What’s new with Yelp for Business | August 2023

Check out the latest launches and enhancements for Yelp for Business—from Yelp Guaranteed to an integration that gives restaurants access to the largest restaurant consumer network in the U.S.**

Yelp Guaranteed
Upload videos to Yelp Connect
Keyword boosting for Yelp Ads
Yelp for Business on YouTube
Yelp for Restaurants updates
Diversity Resource Hub
Yelp website and app updates

Yelp Guaranteed

To give consumers greater confidence during the hiring process, Yelp Guaranteed is a new satisfaction guarantee program that allows consumers to get up to $2,500 back in the event something goes wrong with their project,* making hiring home service pros a worry-free experience.

When your business is highlighted with the Yelp Guaranteed badge and you get hired through Yelp’s Request a Quote feature, your customers have peace of mind, knowing their project is protected—at no cost to you. Benefits include:

Yelp features your business: When eligible, your business gets highlighted with the Yelp Guaranteed badge when customers search on Yelp to start their project, giving you more opportunities to get noticed.
Ready-to-hire customers notice you: Customers are requesting a quote because they want to hire a business. They’ll see their project with you is covered by Yelp Guaranteed when the badge is shown on Yelp search results, your business page, and Request a Quote messages.
You’re chosen with confidence: Yelp Guaranteed helps customers hire you with even more confidence because their project is protected up to $2,500 if something goes wrong.

How it works: When a Yelp user hires a business through Yelp’s Request a Quote feature for an eligible project, they’ll automatically be enrolled in the program, allowing them to submit a claim if they run into challenges resolving an issue directly with a business—either because they’re not satisfied with the work performed, property was damaged related to the project, or if the business was a no-show on a pre-paid job.

The program is now available nationwide for eligible Request a Quote-enabled advertisers based on a variety of qualification factors. Read more about Yelp Guaranteed.

*When a customer hires a business with a Yelp Guaranteed badge through Yelp by requesting a quote, consultation, or virtual consultation, we guarantee the customer’s projects up to a lifetime max of $2,500 if something goes wrong. Subject to the limitations and eligibility requirements in Yelp Guaranteed Consumer Terms.

Upload videos to Yelp Connect

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You can now upload videos to your Yelp Connect posts, helping you deliver more engaging content to consumers—whether it’s a weekly deal, special menu items, or an upcoming event. Share up to 30 seconds worth of content per clip to show off your business’ personality, advertise promotions, and connect with your community.

Yelp Connect is a paid feature that allows business owners to share important updates directly with consumers. Your message is shared automatically both on your page and beyond on Yelp to spread the word to the right customers.

Keyword boosting for Yelp Ads

When setting up your ad on Yelp, you can boost keywords that are important to you, and Yelp will try to show your ad more often to consumers searching those keywords. This type of targeting helps your ad reach the right customers for your business. Check out the seven simple steps it takes to set up Yelp Ads for your business.

Note that you can also exclude keywords after purchase (recommended only if there are adjacent keywords for services you don’t offer).

Yelp for Business on YouTube

Yelp for Business now has its own YouTube channel. Explore educational and how-to videos, sessions from past events like the Women in Business Summit, the Yelp University series, and more—all created for the business owner audience.

Yelp for Restaurants updates

The Servies

Update (8/23): Nominations are now closed. Voting for the Servies begins September 12.

To celebrate and reward front-of-house staff at restaurants across the country, the Servies are back! For the second year, this second annual awards program gives recognition to the hard-working folks who pour, serve, seat, and greet.

Do you employ or know of an outstanding host, server, bartender, or manager? Nominate front-of-house workers across six categories for a chance for them to win a $3,000 “tip” and more. Nominations are open through August 23 at TheServies.com.

Yelp Guest Manager integration with Reserve with Google

Through Yelp Guest Manager’s new integration with Reserve with Google, diners can make a reservation or join a waitlist online with restaurants in Yelp’s network directly from Google Search and Google Maps. With this integration, Yelp Guest Manager now gives restaurants access to the largest restaurant consumer network in the U.S.**

**Comscore Media Metrix®, based on Yelp and Reserve with Google collective monthly average number of visitors in the U.S. 2022 when compared to other Reserve with Google integrations.

