SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The popular review platform Yelp is rolling out artificial intelligence technology to help customers more easily navigate information compiled by fellow users.
While Yelp’s community has always had access to browse through its massive collection of 330 million business reviews, users can often feel overwhelmed by the extensive feedback about restaurants, medical professionals, contractors, home repair services and countless other local businesses — an issue the newly launched chatbot assistant aims to address.
As an example, when someone asks Yelp’s fresh AI assistant about pet-friendly coffee shops, the application will display suggestions along with pertinent user feedback.
“This chatbot can really understand 500 reviews in a second whereas a consumer might say, ‘Well, I read the first five reviews, so I guess that’s good enough,’” said Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, who co-founded the company 22 years ago.
Processing and summarizing large volumes of data into easily understood formats is already being accomplished by other prominent AI systems including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity’s search engine and Google’s artificial intelligence summaries.
Yelp expects its chatbot to differentiate itself by referencing the specific reviews that informed its suggestions and findings. The San Francisco-headquartered business chose to develop an AI assistant that displays supporting evidence after research revealed most people are concerned about technology providing false information or made-up content.
“People want AI chatbots to be transparent about where they are getting the data from, they want to see the reviews alongside the results when they’re doing local search,” said Craig Saldanha, Yelp’s chief product officer. “So we are trying to make sure the human connections stay front and center while AI handles all the drudgery of making those connections.”
Yelp has been seeking momentum during an artificial intelligence surge that has more than doubled the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index’s value while the company’s stock remains approximately at 2022 year-end levels, around the time OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT.
Despite Yelp business evaluations remaining widely used by people seeking dining and shopping advice, the platform hasn’t managed to overcome consumers’ automatic tendency to use Google for nearly all their search needs.
Google had already become the standard for online searches when Stoppelman and Russel Simmons created Yelp in 2004, though its local business information was frequently insufficient or incorrect.
To address this gap, Google entered a two-year licensing deal to access Yelp’s review database. However, the collaboration collapsed when Google started consolidating various information on different subjects — including dining recommendations for specific areas — in ways that reduced users’ incentive to visit other websites.
This trend has damaged Yelp and other free online platforms that generate revenue primarily through advertising; Yelp relies on Google for over 70% of its U.S. website visitors.
The conflict intensified when Yelp charged Google with inappropriately using its business reviews and promoting its own services. These claims contributed to a Federal Trade Commission investigation that concluded with a 2013 agreement requiring only minor adjustments from Google.
However, criticism of Google’s practices continued, leading to a U.S. Justice Department legal action that resulted in a 2024 ruling declaring the search giant an illegal monopoly. A federal judge rejected the government’s breakup proposal last year, instead mandating less severe modifications — a ruling influenced by the growing public reliance on chatbots rather than traditional search engines.
Yelp is currently pursuing its own antitrust case against Google, with proceedings set for May 2028.
As part of efforts to expand and grow its $1.5 billion annual revenue, Yelp is already providing some of its information to OpenAI for possible integration into ChatGPT while wagering that its chatbot’s focus on human connections will attract more users to its platform.
“With this new technology, we really think you are going to be able to find that needle in a haystack and have a far more personalized experience,” Stoppelman said.
