Yelp Reports Major Growth in Searches For Diverse Businesses

Yelp’s latest local economic impact report reveals that searches for diverse businesses grew significantly over the past year.

The report defines a diverse business as a women-owned, Black-owned, Asian-owned, or Latinx-owned establishment.

Businesses that identify as either women-owned, Black-owned, Asian-owned or Latinx-owned can display attributes on their Yelp page to assist people searching for a diverse business.

Business owners can opt-in to more than one attribute, if applicable, such as Black-owned and women-owned.

Yelp data tracks when business owners opt into those attributes on their business page. Its latest report aims to measure the impact the pandemic has had on consumer interest in diverse businesses.

This article includes highlights from the report, starting with search data, as well as news about a new identity attribute available to business owners.

Yelp Search Data Shows Growing Consumer Interest in Diverse Businesses

Over the past year, which includes February 2020 to February 2021, searches for diverse businesses grew by 2,930%.

More specifically:

• The rate of searches on Yelp for women-owned businesses in the U.S. increased by 264%
• The rate of searches on Yelp for Black-owned businesses in the U.S. increased by 3,085%
• The rate of searches on Yelp for Latinx-owned businesses in the U.S. increased by 4,077%
• The rate of searches on Yelp for Asian-owned businesses in the U.S. increased by 130%

Yelp’s reports details which types of businesses saw notable increases in consumer interest:

• Women-owned: searches for restaurants grew 8,620%
• Latinx-owned: searches for nail salons up 1,589%, searches for hair salons up 5,762%
• Black-owned: searches for flower shops up 5,740%, searches for vegan restaurants up 2,142%
• Asian-owned: searches for bakeries up 721%, searches for coffee shops up 652%

In addition to customers increasingly seeking out diverse businesses, engagement with diverse businesses grew as well.

Yelp’s report defines engagement as viewing a business page, posting a review, or posting a photo.

Engagement rose sharply for certain business categories after they added an identity attribute to their Yelp page.

The chart below illustrates the change in consumer interest after an identity attribute was added:

Additional Highlights From Yelp’s Report

Other notable data points pulled from Yelp’s report on diverse businesses:

• Consumers rate many businesses owned by women, Black people, and Latinx people higher than other businesses.
• Women, Black people, and Latinx business owners engage with consumer feedback on Yelp more than other businesses.
• In 94% of categories with women-owned businesses, the average star rating for the women-owned businesses is higher than the category overall.
• In 86% of the categories with Black-owned businesses, the average star rating for Black-owned businesses is higher than the category average.
• In 90% of categories with Latinx-owned businesses, the average star rating is higher for Latinx-owned businesses than other businesses in those categories.

New Attribute For Asian-Owned Businesses

Along with this report, Yelp introduced a new way for businesses to self-identify as Asian-owned if they choose to do so with a free business attribute.

Business owners can manually add the new attribute to their Yelp page at their discretion. Once added it becomes searchable for other users.

Follow the steps below to add the Asian-owned attribute, or the other attributes mentioned in this post, to a Yelp page:

• Log in to Yelp for Business
• In the Amenities section, click Add or Edit
• Select Yes next to applicable attributes
• Click Save Changes

Sources: Yelp Official Blog, Yelp Economic Average