Not unique to Yelp and not their invention. The overall industry around utilizing dedicated phone numbers to measure effectiveness of ads goes back a while. This is collectively referred to as “Call Tracking”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call-tracking_software
The term evolved well before the current “tracking” lingo.
The more usual examples included yellow pages ads featuring phone numbers that forwarded to the businesses and allowed publishers to count how many “leads” were sent. Apartment listings magazines used these extensively, car ads, etc. - pretty much anything print or direct response web.
While Yelps use case may raise ire, the base tech and many of the implementations definitely are not intended to device. For a long time, most were toll-free numbers, as local numbers were too expensive, especially before VoIP became ubiquitous.
The term evolved well before the current “tracking” lingo.
The more usual examples included yellow pages ads featuring phone numbers that forwarded to the businesses and allowed publishers to count how many “leads” were sent. Apartment listings magazines used these extensively, car ads, etc. - pretty much anything print or direct response web.
While Yelps use case may raise ire, the base tech and many of the implementations definitely are not intended to device. For a long time, most were toll-free numbers, as local numbers were too expensive, especially before VoIP became ubiquitous.