Yelp linking to Yahoo!

I hope I am not slow on the uptake spotting this but are yelp and yahoo working together on local search? At the foot of the following las vegas steakhouse review (this is my favorite steakhouse in las vegas by the way): http://www.yelp.com/biz/golden-steer-las-vegas there is a link to Yahoo! local which says:

 

The link is not “no followed” and points to http://local.yahoo.com/NV/Las+Vegas/Food+Dining/Restaurants/Steak+Houses and this yahoo page is currently top ten in Google for a search for “las vegas steak houses” and is actually ahead of Yelp! I can’t see any reason Yelp! would be doing this unless it’s some kind of business relationship.

I looked into a few other verticals and the same thing is happening in Italian restaurants ( http://www.yelp.com/biz/enoteca-san-marco-las-vegas ) and so on:

Looking at the link profile for the yahoo local steakhouse page you see the following results ( https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Flocal.yahoo.com%2FNV%2FLas%2BVegas%2FFood%2BDining%2FRestaurants%2FSteak%2BHouses&bwm=i&bwmo=d ):

All 90 back links come from Yelp. It would be great if Google is ok with this for big companies since that would totally alter my backlinking strategy but I guess that the better user experience would be for Google to contain the links to the main web location for all the las vegas restaurants that yelp or yahoo have on their search results pages (wherever their main web presence is, be that on Yelp! or a standalone website). I’m going to keep an eye on this one.

Comments

[buy propecia]

What legal issues, if any, are there with linking to Yahoo's site?
For example, say I wanted to build a website where I have links along with the topic title for a site like Yahoo! Answers. I wouldn't be hosting any of the actual content, I'd just have links along with the matching titles.

Is this potentially a copyright infringement?

[Brad West]

Hi

I was out looking for some Las Vegas stuff after the Dark hour and all last Saturday and came across your post. Thank you for pointing the Yahoo thing out I must take some time and look into this myself. If you are into back linking give us a chat at somepoint.

Nice site
Brad West ~ onomoney

[Andrew H]

I'm glad you spotted this. These links have been around for at least a year (most likely longer). I remember spotting them just before Christmas and thinking WTF?

I wonder what Yelp are getting in return for these links? Links back? Heavily featured in search monkey? Better rev share on display advertising?