This collaboration brings Yelp’s Reservations and Waitlist tools to ChatGPT users, letting them book a table or join a waitlist through Yelp without leaving their chat, the company said in a news release Monday (Aug. 10).
“This builds on our existing content integration, which provides ChatGPT users with reliable local recommendations by surfacing Yelp’s trusted reviews, ratings, photos, and business details directly within the chat experience,” the release said.
“Together, Yelp Reservations, Waitlist and content make it easy for people to go from discovery to action, right from where the conversation happens.”
Once users have booked a reservation, users can make changes through Yelp. The company said connecting its booking capabilities directly into ChatGPT helps people go from finding a restaurant to securing their seat in the dining room.
“For restaurants using Yelp Guest Manager this integration expands their access to the largest restaurant consumer network in the U.S., helping them fill more tables and reach more guests exactly when discovery happens,” the company added.
The partnership follows Yelp’s launch of Yelp Assistant in April, an AI chatbot that reads across its 330 million local business reviews and surfaces tailored recommendations with explanations of why each business matches the user’s request.
As PYMNTS wrote last month, Yelp relies on Google for more than 70% of its web traffic in the U.S., so an AI assistant is a direct bet that Yelp can create a discovery layer that does not require Google to direct someone to its site first.
Yelp has accused Google of improperly using its business reviews and favoring its own services, the report said. Google has dismissed the company’s allegations.
The report also posited that Yelp’s creation of its own recommendation layer is a direct response, in that “if the AI answer is the last stop before a purchase, whoever controls that answer controls the sale.”
Research by PYMNTS Intelligence demonstrates why the stakes are so high, that report added, with 48% of eCommerce shoppers saying they used AI during their most recent purchase.
The research also found that AI-referred traffic to U.S. retail sites jumped 393% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, while ChatGPT’s share of product research climbed from 2% to 30% in two years.
“The platforms hosting the reviews that trained those models are now racing to ensure the AI synthesizing their content is their own,” PYMNTS wrote.
