Yelp Uses AI to Deliver Personalized Recommendations With Collections

Yelp now uses A.I. to deliver personalized recommendations with Collections

Do you get lost in the Yelp reviews when trying to decide where to eat or what to do? Yelp is now serving up personalized recommendations with a new Collections tool, announced on May 24. Collections use artificial intelligence to look at past browsing actions to suggest new places to frequent. Yelp users can also create their own Collections or follow another user’s existing Collection.

Yelp says that Collections, available on the app and the website, work to take some of the legwork out of finding a new business to try. Collections take on a handful of different forms — machine-generated suggestions, Yelp-curated options, and user-created recommendations. The organized form of bookmarking businesses and finding new recommendations lives inside a new Collections tab on both the mobile and web platforms.

First, Yelp is starting users out with an automatically generated Collection called Recommended For You. As Yelp’s A.I.-generated option, this Collection gets more personal the more you use Yelp’s different features, the company says. The recommendations get a refresh every week.

The computer-generated Collection will be joined by recommendations from Yelp staff in a number of different cities. These collections are organized by city. Following a curated Collection enables notifications for new picks.

Finally, Yelp users can also create their own or browse other Collections generated by the Yelp community. Collections can also be set to private to create unshared sets of saved listings. The option is available by tapping or clicking the save icon on a business listing and choosing the collection or creating a new one from the pop-up menu. The Collections tab also houses an option to create a new collection.

Previously saved bookmarks are now inside a “my bookmarks” Collection.

“At Yelp, we’re always thinking about ways to deliver fresh, up-to-date content that helps connect you with great local businesses,” Yelp Product Manager Jay Garg wrote in a blog post. “Today, we’re announcing the launch of Collections to take the legwork out of finding great, new businesses by serving up personalized recommendations based on your activity on Yelp and amplifying top recommendations from across the Yelp community.”

By mixing the machine-generated and curated Collections with user-generated options, the update allows users to both organize saved businesses and find new places to try rolled up into a single feature.

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