Yelp Introduces an Easier Way to Find Places You’ll Love Based on Personal Preferences

Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP), the company that connects people with great local businesses, announced it will launch new personalization functionality that tailors the app to people’s individual preferences and lifestyle. For the first time, when two users with different lifestyles open up the Yelp app from the same location, they’ll see a completely different homescreen and search results based on their personal preferences. Yelp users will now find it easier to discover their favorite types of businesses, faster. The option to personalize Yelp will begin rolling out to iOS and Android app users today.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190827005274/en/

Yelp launches new personalized app experience, making Yelp more yours and saving you time. (Graphic: Business Wire)

As part of the new update, users will be able to indicate their personal dietary and accessibility preferences, lifestyle attributes — like whether they’re a parent or homeowner — and things they like to do. Yelp will do the heavy lifting by processing the information in real-time and transforming the user’s homescreen and search results into a completely personalized experience represented by Yelp’s newly created heart symbol — including search result rankings, shortcuts to filters, and personalized highlights that tell the user why they might like the business based on their preferences.

“As Yelp turns 15 this year, we’re embarking on one of our most significant product updates with the introduction of a new personalized experience,” said Vivek Patel, Yelp’s chief product officer. “Yelp has always been a helpful discovery platform that surfaces great local businesses based on your search. By making it more personalized, we’re saving people time and giving them an easy way to find the right business for them. Now, Yelp will help you discover businesses and activities based on who you are and what you like to do.”

With its vast amount of rich content and data — which includes more than 192 million reviews, as well as millions of photos and attributes generated by an engaged community of users and business owners — Yelp is able to identify and surface business information that is deeply aligned with consumer needs. Rather than serving recommendations solely based on a user’s search history, Yelp is starting an open conversation with consumers to better understand their preferences and interests in order to customize the app to show them what they want to see more of. The preferences a consumer shares with Yelp will only be visible to them, and the information will only be used to personalize their experience on Yelp.