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Yelp for iOS adds vertical feed for users, paid feature for business

Yelp announced today it’s releasing a new homepage for its iOS app. With that, users will have an easier way to discover relevant content within the application.

According to a blog post, Yelp is launching “an entirely new experience that better surfaces relevant, local and unique content from restaurants to a user’s home feed.”

For the first time ever, Yelp iOS users will be able to scroll through a vertical feed that features visual content from local restaurants in their city, including Popular Dishes, popular photos from consumers and updates directly from restaurants. The content shown on Yelp’s home feed is contextualized to users based on various factors, including their proximity to the business, the recency of the content and the popularity of a dish in reviews.

The app uses machine learning to help users discover popular dishes of restaurants as well as show more content about them.

Not only that but for restaurants that use Yelp Connect, businesses will be able to use a paid feature to enable sharing updates with new and existing customers with “greater visibility than ever before as users will now easily discover these Connect posts right on their home feed.”

The company says this will increase consumer engagement with businesses’ Connect posts by as much as 30%. Users will also be able to engage with this kind of content by tapping the heart icon, letting the business know that their content is resonating with potential customers.

According to Yelp, this update is now rolling out on iOS across more than 25 US states and will keep expanding in the future for more places.

Over the past few months, Apple Maps users have also been able to take advantage of Yelp’s information about businesses policies regarding COVID-19 vaccination, as you can read more about it here.

What do you think of this new experience Yelp is providing? Tell us in the comment section below.

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