Yelp! Inc.

04/21/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 04/21/2026 05:04

Yelp Spring Product Release: Search Less and Do More With the New AI-Powered Yelp Assistant

Key updates from Yelp's 2026 Spring Product Release:

AI is now at the core of the Yelp experience. With this release, we're taking the next major step in Yelp's AI transformation. By combining our foundation of authentic, human-generated content with advanced AI, we're delivering a more conversational and personalized Yelp, empowering you to make confident decisions and get things done with ease.

First, we're excited to introduce the new Yelp Assistant: your AI-powered conversational chatbot that understands your needs, offers trusted recommendations, and helps you complete tasks. For the first time ever, you can ask Yelp Assistant anything across every business category, get instant answers, and easily reserve tables, book appointments, or request quotes.

Yelp Assistant is among more than 35 features and updates we're announcing in our Spring Product Release. New partner integrations with Vagaro, Zocdoc, and Calendly allow you to seamlessly take action, and an upgraded Menu Vision makes it easier to decide what to order.

The new Yelp Assistant: Your local guide for getting things done

Ask Yelp Assistant about any business and get instant, review-backed answers-like whether a playground is toddler-friendly.

The way you discover local businesses on Yelp is evolving. The new Yelp Assistant is built to deliver reliable answers and recommendations, while helping you complete tasks-all in one conversation. Rather than browsing search results, simply describe what you're looking for, even if it's complex or highly specific, and it will surface the most relevant options for you. From there, Yelp Assistant makes it easy to go from getting answers and recommendations to getting things done-whether you're reserving a table, ordering delivery or takeout, requesting a price quote, or booking an appointment-serving as your trusted assistant for all things local.

First introduced in 2024 as an AI chatbot to help you hire service pros and later expanded to answer questions about individual businesses, Yelp Assistant is becoming the center of the app experience. Through a dedicated new "Assistant" tab, Yelp Assistant now works across every category on Yelp to address all your local needs.

Every answer is powered by Yelp's authentic, in-depth community content-hundreds of millions of reviews, photos, and detailed business information contributed by real people. We know how important this is. In a recent survey we conducted with Morning Consult, nearly three out of four people said they want to see ratings and reviews from real customers when using AI search tools to find local businesses.

You can ask about "birthday dinner spots with vegan options and heated outdoor seating," "top-rated gyms with group classes and childcare," or get help planning an afternoon with your friends in a new city. Yelp Assistant delivers tailored recommendations with clear explanations of why each business is a fit, surfacing relevant user reviews, highlighting star ratings, and summarizing helpful details that matter to your search. You can ask follow-up questions about any business, refine your search, and tap into any business's full reviews, photos, and business page to learn more.

From planning a day out to finding dog-friendly dining, Yelp Assistant handles a wide range of questions across every business category.

For the first time, Yelp Assistant goes beyond answering questions by helping you take action. Once you've found the right business, Yelp Assistant can initiate a reservation, start a quote request, or begin booking an appointment, guiding you through each step while handling the heavy lifting:

Once you've found the perfect spot, Yelp Assistant helps you book a reservation-all without leaving the conversation.
  • Reserve a table at thousands of restaurants that use Yelp Guest Manager for table booking and soon join a waitlist.
  • Order takeout or delivery through DoorDash, Yelp's preferred partner, as well as Grubhub, and more-from more than half a million restaurants.
  • Request a quote from professionals across more than 450 categories-including home, local, auto, beauty, pet, and event services.
  • Make beauty, wellness, and fitness appointments through Vagaro on iOS, a leading salon, spa, and fitness marketplace.
  • Schedule healthcare visits through Zocdoc on iOS, the healthcare access platform that connects patients to great care.
  • Book appointments with RepairPal-certified auto shops, the largest network of trusted auto repair facilities.
  • This summer, you'll also be able to schedule appointments with eligible service pros through scheduling platform, Calendly, simplifying how you get your projects done.
Yelp Assistant helps you take action-reserve tables, order food through DoorDash and Grubhub, request quotes, and book appointments with Vagaro, Zocdoc, and RepairPal.

The new Yelp Assistant is available on iOS and Android through the new "Assistant" tab and on eligible business pages, including restaurants, retail shops, and attractions, with expansion to all business pages and desktop coming later this year. Stay tuned for more updates to come-we're continuing to enhance Yelp Assistant to help you better compare options, receive even more personalized recommendations, manage multiple projects at once, complete additional tasks, and more.

New Integrations: Book, order, and schedule directly on Yelp

Now when you find the right business, it's easier than ever to take the next step right from Yelp-whether you're booking a beauty appointment, scheduling a visit with a doctor, or setting up a consultation with a service pro. New integrations with Vagaro, Zocdoc, and Calendly, as well as enhancements to existing integrations-including expanding our DoorDash integration to Canadian restaurants-simplify getting things done on Yelp.

Book with beauty, wellness, and fitness businesses via Vagaro

Through our integration with Vagaro, you can now book beauty and wellness appointments and fitness classes from Yelp business pages and Yelp Assistant. You'll find a "Book appointment" button, which seamlessly takes you to the business's Vagaro scheduling page, where you can select a service, provider, date, and more.

