Apple gave Yelp some Siri-ous love in iOS update

Local business reviews are at your beck-and-call on Apple’s iPhone 4S, thanks to deeper ties between mobile virtual assistant Siri and Yelp’s reviews service.

Yelp, one of a group of third-party services to be integrated into the Siri experience at launch, was given a more dominant role on Apple’s best-selling device in the iOS 5.1 update released earlier this month, Yelp said Tuesday.

Now, if you query Siri for recommendations, say a great nail salon or vegan restaurant, it will return Yelp star-ratings next to local restaurants and businesses results that, on click, will open the application and direct you to a Yelp business page. Prior to the update, Siri would pull from Yelp to return local business results but not send you directly through to the application.

The Apple love could prove pretty consequential for Yelp if Siri users start clicking through to mobile business pages. More exposure and distribution from the powerful phone-maker will not only bring in more mobile users, and advertising dollars by association, but also help the newly IPO’d company win favor from Wall Street.

Yelp, which made its public debut on March 2, has already experienced a tumultuous stock market ride. The site was greeted with a warm, day-one welcome but quickly lost its luster and fell from a $26 a share high to a $19.36 low. The company has started to gain back ground and closed Tuesday at $22.90 a share with a $1.37 billion market cap.

Photo credit: Will Hastings/Flickr