful, they can close the doors for two weeks and be fine with it.

So off I went to find another place to eat on Saturday night.  I started with Google maps looking into locations close to our hotel.  Nothing really jumped out at me so I decided to give Yelp a try.  It was both easy and fun to get a ton of information on possible choices and also involve the wife on the decisions.  Here are the things I really liked about using Yelp:

• On the San Francisco restaurants page you can widdle down choices by cuisine
• Integrated maps make it easy to make wise decisions based on location
• Plenty of feedback, Scala’s Bistro has 127 reviews with varying opinions so I can filter what matters to me.  There are also 13 photos that Yelp users have uploaded to give great visuals.
• "Send to a friend" allows me to send my top choices to the wife, the master of approval.
  

 
These are just a few of the main reasons why Yelp is a big help.  I would suggest giving it a try if you haven’t, especially for larger cities and dining or hotel choices.  I know I will be contributing my thoughts on where we dine upon our return.  A SF establishment should be so lucky to get my critique.

Posted on August 20th, 2007 by Aaron
Filed under: resources, small business, search, local search

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