Today, the Vagaro integration is available on iOS; Android and desktop are coming later this year, in addition to the ability to book with a business from its listing in search.

Schedule healthcare appointments with Zocdoc

Taking care of your health just got easier with our new integration with Zocdoc. Now, you can seamlessly find and schedule appointments with doctors, dentists, and healthcare providers directly from Yelp business pages and Yelp Assistant, powered by Zocdoc. Simply click the "Book now" button on eligible business pages to view real-time in-network provider availability and indicate the reason for your visit. When you're ready, you'll be taken to Zocdoc to securely provide your personal details and complete your booking. Your personal health information is handled entirely by Zocdoc and is never stored on Yelp.

Currently available on iOS, the Zocdoc integration will be available on Android and desktop later this year, in addition to the ability to filter search results based on provider availability.

Confirm service pro appointments through Calendly

A new integration with scheduling platform, Calendly, simplifies booking appointments and consultations with service pros from Yelp. After you request a quote from a pro with Calendly you'll see a "Book now" button in your Projects tab messages that will direct you to view the business's real-time availability, pick a time that works for you, and add it to your calendar-no back-and-forth messages or phone calls required. The new Calendly integration is available for all services categories, including home, local, auto, professional, pet, event, real estate, financial services, and more.

Soon, you'll also find booking via Calendly on eligible business pages and business listings in search. Plus, additional calendar integrations for service pros are coming soon, making it easy to see the pro's real-time availability and schedule appointments.

New integrations with Vagaro, Zocdoc, and Calendly make it easy to book appointments directly from Yelp.

Menu Vision: See the dishes before you order

Point your camera at any menu and Menu Vision instantly surfaces photos of each dish, helping you choose what to order.

Originally released last October to bring menus to life with AI, augmented reality, and text recognition, Menu Vision is even more visual and detail-rich, making it easier to see what's on the menu and decide what to order. Now, when you scan a menu with your camera, images of the dish instantly appear over the menu with its name, the number of related reviews and photos, and a "Popular" badge for standout items. Tap any dish, drink, or dessert to see all available photos and relevant reviews for popular items, giving you even more confidence in your next order.

We've made it even easier to find the dishes you're craving by improving how we match photos to menus, expanding our menu coverage using both photos and reviews, and boosting menu accuracy with AI that recognizes more dish names and synonyms. Menu Vision also displays helpful on-screen guidance as you scan the menu and can process QR code menus on iOS: just point your camera to explore the restaurant's full digital menu. Menu Vision is available on iOS and Android. You can access it from the business's media gallery on Yelp or from the business page under the menu section.

A more AI-powered, personalized, and visual Yelp

We're bringing you new ways to make discovery and sharing on Yelp effortless. Our redesigned home feed now uses advanced AI to serve up more personalized content, trending spots, and immersive videos tailored to your tastes. Plus, natural language photo search on business pages and smarter photo ranking help you quickly see the best of what local businesses offer.

Find more personalized content, videos, and ways to engage on the home feed

We refreshed the Yelp iOS home feed with a new AI-powered personalization model that surfaces even more relevant content to better match your taste, plus new ways to engage. We're now surfacing more updates from people you follow, showing video with an immersive full-screen view, and delivering smarter nearby recommendations that factor in time and place.

You can search for similar dishes via the "more like this" magnifying glass icon on user-submitted photos, videos, and reviews, which will take you directly to a related business search. Plus, when you discover a business you want to visit it's simple to save it to a Collection with the "Want to Go" bookmark and share it with friends.

Android users will also see an enhanced experience, with a dynamic, visual, and personalized home feed. You'll now find new ways to search, engage, and share content, as well as view new content types such as reviews, Collections, and user-generated videos.

Experience better photo discovery and more visual insights

Looking for photos of a specific dish? Now, you can use natural language when searching within a business's media gallery, and we'll surface the most relevant images-no need for perfect keywords. We expanded Popular Offerings, which leverages LLMs to highlight the most frequently mentioned services, items, or experiences, to even more categories and across all platforms-giving you a snapshot of what each business is known for at a glance. Plus, in the coming weeks, AI-powered before and after photos labels for services businesses will be available on iOS for more than 100 visually-driven services, including home, auto, beauty, pet, and real estate categories. These labels help you quickly evaluate a pro's work to make hiring decisions.

Additionally, you can now upload longer, 90-second videos to business pages or your reviews, letting you share richer, more dynamic experiences. Plus, our new passwordless login streamlines the review writing process, so whether you're a longtime Yelp Elite or just leaving your first review, contributing valuable feedback is easier than ever.

Discover more with the more personalized home feed, Popular Offerings on business pages, and natural language photo search within a business's media gallery.

Our Spring Product Release marks the next major step in Yelp's AI transformation. By combining authentic human content with advanced AI, we are making every interaction more conversational and personal-from discovering the best of your community to getting things done. With the new Yelp Assistant, integrated scheduling and ordering, and more, we're redefining how people connect with great local businesses. Plus, new AI-powered updates for business owners and enhancements to ads are helping local businesses operate more efficiently and spend their time where it matters most. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to transform Yelp with AI.

Yelp! Inc. published this content on April 21, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on April 21, 2026 at 11:05 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]