Yelp Guest Manager integration with Toast

Yelp’s new integration with Toast—a cloud-based, all-in-one digital technology platform for restaurants—helps Yelp Guest Manager clients seat guests efficiently and is designed to allow hosts to focus on hospitality and create better guest experiences.

Restaurants can expect:

Improved operational efficiency: Data integrations that help restaurants connect their tech stack and stay on top of the floor state
Seat guests more efficiently by optimizing table turns: Automated table status updates frees up staff to focus on hospitality and seating guests quickly
Integrated data: Combining front-of-house and point of sale data surfaces dining trends and helps restaurants to strengthen guest relationships

New features for Yelp Guest Manager

Yelp Guest Manager has rolled out new features to help restaurateurs increase efficiency, give staff more control, and prevent lost revenue due to empty tables:

Credit card holds with customizable policies: With the latest update, restaurant owners can set credit card holds with policies for weekends, holidays, or special events, as well as customize what and when customers are charged for no shows or late cancellations.
Advanced reservation planning updates: Restaurant owners can now customize reservation settings, from diner reminders to host notifications. New updates also allow staff to easily search for upcoming reservations by guest’s name or phone number, making it easy to view, update or edit the reservation stat. Hosts can also now more easily plan upcoming reservations with Reservation Timeline, allowing them to smoothly accommodate walk-ins and reservation guests during service.
Improved table and floor management: New Table Suggestions ease FOH staff workload by auto-assigning each reservation based on party requirements, table size, and availability. It also warns hosts of scheduling conflicts, to prevent overbooking. Updated easy drag-and-drop features allow hosts to easily seat parties, combine, or change tables without extra taps. Managers can now assign upcoming reservations and block tables days in advance to prepare staff for the shifts ahead, as well as adjust restaurant capacity. Manager Table Blocks also keep certain tables from being booked online each day to reserve for walk-ins or VIPs during a chosen time period.
Shift management improvements: New shift management features enable team leads to better prepare FOH staff based on the daily needs of the restaurant. New functionality includes the ability to build weekly recurring schedules, create one-off shifts for special days, and manage cover flow in advance to prepare for guests before their arrival.

Read more about these updates, and stay up to speed on the latest with Yelp Guest Manager.

Diversity Resource Hub

To celebrate and support diversity in business and life, we’ve put together the Diversity Resource Hub, a list of our resource hubs for business owners and allies, each including helpful tools, tips, and entrepreneurial stories to thrive and inspire.

Hubs include Asian-owned, Black-owned, Latinx-owned, LGBTQ-owned, veteran-owned, and women-owned—plus explore other resources to help make an impact, from accessibility to sustainability.

Yelp website and app updates

Yelp launched a series of new features to enhance the consumer experience, helping users connect with great local businesses.

Enhancing the search experience on Yelp leveraging LLMs and AI

To make it even easier for consumers to find businesses that fit their needs, Yelp continues to invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) to further enhance the search and discovery experience on Yelp.

Review highlights driven by LLMs help consumers find relevant businesses easier: By leveraging LLMs, Yelp can better understand the nuance in consumers’ search intent and highlight relevant information from reviews in new snippets that appear under each business listing in search results.
AI-powered search suggestions help consumers easily find businesses anywhere: Yelp is using AI to provide better search suggestions that are not bound by a person’s location, streamlining the discovery experience when someone already has a specific business in mind.
“Surprise Me” provides inspiration for where to eat: An easy click on the red “Surprise me” button, found on the Yelp home feed and search results, will generate a unique highly rated recommendation nearby. More than one million businesses have been suggested every month through this new feature.
Clickable category tags enhance discovery in search: These tags on business listings for restaurants, food, and nightlife searches help users better refine their search.

Revamping the review experience with new ways to contribute

Videos in reviews: Yelp users can post high-resolution videos up to 12 seconds alongside their text reviews and photos.
Review topics make writing helpful reviews even easier: New interactive review topics—like “food,” “service” and “ambiance” for a restaurant review—help consumers track what they’ve covered, and remind them of other topics they might want to address. Once a topic is addressed, it will automatically turn green with a checkmark at the top of the draft review.
New review reactions: A new set of review reactions enables people to show appreciation for the reviews they find most useful, including: “Helpful,” “Thanks,” “Love this” and “Oh no.”

Keep in touch with Yelp for Business

Looking for other new features and enhancements? Check out our past updates: