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Yelp releases new AI-powered discovery and connection features

Yelp’s end-of-year release rolls out new AI-powered Review Insights, enhancements to business discovery, and updates for more seamless connections with service pros, plus AI-enhanced ad optimization for business owners



In this end-of-year release we’re introducing:

  • Review Insights that leverage LLMs to surface reviewers’ sentiment on common aspects of a business, offering a shortcut to the information in reviews you care about most.
  • Enhanced business discovery with more personalized content on the home feed and trending searches, as well as refreshed business pages that now surface reviewers’ Recognitions alongside their reviews, display the business’s tipping policies, provide easier ways to quickly connect with businesses, and more.
  • More functionality and availability for Yelp Assistant, our AI chatbot that connects you with pros, along with easy project editing and broadcasting to streamline communication with pros.
  • Request a Quote in Apple Maps, enabling seamless connections with local pros no matter where you’re searching from.
  • AI-powered smart selection for advertisers, which automatically optimizes and strengthens ad performance, and a refreshed AI-enhanced business owner inbox to help service pros better manage their leads.

This year, Yelp celebrated 20 years! From our first review to hundreds of millions of contributions, we’ve grown with our community, always keeping the same mission in mind: helping you connect with great local businesses, whether it’s discovering your new favorite restaurant or finding a service pro who can quickly handle an emergency fix in your home.

Today, we’re excited to unveil our end-of-year product release, featuring more than 20 new features and updates designed to enhance the Yelp experience for both consumers and business owners. This release includes new AI-powered Review Insights to help you seamlessly find the right business for your needs, a more personalized home feed to help you discover new local gems, more information on a business’s tipping policies so you know what to expect before you get there, enhancements to Yelp Assistant to simplify how you find the right service pro for your project, and more. For business owners, we’re excited to introduce AI-powered features that automatically optimize ads and simplify lead management—helping them attract more high-intent customers and streamline their operations.

Introducing AI-powered Review Insights: Your shortcut to the information you care about most

New Review Insights use large language models (LLMs) to analyze and summarize reviewer sentiment on various aspects of a business, such as food quality, service, and ambiance. Insights are displayed above a business’s reviews as aggregated sentiment scores for each topic—positive, neutral, and critical—ranging from 1 to 100. Users can also explore related reviews for each topic. Review Insights are available on iOS for restaurant, food, and nightlife businesses.

When searching for a local restaurant, you might have a specific aspect in mind that matters most to you—be it the vibe of the space, how long it takes to get a table, or the quality of the food. While Yelp is known for aggregating consumer reviews of local businesses into a single business rating, we know finding detailed information about your specific interests can be time-consuming. To streamline this process, we’re introducing Review Insights, which leverage large language models (LLMs) to discern reviewer sentiment for common aspects of a business, such as the quality of its food, service, ambiance, wait time, and drinks. Even when a review doesn’t explicitly mention one of the topics, the LLM understands the context in the review to identify and surface the relevant topic and sentiment.

Review insights are surfaced as aggregated sentiment scores—positive, neutral, and critical—ranging from 1 to 100 for each topic, conveniently displayed above reviews on business pages. By tapping on these scores, you can delve into all the reviews related to a specific topic you care about, gaining a clearer picture of the firsthand experiences. Currently available on iOS for restaurant, food, and nightlife businesses, we plan to expand Review Insights to services categories next year.

AI-enhanced business discovery with more contextual information

We’re introducing improved ways to discover, learn about, and connect with local businesses with new features across the home feed and business pages on Yelp. More personalized content on the home feed and trending searches make discovery easier. Plus, we’re continuing to test AI-stitched videos, which use real photos, videos, and information from Yelp, to create unique and engaging videos about local restaurants, showcasing what it’s like to visit the business, its most popular dishes, and more. Business pages will also now surface reviewers’ Recognitions alongside their reviews, display information on the business’s tipping policies, and provide quicker ways to connect with businesses.

Discover and connect with local businesses effortlessly with Yelp’s new features: personalized home feed with more relevant content, Recognitions appearing alongside user profiles, new tipping attributes, and a redesigned business pages showcasing popular searches.

Yelp Assistant updates and AI-integrated lead management refine the services experience

We’re leveraging AI to enhance the services experience and simplify connections between you and service pros. Yelp Assistant now offers even more functionality and availability—enabling quote requests via texts and calls after you submit a project, introducing new conversational prompts in search, and expanding platform availability. Additionally, new updates to the project submission experience make it easy to edit and auto-relay revised project details with multiple services pros at once for the most accurate quotes. Plus, a new integration in Apple Maps helps you conveniently connect with pros and request a quote no matter where you’re searching from. For business owners, a redesigned inbox with AI-enhanced job summaries surfaces the most relevant information.

New Yelp Assistant updates and AI-integrated lead management are refining the services experience. This photo features new ways to access Yelp Assistant directly from search results, easily update project details, request quotes via Apple Maps, as well as a redesigned inbox for business owners to help streamline their communications with leads.
Seamlessly connect with service pros to complete your projects with new enhancements to Yelp Assistant and easy project editing and broadcasting, request quotes via Apple Maps, and business owners can benefit from a redesigned inbox that leverages AI to surface the most important information in leads.

Harnessing AI to make ad set-up and optimization easier than ever

We’re enhancing our product suite for businesses with new features designed to empower local business owners by simplifying ad setup and strengthening ad performance from day one. From AI-enhanced ad optimization to customizable competitive analytics and more options for support, we are committed to providing tools that help business owners achieve their advertising goals with ease.

Yelp is harnessing AI to make ad set-up and optimization easier than ever. This photo features smart selection, an AI-powered feature for advertisers that automatically tests the best reviews and photos to showcase, optimizing their ad for the highest return on ad spend. It also shows new competitor measurement tools on the Yelp for Business homepage allow business owners to compare their Yelp page performance with up to three competitors of their choice, helping better inform their growth strategies.
Advertisers can maximize their impact with the new AI-powered smart selection, which automatically recommends optimal photos and review text for Yelp ads, while business owners gain new insights by comparing their page visits against competitors of their choice.

For two decades, Yelp has consistently elevated how you discover your next favorite spot or new go-to pro, building a vibrant community of locals supporting locals. From business summaries to Yelp Assistant, and now Review Insights, this year, we’ve introduced over 80 new features and harnessed the power of AI to transform the way you discover and connect with local businesses and service pros. Despite how far we’ve come, each exciting new innovation makes us feel like we’re just getting started and we can’t wait to show you what next year will bring.