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
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
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.
Your home feed is more dynamic and personalized than ever, featuring a variety of new content types on iOS. The home feed now features: autoplay user videos that unmute and expand to full-screen; user reviews and photos with reviews that surface recent experiences; trending searches to inspire exploration; hot & new and trending businesses to highlight popular spots nearby; videos and collections of businesses featured in Yelp’s top lists, and more. In the coming weeks, we’ll roll out an AI-powered update that better tailors the home feed to your preferences, helping you discover new and relevant businesses.
You’ll also now find trending searches drop down when you begin your search on Yelp’s iOS app. This search enhancement identifies and generates popular user searches in your area, helping you discover even more great local businesses—coming to Android early next year.
To further distinguish contributors who are familiar with specific types of businesses, we’re now showcasing a reviewer’s Recognitions alongside their reviews on business pages. This makes it easy to navigate differing perspectives in reviews and identify reviewers who have experience with businesses in that category. You can also click on the reviewer’s Recognition to explore other businesses they’ve reviewed in the category for additional recommendations.
Initially released for restaurants, food, and nightlife categories earlier this year, Recognitions now highlight even more categories reviewers are passionate about across more than 220 additional home services, beauty, and active life categories. There are now more than 170 Recognitions available when reviewers contribute at least three reviews within a year for businesses within the same select category. In addition to iOS, Recognitions are now available on desktop and coming to Android early next year.
To help you better plan for the bill before you get there, we’re adding eight new business attributes that provide more transparency around a restaurant’s tipping policies, as well as payment policies and available payment methods. New attributes include:
Whether the business has a “no tipping” policy, if tipping is optional, or if gratuity is automatically applied to the bill, for restaurant, food, nightlife, and beauty services businesses.
If tipping is mandatory or optional for large parties for restaurant, food, nightlife, and event services businesses.
If the business has credit card processing fees or minimum card payment amounts.
If the business accepts alternative payment methods, including Zelle, PayPal, Venmo, and Cash App.
You can find these attributes under the “Payments” section within the business’s amenities on their Yelp page. Business owners can add these attributes for free by logging into their Yelp for Business account and editing their “Business Information” section. We’re also surveying consumers about these attributes through the “Update the community” questions on Yelp business pages to source the most updated information about a business.
New updates across business pages make it even easier for you to find what you’re looking for and connect with great local businesses. A new “People also search for” section leverages AI to show relevant search recommendations based on your search intent in select categories, giving you more options to find the right business for your needs—now available on desktop, with iOS coming next month. The new personalized action panel for restaurant, food, and nightlife businesses in the mobile app streamlines your ability to quickly connect with businesses no matter where you scroll on the page—from placing a food order, calling, visiting the website, and more. We expanded our navigation bar feature to all categories on Yelp, letting you jump directly to a business’s amenities, reviews, and more on iOS and Android. Plus, the enhanced business page design on iOS improves readability for frictionless browsing, highlights more relevant information, and simplifies how you find the right business for your needs.
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.
Earlier this year, we introduced Yelp Assistant, a conversational AI feature that intelligently guides you through the process of finding the right service pro to complete your projects. Yelp Assistant now supports requests for texts and calls from service pros after you submit a project on iOS, helping to reduce any friction involved in connecting and coordinating with pros, while masking your phone number for privacy. You can also now find Yelp Assistant through new conversational prompts on search results pages on iOS in addition to the Projects tab across all platforms. We’ll be bringing Yelp Assistant text and calling support and conversational prompts in search to Android and desktop early next year.
After submitting your project, we’re making it easier to update your quote submission with project editing and broadcasting—enabling you to add photos, edit details, and attach additional information to your project at any time to provide a clear and more accurate description of your needs. Once you make changes, we’ll notify all the service professionals that received your initial request so they can update their quotes accordingly. This update is currently available on iOS with desktop and Android coming next year.
To make it even easier to connect with pros, no matter where you’re searching from, our Request a Quote feature is now integrated into Apple Maps. You can effortlessly request quotes from pros across more than 200 home, local, auto, professional, and events categories by clicking the “Quote” button on Apple Maps business pages, which brings you directly into the Request a Quote flow for that business in the iOS Yelp app. For those without the Yelp app installed, the feature directs you to the Request a Quote mobile web experience, ensuring a seamless connection with local pros. This integration brings even more high-intent leads to businesses from people starting their search off Yelp.
Keeping track of leads and managing customer communications can be a challenge for local service pros. To simplify this, in the coming weeks, the business owner inbox will be redesigned to surface brief AI-powered summaries with crucial information about the job, allowing service pros to easily evaluate leads at a glance. By leveraging LLMs, we extract and highlight the most relevant information about a job, such as the location, project specifics, whether it’s a one-time job or regular service, and more.
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.
Testing different ads to determine what resonates best with consumers can be time-consuming and require marketing expertise. To simplify this process, we’re introducing 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. When advertisers select “smart selection” during ad setup, Yelp will select, test, and optimize an ideal review and photo to help maximize the number of users it drives to their Yelp page, increasing their reach, and helping them meet their advertising goals. This free feature is available to all advertisers.
We’re adding new options for competitive insights and support for local businesses with new features designed to simplify their advertising choices. Business owners looking to better understand how their page performance compares to others now have access to more customizable competitive data. The new page views dashboard in their business owner account enables them to compare their page views with up to three competitors of their choice in one view, helping to inform their own growth strategies. For advertisers who see significant fluctuations in their business due to seasonality, we’re introducing new ad budget options that allow them to temporarily reduce their ad spend during seasonal shifts with automatic restarts whenever it’s most convenient for them. Finally, our redesigned Support Center now features refreshed content tailored to businesses’ advertising status, simplifying how they find answers to their questions, underscoring our commitment to supporting business success with helpful resources.
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.