Yelp glitch blocks site for some

U.S. employers may have noticed a slight spike in productivity Wednesday as a computer glitch blocked access to online reviews site Yelp.com.

The outage lasted from around 9 a.m to 11 a.m. Pacific Time, and blocked visitors from some companies, including Bank Of America, Kaiser Permanente, and Visa, according to posters at Yelp’s discussion forums. Access at IDG’s West Coast offices was also blocked.

Yelp is a popular source of user-generated restaurant, entertainment, and business reviews in the Bay Area, and some companies have blocked access to the site to prevent employees from reading and contributing reviews during office hours.

The glitch didn’t shut down the Web site, but many visitors to the site were greeted with a “403” error telling users that they did not have permission to access the server. This type of error is returned by Web servers when someone tries to visit a restricted area of the site.

Yelp wouldn’t explain exactly what went wrong, except to say that it was a glitch caused by an update to the Web site that was pushed out Tuesday night. Most Yelp users had no problem visiting the site Wednesday, said Yelp spokeswoman Stephanie Ichinose. “It was a very narrow isolated incident that’s now been rectified.”

That probably comes as welcome news to some.

Yelpers were at first worried that their companies had moved to block access to the popular service. “Seems like a lot of filters at work added yelp to their list of blocked sites now,” wrote one poster named Euge l. “I’ve heard of a handful of daily day time posters in the west coast have been blocked as well as the east coast. Is this the end of day time yelp?”