Yelp’s AI assistant can now answer questions about local businesses 

Yelp
users looking to learn more about restaurants, businesses, and other
locations on the platform can now get information from an AI-powered Yelp Assistant. 

When
logged-in users on Yelp’s iOS and Android apps visit particular
business pages, they can now ask specific questions ranging from where
to park to whether a restaurant offers vegan options. The answers are
generated based on facts from reviews posted on Yelp, information
provided to the platform by businesses, and businesses’ own websites,
with relevant sections and even photos from Yelp reviews highlighted in
the AI response.  
 
The assistant also provides a list of
suggested questions to ask about a particular business. In addition, a
new AI-powered feature called Popular Offerings separately highlights
goods and services frequently mentioned and photographed in a business’s
Yelp reviews. 

In a demonstration for Fast Company,
Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, Yelp senior vice president of product,
highlighted how the Yelp Assistant could answer questions about a
restaurant’s cuisine, parking, dog-friendly seating, and even the best
times to avoid a long wait. The AI surfaced information from reviews and
even user-submitted photos of canine-compatible outdoor tables. 

“This isn’t an AI that’s hallucinating,” says Kuduvalli Ramesh. “This is an AI that is providing me answers, evidence first.”  

Tapping into a rich vein of content

The expansion of the Yelp Assistant, which launched last year with a focus on helping consumers find services from home repair to haircuts, comes as other tech companies from longtime rival Google
to startups like Perplexity promote AI options for finding and booking
tables at local restaurants, which has long been a key part of Yelp’s
mission. But Yelp cofounder and CEO Jeremy Stoppelman says the company’s
wealth of business data, long trusted by consumers and partner services
like Apple Maps, enables it to deliver reliable answers in an age of
hallucinating AI. 

“We’re now at the point where you will be able
to ask detailed questions about nearly every business on Yelp,” he says.
“And it’s able to tap into the rich content, the reviews, and all of
the survey information—everything that we’ve been able to gather about
that business.” 

Stoppelman
anticipates the Yelp Assistant will continue to grow more powerful,
able to offer more detailed, personalized recommendations across
businesses and categories. Already, thanks to Yelp’s AI advances, users
can also now type or speak more involved natural language queries into
Yelp’s search interface, with the AI able to parse requests like “need
help fixing a leaking faucet” or “dog-friendly brunch spot that’s good
for groups” instead of simply matching on keywords.  

“We would like people to basically query Yelp as though they’re talking to it,” says Kuduvalli Ramesh. 

And
when Yelp users visit a particular restaurant, they can also now use
the service to quickly find information about particular dishes by using
the Yelp app to scan the menu with a new feature called Menu Vision. It
can offer quick links to reviews and photos of Yelp-reviewed dishes,
and the company plans to continue to expand the feature to include more
options and information over time. 

Growing competition

Yelp’s
push into AI is far from the first time the company has incorporated
new technology to meet new consumer tastes. In the heyday of Foursquare,
Yelp added location check-in features. And as TikTok and other video platforms became increasingly important tools for restaurant discovery, Yelp enabled users to post short-form videos alongside text reviews and photos.  

The company, which for its most recent quarter reported $44 million net income on a record net revenue of $370 million, has also expanded into home services
in recent years, taking on rivals like Angi and Thumbtack with its
increasingly sophisticated tools to request quotes and communicate with
home professionals. And in November 2024, Yelp also acquired RepairPal,
which connects users with auto repair shops, and has been integrating
its offerings into the core Yelp product.  

Yelp’s AI also now offers guidance to service professionals on responding to customer requests—and awards visible badges
to those with a pattern of helpful responses. A pair of paid AI phone
tools, called Yelp Host and Yelp Receptionist, are now also rolling out
to restaurants and other businesses, respectively, to field calls from
customers. Yelp Host is able to book and modify reservations, including
fielding special requests, while Yelp Receptionist can capture contact
info and full call transcripts, then summarize the relevant information
needed to get back to a potential customer.  

“By the time the
local business gets a lead, it’s a fully vetted lead, and it’s got an AI
summary,” says Craig Saldanha, Yelp’s chief product officer. “They can
listen to the transcript, but they can also read the summary in 30
seconds and essentially call you back with all of the information.” 

Yelp
Host and Receptionist are designed to let busy restaurants and
businesses actually process phone calls, rather than simply amassing
voicemails, while they’re closed for the day or assisting other
customers. And those services, too, are enabled by the detailed
information Yelp has amassed over more than two decades about specific
businesses and different types of local merchants, Stoppelman says.  

“It
is grounded in the same underlying infrastructure,” he says. “And so,
when you do sign up, we have a very good understanding of businesses,
both in that category and then your business specifically.”