Apple Maps and Yelp team up for service requests
Matt V
December 11, 2024
AI TECH
Yelp has rolled out updates to make it easier for users to explore reviews and connect with businesses.
The changes include AI-powered review insights, personalised features, and improved tools for businesses.
Yelp’s AI-Powered Review Insights now breaks down reviews into categories like food quality, service, and ambience, each with a sentiment score from 1 to 100.
These insights, available on iOS for restaurants, food, and nightlife businesses, help users quickly find what matters.
Tapping on a category shows summarised reviews for that topic.
Craig Saldanha, Yelp’s Chief Product Officer, explained how LLMs analyse reviews.
For example, a comment like "drinks came out quickly" is tagged under "service," even if the word "service" isn’t mentioned.
This approach uses Yelp’s huge review database to give users personalised and precise insights.
The app’s personalised home feed now includes autoplay videos, trending searches, and popular local businesses.
Users can also see badges and recognitions, such as achievements or tipping details, alongside reviews.
Here’s what you should know:
Sentiment scores and summaries make it easier to evaluate businesses.
Features like masked phone numbers and quote requests improve how users interact with businesses.
AI unlocks valuable insights from Yelp’s massive review collection.
Badges are the new flex
For businesses, Yelp has added integration with Apple Maps so users can request quotes directly from service providers.
Redesigned inboxes with AI-powered job summaries help businesses manage projects more easily.
Users can also update project details and notify providers, ensuring quotes are accurate.
Yelp also improves privacy by masking user phone numbers when service providers call.
Craig Saldanha said Yelp’s strength is its vast collection of reviews, which AI now makes more useful.
These features also extend to Yelp’s Fusion API, providing businesses with powerful data tools.
Google remains a competitor, using similar AI features for review summaries on Google Maps.
However, Yelp’s deep review database and personalised insights set it apart.
LLMs reading between the lines so we don’t have to.