Consumers can now hire home service
professionals with more confidence than ever with Yelp Guaranteed;
contribute helpful and engaging reviews with video and new
reactions; easily find the right business for their needs using
AI-powered search features; and more
Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP), the company that connects people with
great local businesses, today announced a series of new features
that make it even easier for consumers to discover businesses that
fit their needs and contribute helpful content on Yelp. The company
is introducing Yelp Guaranteed, a new satisfaction guarantee
program that gives people peace of mind when hiring eligible home
service businesses; an enhanced search experience powered by
Artificial Intelligence (AI) to surface helpful insights on local
businesses; new features that encourage richer and more detailed
reviews; as well as an improved user experience across the platform
that allows consumers to seamlessly find the right business for
their needs.
This press release features multimedia. View
the full release here:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230425005487/en/
Yelp has released more than a dozen new
features to enhance the consumer experience in the company’s most
significant update in recent years. (Graphic: Business Wire)
“At Yelp, we’re always innovating on ways for consumers and
businesses to connect in more seamless and meaningful ways,” said
Craig Saldanha, chief product officer at Yelp. “Millions of people
rely on Yelp to make important spending decisions with local
businesses, and their trust is at the center of everything we do.
With the new updates we're announcing today, we want to help
consumers more easily discover businesses that meet their needs in
a way that is both precise and personal, as well as give our users
more engaging ways to share their experiences with the
community.”
Yelp Guaranteed Provides Peace of Mind When Hiring Home
Service Professionals
Over the last several years since the introduction of Request a
Quote, Yelp focused on differentiating the product experience in
services categories for both sides of the marketplace — to help
consumers easily hire service pros, and better match services
businesses with relevant customer leads. As part of this evolution,
Yelp is rolling out Yelp Guaranteed, a new satisfaction guarantee
program that allows Request a Quote users to receive up to $2,500
back in the event something goes wrong with a project from an
eligible business. Building on the growth of Request a Quote and
Request a Call, as well as the recently launched ‘Projects’ tab,
Yelp Guaranteed provides consumers with added confidence and peace
of mind when hiring home service professionals.
At launch, Yelp Guaranteed will be available on iOS to consumers
in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Seattle and Washington
D.C., among some of Yelp’s most popular home services — such as
movers, plumbers, contractors, home cleaners, landscapers and more.
This summer, the company plans to expand the availability of Yelp
Guaranteed nationwide, and roll it out on Android and desktop.
Enhancing the Search Experience on Yelp Leveraging LLMs and
AI
Yelp has rolled out new search features across all platforms
that use AI and large language models (LLMs) to surface smarter
suggestions and insights based on the user’s search intent.
- Review highlights in search results: 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: To streamline the
discovery experience for consumers who already have a specific
business in mind, Yelp is now using AI to suggest businesses
consumers may be interested in across the U.S. — not bound by the
user's current location.
“People often come to Yelp with high intent — LLMs provide Yelp
with the speed and scale to quickly parse vast amounts of review
data, so we can succinctly summarize insights in a meaningful way.
We envision this technology will further help both consumers with
complex and nuanced needs, as well as those with broad, open-ended
searches by leveraging the more than 265 million high-quality
consumer reviews on Yelp’s platform,” said Saldanha.
To support users without a specific search in mind, Yelp is also
introducing new search features that will help them narrow down
their search and discover new restaurants to try.
- Surprise Me: For consumers who have a tough time
deciding where to eat, Yelp’s new Surprise Me feature generates
restaurant recommendations, which users can find from the Yelp home
feed and search results page. Surprise Me is currently featured on
iOS, and will be available on Android in the coming months.
- Clickable Category Tags: Users can find this feature on
business listings for restaurants, food and nightlife searches,
helping undecided consumers better refine their general searches
(such as for “restaurants” or “dinner”) with category-specific
searches. New clickable category tags can be found on iOS, with
Android coming soon.
Revamping the Review Experience with New Ways to
Contribute
In 2022, Yelp saw an increase in review contributions by
reducing review writing friction, with approximately 21 million new
reviews contributed throughout the year. To better inform
consumers’ spending decisions and expand upon the platform’s
trusted content on local businesses, Yelp is releasing more visual
and interactive ways for consumers to contribute.
- Videos in reviews: To share their experiences in more
visual and engaging ways, reviewers will be able to upload high
resolution, short-form videos on iOS alongside their text review
and photos. For example, a tableside preparation or the unique vibe
of the restaurant. Yelp plans to roll out video in reviews to
Android soon.
- Review topics: Users will find new interactive topics —
“food,” “service” and “ambiance” — at the top of their review
drafts that turn green with a checkmark 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. Review topics are live on iOS and Android, and the company
plans to roll it out on desktop this summer.
- 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.” New reactions are live on iOS and desktop,
and coming to Android devices this summer.
Creating a More Visual and Seamless Yelp Experience
Yelp has rolled out new features that better surface the
company’s rich, visual content and make it easier to access
reliable and useful information on local businesses. This includes
the ability for business owners using Yelp Connect to upload videos
to their posts, a refreshed home feed with more helpful information
about local businesses, a new navigation and photo experience on
business pages, passwordless login and more. All of these new user
experience features are now available on iOS, with many available
on Android and desktop.
Additional Information and Assets
Learn more about the series of new updates Yelp announced in a
blog post and a video overview from Saldanha. Assets and images can
be found here. For more information about Yelp, visit Yelp’s Fast
Facts page.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements relating
to, among other things, Yelp’s future product plans, including the
ability of its investments and initiatives to drive profitable
long-term growth and shareholder value, that are based on its
current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve risks
and uncertainties.
Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences also
include, but are not limited to, those factors that could affect
Yelp’s business, operating results and stock price included under
the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and
Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in
Yelp’s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K or Quarterly Report
on Form 10-Q at yelp-ir.com or the SEC’s website at sec.gov.
About Yelp Inc.
Yelp Inc. (yelp.com) is a community-driven platform that
connects people with great local businesses. Millions of people
rely on Yelp for useful and trusted local business information,
reviews and photos to help inform their spending decisions. As a
one-stop local platform, Yelp helps consumers easily discover,
connect and transact with businesses across a broad range of
categories by making it easy to request a quote for a service, book
a table at a restaurant, and more. Yelp was founded in San
Francisco in 2004.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230425005487/en/
Press Contact Yelp Inc. Julianne Rowe press@yelp.com
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