Starting Thursday, August 5, 2021, Yelp will filter business listings by their vaccination policies as to whether proof of vaccination is required to frequent the business and whether all of a business’ staff are fully vaccinated.

Yelp senior vice president of public policy Luther Lowe tweeted the announcement on the new “service,” saying business owners can opt in for the service.

On the Yelp Official Blog, VP of operations Noorie Malik added that “Users will be able to filter by these attributes when searching for local businesses on Yelp and will easily see ‘Proof of vaccination required’ indicated on restaurant, food and nightlife businesses in search results.”

Yelp is also “proactively monitoring” its pages to protect any businesses that may experience backlash for their vaccination policies, the blog says. Ongoing monitoring of the Yelp pages during the pandemic has already led to nearly 4,500 reviews being taken down for what Yelp deems inappropriate, the blog says.

A similar system will keep “review bombing” from occurring if Yelp decides the reviews are in retaliation for a business’ vaccination policies.

SOURCES:

Luther Lowe Twitter August 5, 2021

Yelp Official Blog August 4, 2021