• by Laurie Sullivan , Yesterday

Yelp has released an AI-powered support chatbot for advertisers in the Business Owner Account (BOA) section of its website this week. Large language models (LLMs) power the tool, which can understand and answer nuanced questions.

The chatbot does not provide canned responses or wait times for answers, and allows businesses to ask about billing for its account or troubleshooting an error, providing specific answers in real time. If an issue needs a human, the caller is connected to Yelp’s support team.

“This is just the start,” Yelp Vice President of Product Nicole Lund wrote in a post on the company’s website.

Yelp wants to become an integrated tool for advertisers and a destination for site visitors -- not just for the millions of users who contribute and read reviews and book services, but for anyone searching for answers to questions about local businesses. The goal is for companies to use advertising to connect consumers with their businesses.

The company has plans to develop additional AI-driven tools designed to assist businesses nurture leads directly through the platform.

By deepening integrations with third-party systems that businesses use today, Yelp aims to support the entire customer lifecycle, acknowledging that the lead pipeline extends beyond a single platform.

Getting there requires introducing a slew of features and updates. This week the company introduced more than 35 features to offer a new way consumers can use its platform, and business owners reach clients, including Yelp Assistant that integrates with DoorDash, Calendly, Vagaro, Zocdoc, and RepairPal.

Consumers can book haircuts, make doctor appointments, and schedule food deliveries through Yelp. Users could already request quotes from businesses ranging from home and auto repair professionals to beauty experts.

The Yelp Assistant will get its own tab in the app, as the company aims to become a destination not just for its hundreds of millions of user-contributed reviews but for answering questions about local businesses and booking their services.

Yelp partnered with Morning Consult to survey 2,202 U.S. adults on their use of AI-powered search. The research shows that while adoption is high, trust remains low. Consumers aren’t ready to entirely surrender decision-making to AI. They still want to know where the information comes from.

Features like Review Insights use large language models (LLMs) to analyze consumer sentiment experiences and pricing. The feature parses user reviews to surface when specific topics like ambience, food and service, are mentioned to provide sentiment analysis for each topic.

Business owners and consumers can easily identify themes most frequently mentioned and get a quick sense of how people feel about them. They can read relevant reviews from the business page.

The goal is to make it easy for business owners to identify strengths, address concerns, and spot trends without having to read each. It has become a valuable feedback tool that businesses can use to improve offerings based on Yelp users’ reviews.