Yelp

Quick Take

Yelp has taken clear public sides on several contested issues. On abortion, it covers travel costs for staff who must leave their state for the procedure, and it labels crisis pregnancy centers. [5][1] On race, it promotes Black-owned businesses and flags businesses accused of racist behavior. [6][7] In 2017, it joined nearly 100 companies that opposed President Trump's travel ban in court. [16] Its longest fight, an antitrust battle against Google that runs from 2011 to a 2024 lawsuit, does not line up neatly on the left or right. [8][9] On political money, its visible activity is federal lobbying on competition policy. It also has a corporate PAC, though federal records show it has sat idle in recent cycles. [9][17]

Taking Sides on Abortion Access

Yelp has staked out a clear corporate position on abortion. In September 2021, Yelp was one of more than 50 companies that signed the Don't Ban Equality statement, a business-coalition letter opposing abortion restrictions that was organized in response to Texas's Senate Bill 8, which banned most abortions after about six weeks. [20] In the spring of 2022, as the Dobbs decision loomed, Yelp said it would cover travel costs for employees in restrictive states who need to travel for an abortion, and Chief Diversity Officer Miriam Warren tied the move to employees' ability to control their reproductive health. [5] The next year, Yelp said it expanded that travel benefit to also cover out-of-state trips for other care restricted by state law, including gender-affirming care and fertility treatment. [21] Around the same time, CEO Jeremy Stoppelman published an essay in Fast Company arguing that silence on abortion conflicts with any real commitment to equity, and urging business leaders to help protect reproductive rights. [11]

That August, Yelp added a consumer notice to crisis pregnancy center listings, saying its staff had reviewed such listings since 2018. [1] The first version said the centers typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical staff on site. On February 7, 2023, a coalition of 24 state attorneys general, including Paxton, demanded that Yelp remove the notice; the next day Yelp revised it to say the centers do not offer abortions or referrals to abortion providers. [12] Texas sued Yelp in September 2023 over the original label, and Yelp sued the state the same week, calling the action retaliation for its speech. [1][2] That October, a separate coalition of 16 attorneys general led by California signed an open letter backing Yelp. [13] A trial court first dismissed the Texas case, but in October 2025 a Texas appeals court reversed that dismissal and sent the case back, holding that Texas courts had specific personal jurisdiction over Yelp. The ruling did not decide whether Yelp broke Texas law. [1][12]

A Public Stance on Race

After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, Yelp rolled out several race-related features and commitments. It launched a searchable Black-owned business attribute, built with the group My Black Receipt, and joined the 15 Percent Pledge, committing that 15 percent of its community events, vendor relationships, Instagram content, and curated lists would feature Black-owned businesses. [6][14] It also said the Yelp Foundation and its employees together gave more than $1.5 million to Black-led and Black-serving organizations, money the company described as helping build Black political power. [15]

Yelp went a step beyond labeling and promotion. In October 2020 it launched a Business Accused of Racist Behavior alert, a label placed on a business page when the company finds credible news reports of egregiously racist actions by an owner or employee. [7] Yelp described the alert as responding to a national reckoning with systemic racism, tying it to that summer's protests. [7] The company applies that top label rarely: it reported that in 2024, only two of its public attention alerts were escalated to a business accused of racist behavior alert. [4]

The Long Fight With Google

Yelp's oldest and most consistent political effort has little to do with social issues. The rivalry has an unlikely origin: in late 2009, Yelp was in advanced talks to sell itself to Google for around half a billion dollars, but it walked away and stayed independent. [23] Since Stoppelman testified before a Senate antitrust panel in 2011, the company has pressed regulators in the United States and Europe to check what it calls Google's self-dealing in search. [8][9] In that 2011 testimony, Stoppelman estimated that about 75 percent of Yelp's traffic arrived through Google in some form, which he offered as proof of how much leverage the larger company held. [8] In August 2024, days after a federal judge ruled that Google held an illegal monopoly in search, Yelp filed its own antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing it of abusing that monopoly to favor its own local listings; Google has called the claims meritless. [10][9] This fight does not map cleanly onto left or right, since reining in Big Tech has drawn support from both parties, and Yelp frames it as a competition matter rather than a partisan one. [9]

