Portland has been called a lot of things in recent years – America’s most livable city, the third-best city in which to raise kids, the fifth-best city for hipsters, and the country’s foodiest small town.

Now Portland can add “best place to shop local” to its list of distinctions, thanks to Yelp, the online review site.

Yelp conferred the award after analyzing its 75 markets to find the communities with the largest concentration of highly rated, local businesses in 30 categories where shoppers can find holiday gifts.

Portland was the only market that received a perfect score, said Hannah Cheeseman, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based rankings sites.

The news got plenty of applause from locals.

“We’re very excited,” said Debra Tennenbaum, a board member of Portland Buy Local, an 8-year-old nonprofit with 425 members.

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“I think it just shows that people in Portland know that if they don’t support our local businesses, we’ll end up looking like Anytown USA, with no sense of identity.”

The news comes in advance of Small Business Saturday, Nov. 29, a shopping holiday launched in 2010 by American Express to encourage shoppers to support small local businesses, playing off Black Friday and Cyber Monday monikers that the Friday and Monday after Thanksgiving have earned.

In a survey conducted with Nielsen Research, Yelp found that 8 in 10 Americans are likely to shop at local businesses this holiday season.

“More and more people are shifting to mobile to buy or shop online,” Cheeseman said.

“We really want to help people invest money back into their communities and the businesses that make their city so great.”


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