Online Reviews | featured news

It is something every restaurateur and hotel owner knows: good reviews boost takings while terrible ones can close you down. And, in an age when everyone can be an online critic, ratings have never been more important. But until now no one could be sure just how important the online star ratings system employed by sites such as Toptable and Tripadvisor could be for a business's fortunes.

Consumer review website Yelp Inc's shares traded more than 60 percent above their initial public offering price in their market debut on Friday, as investors rushed to buy a piece of the growing local advertising market... Yelp's shares were trading up 62 percent at $24.60 on Friday morning. At that level, the company is valued at about $1.43 billion -- about 17 times its 2011 revenue.

The search giant agrees to remove a Google Places review that defamed a businessman, 18 months after it was posted.

Small businesses have complained about how Yelp chooses and ranks reviews. Yelp is responding with changes to the site.