Yelp is planning to bring more than just user-generated reviews to your screen.
This week, the crowd-sourced review forum announced that it will be nationally expanding its LIVES program, which displays health inspection information of various businesses. Launching the program in 2013 for San Francisco-area restaurants, Yelp collaborates with local governments and HDScores, a platform that aggregates health inspection reports nationwide, to display health scores on a 0-100 scale to users.
Since the launch of LIVES, Yelp has inserted health scores to 200,000 business pages. The company said in a blog post that this number will more than triple, as it added data for more restaurants in New York, California, Texas, Illinois and Washington, D.C., today. Yelp plans to continue to roll out updates across various states in the coming months.
It appears consumers have utilized these health inspection scores. According to a study published by the Harvard Business School earlier this year, posting hygiene scores on Yelp has led to a 12 percent decrease in purchase intentions for restaurants with low scores relative to those with higher scores.
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