Update 2: Blumenthal points to another response from Yahoo on reddit:

“Thanks for pointing this out! I work for Yahoo, and I’ve reported this to our Yahoo Local team*. They’ll be taking a look at this for sure. Yahoo Local doesn’t use the Yelp API, rather we have a data feed from them that we merge into this feed. They’ll be examining this to see if and what the problem may be. Thanks again for pointing this out to us!

Update: A spokesperson for Yahoo tells us the company is not running any tests that would remove Yelp’s content, and that it’s possible that the listings I tried just didn’t have listings with Yelp reviews (presumably same with Blumenthal’s).

As a matter of fact, Blumenthal noted in the comments of his own post that he is now seeing some Yelp listings. False alarm apparently.

Early last year, Yahoo and Yelp announced a partnership in which Yahoo would begin showing Yelp reviews in its local search results. Some businesses were frustrated with the move claiming Yahoo had trashed “years of positive feedback from customers” in favor of Yelp’s reviews, which have of course been controversial on their own.

That didn’t stop the partnership from carrying on. Yahoo would go on to feature Yelp reviews for all kinds of local search results. While we haven’t yet heard anything about it from the companies, it looks like Yahoo is no longer using Yelp reviews, and is once again using its own local content.

This was pointed out by local search watcher Mike Blumenthal, who wrote in a brief blog post, “It appears that Yahoo is no longer serving up Yelp reviews. Drop maps, change their name and poof. Your old Yahoo reviews are back.”

Yahoo announced the closure of maps.yahoo.com in June, by the way. It noted at the time, “However, in the context of Yahoo search and on several other Yahoo properties including Flickr, we will continue to support maps. We made this decision to better align resources to Yahoo’s priorities as our business has evolved since we first launched Yahoo Maps eight years ago.”

That announcement made no mention of ditching Yelp.

We’ve reached out to Yahoo for content, and will update accordingly.

Images via Yahoo