Yelp Inc. Releases 2024 Trust & Safety Report: A Commitment to Content Integrity

On February 5, 2025, Yelp Inc. (NYSE:YELP) unveiled its annual Trust & Safety Report for 2024, providing a comprehensive overview of the company's ongoing efforts to ensure the integrity and quality of the content on its platform. As the go-to platform for local business reviews, Yelp's initiatives highlight its commitment to creating a trustworthy environment for consumers seeking reliable business information.

Yelp's automated recommendation software plays a crucial role in filtering the vast number of reviews generated on its platform. In 2024, the company reported that approximately 21 million reviews were contributed, with 78% recommended by its software. This advanced technology is designed to surface the most helpful and reliable content while eliminating potentially misleading reviews.

The enhancements made in 2024 focused on better identifying reviews that may have been generated by artificial intelligence tools, lacked detail about the consumer experience, or were solicited through improper means.

Yelp's User Operations team plays an essential role in maintaining the integrity of the reviews. In 2024, the team undertook significant actions to remove inappropriate content:

Additionally, the team closed more than 551,200 user accounts for violating Yelp's Terms of Service, addressing issues such as airline phone support scams and spammy behaviors.

Yelp also saw a dramatic increase in the removal of photos, with over 2.9 million removed—up 159% from the previous year—primarily targeting deceptive content promoting fake customer support numbers.

A significant focus of Yelp's 2024 Trust & Safety Report was on combatting compensated and incentivized reviews. The company introduced a new Consumer Alerts History section on business pages, providing transparency about past compensated activity and suspicious review patterns.

Yelp also closed over 1,300 user accounts linked to review exchange rings and reported suspicious activity to other online platforms, although only 37% of these reports resulted in action.

Yelp's proactive measures extended to moderating business pages that gained public attention. In 2024, 920 Media Attention Alerts were issued, leading to the removal of over 56,900 reviews. Notably, incidents related to political figures saw an extraordinary 96% year-over-year increase in unusual activity alerts.

Yelp actively protects its users from potential legal threats aimed at silencing honest reviews. In 2024, the company successfully avoided producing personal information related to 98% of user accounts subject to legal demands. Additionally, 16 Questionable Legal Threat Alerts were placed on business pages for potential abuse of the legal system.

The report indicated that 81% of these alerts stemmed from gag clauses, which are contractual terms attempting to prohibit customer feedback.

Yelp's 2024 Trust & Safety Report underscores its dedication to fostering a trustworthy platform for consumers and local businesses alike. By leveraging advanced technology and human moderation, the company aims to ensure that users can rely on genuine, firsthand reviews to inform their decisions. For a deeper dive into Yelp's efforts and insights from a commissioned survey conducted with YouGov, interested parties can access the full report and additional resources on Yelp's Trust & Safety page.

For further information, visit trust.yelp.com.