Simon Willison’s Weblog

Why doesn’t Yelp require a login? Is there evidence that suggests that acquiring users at the engagement stage versus initial landing is effective in specific markets?

29th October 2013

My answer to Why doesn’t Yelp require a login? Is there evidence that suggests that acquiring users at the engagement stage versus initial landing is effective in specific markets? on Quora

Unnecessarily requiring a login to browse is (in my opinion) dumb. It discourages people from sharing links to content on the surface and can prevent search engines from indexing content, both of which are terrible for SEO. It also puts a pointless barrier in front of people who are trying to figure out if your service is any use, and encourages fake signups which pointlessly pollute your user database.