Yelp is out with some major updates today including AI-powered review highlights and search suggestions to make it easier to find what you’re looking for, a $2,500 guarantee for services purchases through the platform, a new “Surprise Me” option for finding a restaurant, videos in reviews, new review reactions, and more.
Yelp announced all the upgrades in a blog post and a promo video. Here are the major new features and changes:
- Yelp’s enhanced search experience leverages AI and LLMs to surface smarter suggestions and insights when a user knows what they’re looking for:
- Review highlights: Leveraging LLMs for specific keyword searches, Yelp will now better understand the nuance of what consumers are looking for, and highlight relevant snippets from reviews under each business listing in search results.
- AI-powered search suggestions: Yelp will now use AI to provide business suggestions in search that are not bound by the user’s current location.
- When a user comes to Yelp without a specific search in mind, we’re introducing new features that will help them find the right business.
- Surprise Me: For consumers who have a tough time deciding where to eat, Yelp’s new Surprise Me feature generates restaurant recommendations as users scroll through the Yelp home feed and search results.
- Clickable Category Tags: Users can find this feature on business listings for restaurants, food and nightlife searches, helping undecided users better refine their general searches (such as for “restaurants” or “dinner”) with category-specific searches.
Yelp has also brought a number of changes to the review experience:
- Video in reviews: Reviewers can now post high resolution video up to 12 seconds in length alongside their text review and photos.
- Review topics: Users will find new interactive topics — “food,” “service” and “ambiance” — at the top of their review drafts that turn green when each topic is addressed in their review. These topics not only help alleviate writer’s block, but also help contributors write more helpful reviews.
- New expressive review reactions: To enhance the way people engage with and show appreciation for one another’s reviews, Yelp is introducing new review reactions: “Helpful,” “Thanks,” “Love this” and “Oh no.
More changes include:
- Video coming to Connect
- New navigation and photo experience on business pages makes it easier to find what you’re looking for
- Surfacing more helpful information on the visual home feed
- Passwordless login
Yelp closes by saying:
In the coming months, we will continue to build upon these new features, expand them to even more users and further leverage advanced technology, such as AI and LLMs, to enhance our platform. We look forward to sharing more on what’s to come soon.
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