I'm interested to see what others in digital marketing think of this.

Forbes article: How Yelp Became AI’s Ground Truth

Summary

Despite rapid AI adoption, user trust in AI-generated answers remains low, creating a critical need for "ground truth"—verified, reliable data. Unexpectedly, review platform Yelp, once predicted to be disrupted, is now thriving by providing this essential asset. Major AI players like OpenAI are licensing Yelp's extensive, rigorously governed review data and integrating its transactional capabilities. Yelp's two decades of investing in a unique "trust architecture," including strict content moderation and independent review processes, has created an invaluable, hard-to-replicate competitive advantage. This demonstrates that proprietary, credible evidence, built over time, is now the scarce resource determining AI's believability and value.

my thought:

Looks like Yelp is selling it's data to AI and that data might well be influencing generative search results. Considering how I might be able to leverage this to benefit my clients. I don't work with roofers and plumbers and businesses that use the Request a Quote option, but if the reviews and information in Yelp are being used by generative search more, this might impact how I use Yelp and possibly Yelp ads. Thoughts?

It wouldn't let me post the direct link to this article for some reason. I'll try to include it in a response