YELP IS INTRODUCING MORE THAN 20 NEW UPDATES THAT ENHANCE THE YELP EXPERIENCE FOR OUR COMMUNITY OF CONSUMERS AND BUSINESS OWNERS, INCLUDING:
- AI-powered business summaries that make it even easier to find a business that fits your needs with a quick glance.
- Recognitions that celebrate and distinguish reviewers who are passionate about a specific food, cuisine or nightlife category.
- A new visual home feed and search experience enhance discovery, helping you quickly and easily find your new favorite restaurant.
- New updates to the services experience, such as enhancements to Request a Quote and new ‘Projects’ features, make it easier to find the right service professional for your needs, as well as quickly and efficiently get your projects done.
- A revamped business owner experience that delivers valuable market and competitive insights, while AI-powered smart budgets provide useful recommendations to optimize ad spend, helping local businesses grow and better compete in their markets.
Reflecting back on 2023, we released more than 35 new features that bring more value to all of our users – from leveraging large language models (LLMs) and other updates that ease decision making, to new features that help you hire a service pro with confidence, enhancements to the reviewing experience, and more. Meanwhile, for business owners we leveraged AI to make setting up their ads easier and more cost effective. And, for restaurant owners, we integrated with third parties to give our Yelp Guest Manager clients access to the largest restaurant consumer network in the U.S. Now, as we kick off the new year, we’re excited to share our new Winter Release full of features that make life even easier.
Today, we’re announcing more than 20 new features and updates across the Yelp platform that make it more seamless and engaging for users to discover and connect with great local businesses in their community. New AI-powered business summaries surface short, unique insights that detail what you can expect at a business; and fun, new Recognitions celebrate your helpful reviews. You’ll also find a more visual and engaging home feed and search experience that brings local businesses to life, new features that make it easier than ever to connect and coordinate with service professionals that meet your exact needs, and more. For business owners, we’re introducing new updates that help them operate more efficiently, better compete in their local markets, and grow their business.
Easing decision making with AI-powered business summaries that surface unique insights
For years, we’ve leveraged AI to help reduce consumers’ decision paralysis — from spotlighting the most popular dishes and drinks, to using LLMs to power review highlights for more nuanced searches.
Now, new AI-powered business summaries leverage LLMs to parse recent reviews and describe what you can expect at the business, helping you quickly find a business that fits your needs at a glance. At the top of restaurant, food and nightlife business pages, these unique summaries highlight what the business is best known for based on first-hand reviews from users — such as the atmosphere, service, amenities, value, or a popular dish. AI-powered business summaries are available on iOS and will roll out to Android and desktop later this year.
Celebrating and supporting contributors with an enhanced review experience
You deserve to be celebrated for taking the time to write reviews that help others in your community make informed spending decisions, which is why we’re rolling out new features that spotlight regular contributors, as well as expanding our interactive review topics to make it even easier to write rich and detailed reviews.
Revamping the discovery experience to make it more visual than ever before
We know that the hundreds of millions of photos and videos on Yelp play an important role in helping you decide what business is right for you. Visual elements provide important insights on a business’s ambiance, services offered, or the food quality, which is why we’re rolling out new features and updates that spotlight high-quality visual content, to help you quickly and easily find great local businesses.
Streamlining the services experience and connecting people with pros faster
When you’re looking to start a new home project or find a helpful local service, it can sometimes be hard to know where to start, which is why we’ve been focused on making it easier and more seamless to confidently find the right pro for the job. Today’s updates further alleviate this process with a more streamlined Request a Quote experience; new ‘Projects’ features that help you quickly and conveniently coordinate with pros; and the expansion of Yelp Guaranteed, which gives you confidence that the job will be done right. With millions of projects started on Yelp every year, these features, and more, are also helping business owners close leads faster and better reach consumers looking to hire pros.
Enhancing the Business Owner Experience with AI and data-driven Insights
In a highly competitive market, local businesses are constantly seeking new ways to stand out. Our latest product enhancements provide even more valuable insights to businesses on Yelp, equipping business owners with comprehensive competitive performance data and smarter ad budget recommendations, helping them make strategic, informed decisions to reach relevant consumers and grow their business.
To seamlessly access all these new features and more, we’re also rolling out an easy one-time login experience that allows you to simply enter a pin to access your account, including your ‘Projects’ messages.
This year, as Yelp celebrates two decades of connecting you with great local businesses, we’re committed to building new features across the platform to better inform your spending decisions, as well as deliver more value to local businesses. We’re continuing to double down on new product updates that harness our rich, trusted content to elevate moments of discovery and inspire even more meaningful connections. With recent advancements in AI, you can expect to see us further leverage LLMs to ease the discovery experience, facilitate more seamless connections with service providers and help local businesses succeed. We can’t wait to share more on what we’ve been building.