If you had the chance to read my entry, “One Year,” you’ll know that I’m, more or less, in the middle of moving from one apartment to the next. This go around, I’ve done my due diligence as best I can. I researched where I’d like to live in the city. I tore through the listings on Craigslist for longer than I’d like to admit, and I’ve visited ones that stuck out to get a feel for the property and the neighborhoods themselves. Finally, I went through the reviews on ApartmentRatings.com and Yelp to see what both former and current tenants have to make a more informed decision. It’s a funny thing to trust someone you’ve never met, and may have absolutely nothing in common with, with a personal decision. But according to a study published by Search Engine Land, approximately 72% of consumers surveyed said they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. 72%.

This summer marked Yelp’s eighth birthday. And in that time, the company has gone from having a handful of employees to over 1,000 of them and has 61M users in 17 different counties. With millions of contributed reviews, it might not be too much of a stretch to say that the site has become one of the most authoritative resources for finding great local businesses, no matter what you’re searching for.

For those of you who own, operate or are running the online marketing efforts for your business, you might want to spend some amount of time getting a little more familiar with Yelp. If you haven’t unlocked your business account, you can do so here. It’s free, and it only takes a couple of minutes. Why? Because it’s free, and it only takes two minutes. Well, that and the fact that in the second quarter of this year, 78M people visited Yelp to find businesses and make purchase decisions. Without an account, you might be missing out on a ton of potential business; especially, if you’re in the food and service industry. That being said, it might be most useful for businesses that serve the general public (B2C), but it sure doesn’t hurt if you’re a B2B and have a page. Once you do set one up, you can insert your business’ information, add photos, use it to create deals for visitors who use Yelp to find you, message customers and view how your page is doing in terms of traffic. Keep in mind that Bing is now using Yelp’s application programming interface (API), most likely as a result of Google’s incorporation of Zagat into its own, and will show content including: snippets, photos, business attributes, etc. in local searches so having a presence on Yelp translates to having one anywhere else the API is used.

Additionally, you’ll be able to respond to reviews that may not be especially favorable, either publicly or privately. Inevitably, everyone eventually gets one so try not to take it too personally. This presents an opportunity to fix things with a dissatisfied customer and improve that review. I’m a stickler when it comes to customer service so seeing a company go out of their way to provide a better experience the second time around, when it’s so much easier to ignore the fact, is huge. If you find yourself getting too hung up over reviews, you may have to delegate the task to someone who can serve as the point of contact and will manage your online reputation. Do not do this. Ultimately, reviews should serve as a feedback mechanism. Positive ones will let you know what you’re doing right, and less than sparkling ones will let you know what you need to work on. If you feel like a review violates Yelp’s terms of service, you have the option of flagging it for evaluation.

You might notice that it might seem as though reviews sometimes disappear. What actually happens is that they sometimes get filtered. Yelp has an automated review filter that prevents people, or businesses, from spamming fake reviews to boost ratings and/or to undermine their competition. The ones that don’t end up making the cut and get filtered typically originate from accounts that don’t have additional reviews published. Jeremy Stoppelman, the CEO of Yelp, writes, “If they [slanted reviews] were allowed to occur, they would erode trust…which would reduce the usefulness of the site for both consumers and the good businesses that rely on the positive word-of-mouth they’ve earned.” Without authentic, trustworthy reviews to depend on, Yelp is little better than the phonebook. If you’re a Yelp user who isn’t very active, give back to the community by submitting reviews when you can. That’s something on my list of things to do.

Once you have your page set up and ready to go, focus on providing great customer service. If you consistently put your best foot forward, your customers are bound to notice. And hopefully, the positive reviews you earn in the process will help you attract new customers because those who discover your business online are much more likely to share their experience with others online.