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What do most people do when they need to find a good restaurant or quickly need a plumber or a locksmith? They do a quick search on Yelp to find a decently rated service that fits their needs. Apart from the usual information, the local search engine just added an extra piece of data that can have a big impact.
In honor of Women's History month, Yelp has partnered with designer Rebecca Minkoff and her Female Founders Collective (FFC) to add a Women-Owned Business attribute to the search results. You can now see if a business is owned by a woman and support it accordingly.
“In working with a major corporation like Yelp, we’re underlining our unified goal to close the economic divide,” Minkoff said in a Yelp blog. “Our partnership aims to reach the most people—whether that be businesses self-categorizing as female-led or consumers searching for female-founded companies.”
Users can find one of 11.6 million women-owned businesses in the US by clicking on 'more features' when searching what features a company offers. Female business owners can add this designation by logging into their Yelp business owner dashboard or they can automatically be added if they join the FFC. Yelp is also offering a decal for woman-owned businesses to put in their locations.
A few thousand businesses were already identified as women-owned including CHLOE, Drybar, Milk Bar, Glossier’s New York flagship store, Baked by Melissa, Coolhaus, Sprinkles Cupcakes and many more according to Yelp.
"We’re excited to help raise the profile of millions of women-owned businesses who drive the local economies of our cities and towns,” Miriam Warren, Yelp’s vice president of engagement, diversity, and belonging told Fortune. “We’re hopeful that this new attribute not only makes it easier to identify and connect with great women-owned businesses on Yelp, but that it also drives more dollars directly to the bottom line for these female-owned businesses.”
Women who want to empower women just received an important tool that allows them to support women where it really matters; with their hard-earned cash, checks, or credit cards.
"It's one thing to say you support women, but it's another to really to do that--to give people an actionable way to frequent and shop and support their local women-owned businesses," Liina Potter, Yelp's public relations manager told Inc.
The 2019 International Women's Day theme is "Balance for Better" to help achieve gender parity. Yelp is taking this very much to heart by helping to empower women by supporting female-owned businesses. Now you can too.
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