Google Supposedly Buying Yelp for $500 Million [Google Consolidating Their Position in Local Search, With Yelp?]

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Google has recently been in the news about their upcoming Nexus One smartphone and of course their rumored Chrome OS netbook, but it’s a certainty that their major focus is, still to remain a search engine — as it was originally meant to be. With that in mind, it looks like Mountain View has decided to acquire Yelp, a local search engine website which was founded in 2004 and has since grown to be one of the top 100 US Internet websites.

Of course Google have their own Local Search feature which you can use to find restaurants and other such businesses near you. More to it, in case of Android smartphones, this feature is supplemented by the use of GPS or other location data to track what you’re looking for, even better. So why would they be after Yelp?

Yelp, gets over 25 million visitors every month and looks like Google uses their data for their local search results in “those” places where their information is scarce, and not to be forgotten, Yelp ramps up $30 million in annual revenues. They also have the advantage of being the central portal for finding restaurants and other local shop along with having a significant presence in the mobile space in the form of applications for iPhone and other platforms.

Speaking of figures, Google and Yelp are in advanced negotiations for a $500 million acquisition. An acquisition that will significantly help Google in building their own directory of local businesses with its Places pages which can be accessed via Google Maps and the Google Local Search.