Yelp’s stock tanks after Facebook’s graph search debut — January 15, 2013

Yelp’s stock price has dropped an alarming 8 percent following the announcement of Facebook’s “graph search,” which could help users connect more easily with businesses your friends like.

Facebook’s graph search is aimed to helping you find things easier and make new connections. One such thing could be with restaurants, with queries such as “New York City restaurants my friends like” or “Restaurants my friends have visited.” If graph search works well, that could give people less incentive to use Yelp to find new places to eat.

Yelp opened trading today at $21.97, but as of this writing the stock price is sitting at $20.10, a drop of 8.5 percent.

Check out Yelp’s intra-day performance in the chart below.