Yelp announced Friday it will let businesses identify themselves as black-owned, making it one of a handful of companies that have committed to enacting concrete changes to its business or product in response to the wave of protests over the death of George Floyd.
Businesses will have the choice to label themselves as black-owned on Yelp.
The label will also act as a search attribute, making it easier for users to find black-owned businesses.
Yelp has historically depended on review text to generate search results for black-owned businesses, and the company said the new label will make those results more accurate.
In the last week, Yelp said it saw a 25x increase in the frequency of searches for black-owned businesses compared to the same time last year.
The company’s philanthropy arm is also donating $500,000 each to the Equal Justice Initiative and NAACP Legal Defense Fund and employees will have additional mental health days off in June, the company said.
Crucial quote
“There can be no going back to ‘business as usual’ when the protests, tweets and news cycle die down. We all have to do our part to get educated, and we must use our voices, votes and whatever power and platform we have to reject racism in all its forms, until we put an end to this oppression that has plagued our country for centuries,” CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote.
Source: orbes.com
