The popular website and app Yelp has long been used as a source for those interested in checking out new eateries and shops. The company compiles user-submitted reviews and ranks cafes, stores, and other establishments on a five-star scale. And the app is about to become even more useful, as Yelp has announced they would overhaul the app to customize recommendations based on a user’s profile.
As it stands currently, identical searches on Yelp from different users in the same context yield identical results. Most search engines, including Google and Bing, learn about a user’s preferences or allow users to manually set their preferences in order to serve the user results that are personalized to their profiles. Building a profile on their users also allows these search engines to serve more profitable advertising, as personalized ads are more likely to generate engagement.
After an update, Yelp will allow users to set their dietary restrictions, lifestyle preferences, and accessibility options under their profiles, and the app will elevate results for businesses that match their interests. As Yelp relies upon user-generated input for its database of content, businesses will not have to do anything to adapt to the new change. Yelp uses machine learning and AI to extract information from reviews written by users in order to categorize businesses and automatically apply labels, and business owners will have the option of editing these labels. Personalized results will be labelled as such, with a brief explanation as to why that result was chosen for that particular user.
Yelp is fairly late to the game in its adoption of personalized content. The company has provided multiple reasons for why this feature comes so many years after other companies have implemented similar changes. For one, Yelp is reacting to a growing number of users who are interested in changing their diets. Additionally, Yelp is committed to providing quality suggestions to its users, and had to ensure that their machine learning technology was up to their standards before implementing personalized suggestions. Also, Yelp’s implementation varies from other search engines’ efforts, as the company relies only on data that is submitted intentionally by its users, rather than building a profile based on their searches and other activity on the app. Yelp says that this approach results in higher-quality, more “human” results. The company also prioritized certain categories over others; for instance, dietary restrictions are given more weight than indoor or outdoor seating.
In the past, Yelp has expanded from offering just reviews of restaurants to other venues, including entertainment options like bowling alleys, public parks, and movie theaters. While eateries remain the company’s main focus, the introduction of different choices for activities has led to a rebranding effort by the company from providing a dining app to a full lifestyle app. And the introduction of personalized content, which is based on user input rather than profiles constructed by artificial intelligence, differentiates the app from its main competitor, Google, which also provides user-generated reviews for a plethora of locales but tailors results based on the data it gathers from its users’ activity.
As for how the introduction of personalized results affects Yelp’s advertising model, the company has said that initially there will be no effect on the type of ads Yelp users see, but as time goes on the company is likely to serve personalized ads as well as search results.
If you have an iPhone and you’d like to check out the new features, you can do so for free today by downloading the Yelp app and creating an account or signing in. If you have an Android phone, though, you’ll have to wait, as the update will be rolling out to various devices throughout the year.
Tyler Olhorst is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. You can reach him at inquiries@thenationaldigest.com.
