Yelp updates AI assistant to handle bookings and orders

Yelp is updating its AI assistant to allow users to ask questions, get restaurant reservations, order food delivery, and book service professionals directly through the interface. The company originally debuted the AI assistant in 2024 to help users search for different services based on their specific problems. With this latest update, the platform is attempting to expand the assistant’s utility beyond search, enabling users to initiate and complete actions directly from a single conversational flow. The assistant’s knowledge is grounded in specific business details and user reviews to ensure accuracy when answering user queries.

However, the assistant is not agentic in nature—a term referring to AI systems capable of completing transactions autonomously within the chat window. Instead of processing transactions internally, the assistant redirects users to specific partner apps and pages to finalize their requests. To facilitate these actions, Yelp has integrated with several external providers. For food delivery, the assistant redirects users to DoorDash and Grubhub. For scheduling, it connects to Vagaro for fitness and beauty appointments, Zocdoc for doctor appointments, RepairPal for car repairs, and Calendly for other business appointment bookings.

Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, Yelp’s SVP of product, framed the update as a fundamental shift in how users interact with the service. “We would really like consumers to reconceive Yelp as a place where they can ask questions and get answers, not just that, but also complete the action. That’s Yelp reconceiving from a review platform to an answers and action platform,” Kuduvalli Ramesh said. He added that some of the company’s investments will be directed toward this effort. While the current redirection setup is how Yelp is configured now, Kuduvalli Ramesh noted that it might change in the future. Meanwhile, the desktop version of the assistant and its rollout across all business pages are slated for later in the year.

Why it matters

Yelp is attempting to transition from a passive review platform to an active service-booking hub, aiming to keep users within its ecosystem by facilitating direct actions through AI.