Other Political Activity

Yelp's political voice reaches past abortion and race. In February 2017, Yelp joined nearly 100 technology companies, among them Apple, Google, and Microsoft, on an amicus brief filed with a federal appeals court. [16] The brief supported Washington state's lawsuit against President Trump's executive order that restricted travel from seven majority-Muslim countries. [16] The companies argued the order was discriminatory and hurt their businesses and their employees. [16] Separately, and in his personal capacity rather than the company's, Yelp co-founder and chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman signed a September 2024 open letter in which 88 business leaders endorsed Kamala Harris for president. [22]

Follow the Money

Yelp reported record net revenue of $1.41 billion for 2024 and net income of $133 million, up 34 percent from the prior year. [3] On federal politics, Yelp spends modestly, and its campaign giving goes overwhelmingly to Democrats. People who list Yelp as their employer, together with the company PAC, gave about $285,700 to federal candidates and committees in the 2024 cycle, roughly 96 percent of it to Democrats and about 4 percent to Republicans. [24] That tilt is long-standing and has deepened: Democrats drew about 74 percent of the total in the 2016 cycle and about 95 percent in 2020, while the Republican share fell from about 41 percent in the 2014 cycle to about 4 percent in 2024. [24] Most of that money is individual employee giving; the corporate PAC (the Yelp, Inc. Political Action Committee, FEC C00553966, registered in 2013) is the smaller part, about $15,500 in the 2024 cycle, and federal records show no PAC activity so far in the 2025 to 2026 cycle. [24][17] Yelp also spent about $528,000 on federal lobbying in 2024, much of it tied to competition policy aimed at Google. [24][9] Its charitable giving is separate from this political money: the Yelp Foundation and employee donations fund community causes, which is philanthropy, not campaign spending.

What Yelp Is and How It Makes Money

Yelp runs a website and app where people post reviews of local businesses, from restaurants to plumbers. By the end of 2024, users had contributed 308 million cumulative reviews, including 21 million added that year. [3] Advertising sold to local businesses brought in 96 percent of its revenue in 2024, and its fastest-growing area is services such as home and auto repair; in November 2024 it acquired the auto-repair service RepairPal. [4] Yelp has said the idea began in 2004, when co-founder Jeremy Stoppelman got sick with the flu, went looking online for a good local doctor, and found nothing useful. [18] The company was founded that year by Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, both former PayPal employees, and Stoppelman still serves as chief executive. [4][18] In 2017 Yelp sold its Eat24 food-ordering business to Grubhub for about $280 million and made Grubhub its ordering partner. [19] You can find Yelp at yelp.com and in its mobile app.

How Yelp Sorts Reviews

Yelp does not simply publish every review that is submitted. Its software sorts them, and the company reports the results. As of the end of 2024, Yelp said about 76 percent of submitted reviews were recommended and shown on business pages, about 15 percent were kept on secondary pages as less reliable, and about 9 percent had been removed for violating its content guidelines. [4] Yelp says some alerts also respond to bursts of activity after a business lands in the news, when people who never visited may post to praise or punish it; in those cases the company may temporarily pause new posts while it checks them. [4] It also posts alerts on business pages, including warnings about fake-review activity and, in rare cases, businesses accused of racist behavior. [4][7] The company says these steps protect consumers from misleading content. [4]

Recent News

For 2025, Yelp guided to net revenue in the range of $1.470 billion to $1.485 billion. [3] Its 2024 antitrust suit against Google remains its most closely watched legal matter, alongside the revived Texas case over the crisis pregnancy center labels. [10][1]

