Yelp is betting that artificial intelligence can rescue its stalled growth. The review platform has rolled out a revamped AI chatbot designed to sift through its reservoir of 330 million reviews and surface local recommendations — then let users book services without leaving the app.

How It Works

Ask the new assistant for a good place to get coffee with a dog, and it will show recommendations alongside relevant reviews that back up its picks. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, who co-founded the company 22 years ago, said the 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.'”

Unlike general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews, Yelp’s chatbot points to the underlying reviews that inform its answers — a transparency play designed to address consumer concerns about AI fabrications. “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.”

Booking Integration

Yelp also announced integrations with third-party platforms that let users make reservations or book services directly within the AI assistant. Customers can place food orders on DoorDash and Grubhub, book beauty appointments through Vagaro, schedule doctor visits through Zocdoc, and arrange car repairs through RepairPal — all without switching apps. The move puts Yelp in more direct competition with the so-called “everything app” ambitions of companies like Uber, which recently added hotel bookings, and DoorDash, which has moved into restaurant reservations.

The Stakes for Yelp

The overhaul comes at a critical moment. While the AI boom has more than doubled the Nasdaq composite since ChatGPT’s release, Yelp’s stock price has barely budged from its end-of-2022 levels. The company remains dependent on Google for more than 70% of its U.S. web traffic, even as Google’s AI-powered summaries give users less reason to click through to external sites — a pattern that has been at the center of multiple antitrust complaints over the years.

For New York’s dense ecosystem of restaurants, salons, and service businesses that depend on Yelp visibility, the chatbot’s success or failure could reshape how customers find them. If the AI assistant can keep users inside the Yelp ecosystem longer — reading, booking, and transacting — it could finally give the company the growth story its shareholders have been waiting for. Business of New York will track the rollout.

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