Yelp is releasing several new features as part of its year-end release, including AI-powered review insights, a personalized home feed with new content types, and a redesigned inbox for business owners .
In terms of features for users, the company is currently highlighting reviews in different categories such as food quality, service, and ambience. Each of these categories has a sentiment score from 1 to 100, which can be positive, neutral, or critical. Tapping on any of these categories in the list will highlight related reviews on the app. Yelp is now adding AI-powered insights for restaurant, food, and nightlife businesses on iOS.
Image credit: Yelp Image credit: Yelp
Yelp already has AI-powered business summaries at the top of its list. The company now leverages a large amount of usage data on reviews to highlight various aspects of its business.
In conjunction with the announcement, Yelp's Craig Saldanha emphasized that large-scale language models attempt to categorize and analyze the sentiment of reviews, even when themes are not explicitly mentioned in the review text. did.
“These LLMs allow you to identify and categorize themes within a review, even if they are not explicitly mentioned in the review body. For example, a review that says, 'Drinks came quickly,' might not be associated with 'Service. “It is classified as a 'service' even if the word '' is not used,” he told TechCrunch via email.
Earlier this year, the company launched a new visual feed. More content formats are now being added to your feed, including autoplay user videos, user reviews, trending searches, and popular businesses around you.
Image credit: Yelp
Apps now display ratings (labels users receive when they complete certain achievements) along with reviews. The listing service has also added new badges related to tips, so users can understand how tips work at that particular location.
Yelp has launched an AI-powered assistant to better connect businesses with movers, house cleaners, contractors, and more. Now, the company can include the option for a service professional to contact you by text or phone. To protect your privacy, Yelp masks your phone number when a professional requests a project.
The company is also adding the ability to broadcast your project to the service providers you've already contacted when editing your details. This allows companies to submit new estimates for projects based on new details.
On the business side, Yelp integrates with Apple Maps and displays a button for users to request a quote for services. The company is also revamping its corporate inbox, with redesigned job cards and AI-powered summaries that highlight job openings.
Image credit: Yelp
Using existing data to uncover different types of information was a real theme for Yelp this year. The company has also brought some of these features to the Yelp Fusion API.
“The real differentiator for Yelp is the hundreds of millions of reviews we have. LLM essentially allows us to parse all of that data in a way and at a speed never before possible. “Now we can present information to consumers in a way that feels accurate and personal, helping them find the needle in the haystack,” said Craig, the company's chief product officer. Saldanha said in an interview with TechCrunch earlier this year.
Yelp's rival Google also uses existing review data to provide AI-powered overviews of locations on Google Maps.