Footnotes

[1] Mary Elise O'Bar, The Texan, "Texas' Lawsuit Against Yelp Alleging Misleading Disclaimer on Pro-Life Resources Revived by Appeals Court," October 28, 2025. https://thetexan.news/judicial/texas-lawsuit-against-yelp-alleging-misleading-disclaimer-on-pro-life-resources-revived-by-appeals-court/article_cb7fc871-caba-48cf-b7e0-b1c92874951b.html [2] The Hill, "Paxton, Yelp sue each other over crisis pregnancy center descriptions," September 29, 2023. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4229336-paxton-yelp-sue-each-other-over-crisis-pregnancy-center-descriptions/ [3] Yelp Inc., SEC Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1, "Growth in Services Drove Yelp's 2024 Results," February 13, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1345016/000134501625000004/yelpq4-24ex991pressrelease.htm [4] Yelp Inc., SEC Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, filed February 27, 2025. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1345016/000134501625000007/yelp-20241231.htm [5] Associated Press, via The Washington Times, "Yelp CEO says abortion rights stand is a risk worth taking," June 13, 2022. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jun/13/yelp-ceo-says-abortion-rights-stand-is-a-risk-wort/ [6] Victoria Waldersee, Reuters, via Nasdaq, "Yelp joins 15 Percent Pledge to increase representation of Black-owned businesses," August 31, 2020. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/yelp-joins-15-percent-pledge-to-increase-representation-of-black-owned-businesses-2020-0 [7] NPR, "Yelp will label businesses accused of racist behavior," October 9, 2020. https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/10/09/922271718/yelp-will-label-businesses-accused-of-racist-behavior [8] TechCrunch, "Stoppelman: 75% Of Yelp's Traffic Comes From Google," September 21, 2011. https://techcrunch.com/2011/09/21/stoppelman-75-of-yelps-traffic-comes-from-google/ [9] Axios, "Yelp hits Google with antitrust lawsuit," August 29, 2024. https://www.axios.com/2024/08/29/google-yelp-lawsuit-antitrust [10] Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp Official Blog, "Yelp v. Google," August 28, 2024. https://blog.yelp.com/news/yelp-v-google/ [11] Jeremy Stoppelman, Fast Company, "Why companies need to take a stand on reproductive rights," May 16, 2022. https://www.fastcompany.com/90749901/yelp-ceo-why-companies-need-to-take-a-stand-on-reproductive-rights [12] State v. Yelp Inc., Texas Court of Appeals opinion via FindLaw, October 16, 2025. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/crt-app-tex-15t-dis/117841728.html [13] California Attorney General, "Attorney General Bonta Leads Coalition of 16 Attorneys General in Open Letter Supporting Yelp's Efforts to Provide Consumers Accurate Information about Crisis Pregnancy Centers," October 23, 2023. https://www.oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-leads-coalition-16-attorneys-general-open-letter [14] Yelp, Yelp Official Blog, "Yelp Joins the 15 Percent Pledge," accessed September 11, 2026. https://blog.yelp.com/2020/08/yelp-joins-the-15-percent-pledge [15] Yelp, Yelp Official Blog, "An Update on Our Commitment to Change," accessed September 11, 2026. https://blog.yelp.com/2020/08/an-update-on-our-commitment-to-change [16] The Hill, "Tech companies speak out against Trump's immigration order," February 6, 2017. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/318024-tech-companies-speak-out-against-trumps-immigration-order/ [17] Federal Election Commission, "Yelp, Inc. Political Action Committee," committee C00553966, accessed September 11, 2026. https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00553966/ [18] Newsweek, "My Big Break: Yelp's Jeremy Stoppelman," May 26, 2010. https://www.newsweek.com/my-big-break-yelps-jeremy-stoppelman-81133 [19] Yelp Inc., "Yelp Completes Sale of Eat24," investor relations press release, October 10, 2017. https://www.yelp-ir.com/news/press-releases/news-release-details/2017/Yelp-Completes-Sale-of-Eat24/default.aspx [20] Alison Durkee, Forbes, "More Than 50 Companies, Including Yelp, Lyft, and Ben & Jerry's, Speak Out Against Texas Abortion Law," September 21, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/09/21/more-than-50-companies---including-yelp-lyft-ben--jerrys---speak-out-against-texas-abortion-law/ [21] Yelp, Yelp Official Blog, "Yelp's continued commitment to remote work," June 1, 2023. https://blog.yelp.com/news/yelps-continued-commitment-to-remote-work/ [22] Lauren Feiner, CNBC, "88 corporate leaders endorse Harris in new letter, including CEOs of Yelp, Box and Ripple," September 6, 2024. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/06/harris-endorsed-trump-murdoch-yelp-snap-ripple.html [23] TechCrunch, "Yelp Walks Away From Google Deal, And Half A Billion Dollars," December 20, 2009. https://techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/yelp-walks-away-from-google-deal-and-half-a-billion-dollars/ [24] OpenSecrets, Yelp Inc organization profile (id D000064114): summary, federal lobbying, and PAC records, accessed September 11, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/yelp-inc/summary?id=D000064114