For years, existing consumer platforms have tried to keep users in their app by offering more services. After the advent of the AI chatbot, the trend is for people to use the assistant for both queries and actions without leaving the conversation flow. With its latest update, Yelp lets people ask questions, get restaurant reservations, order food delivery, and order service professionals, all through its updated AI assistant.
The company debuted the AI assistant in 2024 to help people search for different services based on their problem. It now uses platform data paired with an AI assistant to let users multitask.
In a demo seen by TechCrunch, the company’s SVP of Product, Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, searched for hiking spots to walk an off-leash dog; looked for pick-up locations along the way, with the option to place an order on Doordash; looked for restaurant recommendations for a weekend schedule with the ability to check availability and book a table; and asked about painting a friend’s new Victorian house without leaving the chat.
“We really want consumers to think of Yelp as a place where they can ask questions and get answers, not just that, but complete the action. It’s Yelp reimagining from a review platform to an answer and action platform,” he told TechCrunch over a call. “Some of the investments we’re making will be along those lines.”
Users can select a specific page for a restaurant or service when they tap on it, or ask more questions about the business. Yelp said that since knowledge is grounded in details about the company on the platform, the company’s website and user reviews, there is little chance of getting wrong answers.
The company is hosting the assistant in a new tab in the app, which is now located in the middle of the bottom navigation bar, so users are likely to visit it more often. The Assistant will be available on iOS and Android at launch and will work with eligible business sites, including restaurants, retail stores and attractions. The company said the desktop version and rollout across all kinds of businesses is planned for later this year.
In addition to retrieving information, Yelp also announced integration with third-party providers to complete an action, such as placing an order or appointment. Users can now order food through DoorDash and Grubhub, book fitness or beauty appointments through Vagaro, a doctor’s appointment through ZocDoc, and a car repair through Repairpal. Additionally, it also offers a Calendly integration for other types of businesses that allow appointment booking.
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Notably, all of these actions will take you to a specific provider’s app or page, meaning this is not “agentic” in nature, where the entire transaction is completed within the chat window. Kuduvalli mentioned that while the redirects are the way Yelp is set up now, it “might not stay that way” in the future.
However, it’s hard to say how agent pipelines might work with other services in cases where the user doesn’t specify whether they want to order food through DoorDash or Grubhub.
In addition to the new AI assistant, Yelp is rolling out a few quality-of-life updates to the app. Last year, it launched the ability for people to scan a menu and see what dishes look like through photos posted by other users. Now users can look at these dishes in the app while scanning a menu.
Additionally, Yelp said users will be able to search the media gallery of a business using natural language queries instead of keywords. In addition, the company will offer an AI-powered tagging and grouping feature for before and after photos to business owners to avoid manual work.