Yelp Contractor Statistics 2026: Ad Spend, AI Citations, Leads and the Fall Release

Driven Metrics research · October 2026

Yelp contractor statistics measure how plumbers, HVAC companies, roofers, electricians and other service pros use Yelp, what they spend on it, and how often Yelp’s data shows up when people ask AI tools to recommend a local pro. Yelp reports these businesses under its Services category, which in its filings also covers auto, professional, pet, real estate, financial and event services. On October 20, 2026, Yelp announced its fall product release with more than 30 new features, including direct booking with service pros inside Yelp Assistant and an AI lead-reply agent priced at $30 per month.

This is a Driven Metrics original analysis of published data, not a survey or crawl we ran ourselves. We combined 12 sources dated September 2024 through October 2026: Yelp’s SEC filings and shareholder letters, Yelp product announcements and Yelp-commissioned research, BrightLocal’s 2026 consumer survey and AI citation study, Steady Demand’s ChatGPT grounding test, the Foundation Marketing and AirOps citation analysis, and an ACHR News homeowner survey. We then calculated spend per paying location, revenue shares, citation shares and ratios from the raw figures. Every number we derived is labeled as a Driven Metrics calculation.

Our analysis found four patterns. Services ads made up 70.4% of Yelp’s advertising revenue in Q2 2026, up 8.2 percentage points from Q2 2023, so service pros are now the core of Yelp’s ad business. The average paying Services location spent about $310 a month on Yelp ads in Q2 2026, which puts the new $30 Smart Lead Reply agent at roughly 10% on top. Yelp was the second most cited source behind Google Business Profile in every vertical of BrightLocal’s August 2026 AI citation study, including 13.8% of plumber citations. And in ChatGPT, Yelp’s share of citations among Yelp, BBB and Angi rose from 18.5% in Q4 2025 to 94.3% in August 2026 across two separate studies, after Yelp signed an agreement with OpenAI.

Key statistics: Yelp for contractors in 2026

• Yelp earned $240.96 million in Services advertising revenue in Q2 2026, flat from $240.80 million a year earlier, according to Yelp’s Q2 2026 shareholder letter.
• The average paying Yelp Services location generated about $310 per month in ad revenue in Q2 2026, up from about $280 in Q2 2023, according to a 2026 Driven Metrics analysis of Yelp’s reported revenue and paying locations.
• Approximately 10% of Yelp Request-a-Quote projects came through Yelp Assistant in Q2 2026, up from approximately 5% across 2025, according to Yelp’s 2026 shareholder letters.
• Yelp’s Smart Lead Reply AI agent costs $30 per month, equal to 9.7% of the average Services location’s monthly ad spend, according to a 2026 Driven Metrics calculation from Yelp’s pricing and filings.
• Yelp received 13.8% of AI citations for plumbers and 12.3% for service businesses, second only to Google Business Profile, in BrightLocal’s August 2026 study of 1.97 million citations across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT.
• Yelp appeared in ChatGPT’s business-card grounding data for 95.83% of local responses but was cited in only 1.04%, in Steady Demand’s August 2026 test of 2,880 prompts.
• 45% of US consumers used an AI tool for a local business recommendation in the 12 months before BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 adults, up from 6% a year earlier.

Yelp contractor statistics: how big is Yelp’s services business in 2026?

Driven Metrics calculates that Services ads made up 70.4% of Yelp’s advertising revenue in Q2 2026, up from 62.2% in Q2 2023, even though Services revenue itself was flat year over year in Q2 2026.

Note: Services includes Home, Local, Auto, Professional, Pets, Real Estate, Financial and Event Services; from Q1 2025 it includes RepairPal locations. Revenue per location = revenue / locations / 3. Source: Yelp Q2 2026 shareholder letter, key metrics table.

Services carried Yelp’s growth through mid-2025. Services advertising revenue rose 7.8% to a record $947.6 million in 2025, from $879.1 million in 2024, according to Yelp’s Q4 2025 shareholder letter. Driven Metrics calculates that year-over-year growth then slowed from 13.9% in Q1 2025 to 0.1% in Q2 2026. Yelp said Services paying locations and revenue per location were both flat in Q2 2026, while Services ad clicks rose slightly.

Spend per advertiser moved up even as growth stalled. We divided Services ad revenue by the monthly average of paying Services locations and found the average location generated about $310 a month in Q2 2026, up 10.6% from about $280 in Q2 2023. That is a category average: it blends home services with auto, professional, pet and event businesses, and it includes RepairPal locations from Q1 2025 onward, so it is not a quote for any one trade.

Paying advertisers are a small slice of Yelp’s business base. Yelp reported 8.39 million active claimed business locations across all categories in 2025 and 496,000 total paying advertising locations in Q4 2025, which Driven Metrics calculates as about 5.9%. Most service pros on Yelp use the free page, which is the part AI tools read.

How much of Yelp’s revenue comes from service businesses?

Service businesses generated 64.2% of Yelp’s total net revenue in Q2 2026 by Driven Metrics’ calculation, and the fastest-growing line, Other revenue, is now built largely on AI tools sold to service pros and data licensed to AI companies.

Note: three months ended June 30. Shares may not sum exactly because of rounding. Sources: Yelp Q2 2026 shareholder letter; Hatch revenue and purchase price from Yelp’s Q2 2026 Form 10-Q.

Yelp’s Q2 2026 net revenue was $375.5 million, up 1.4% from $370.4 million, according to its Q2 2026 shareholder letter. Services ads held flat at $241.0 million while Restaurants, Retail and Other ads fell 10.1% to $101.5 million. Other revenue nearly doubled to $33.0 million, driven by Hatch, data licensing and food ordering, according to the letter.

Hatch is the service-pro piece of that growth. Yelp paid $271.2 million for the AI lead management company on February 2, 2026, according to its Q2 2026 Form 10-Q, and Hatch contributed $8.5 million of revenue in Q2 2026. Driven Metrics calculates that Hatch made up 25.7% of Yelp’s Other revenue in the quarter, and that the purchase price equals 10.8 times Hatch’s $25 million annual recurring revenue in November 2025, or 7.7 times its $35 million run rate in June 2026.

Yelp is targeting an Other revenue run rate of $250 million by the end of 2028, against $132 million in Q2 2026. For contractors, that target means more paid AI tools aimed at lead handling, alongside the ad products Yelp already sells.

What did Yelp’s fall 2026 release add for contractors?

Driven Metrics counts five changes in Yelp’s October 20, 2026 release that touch service pros directly, and one carries a new price: Smart Lead Reply at $30 per month, equal to 9.7% of what the average paying Services location spent on Yelp ads in Q2 2026.

Sources: Yelp fall product release, October 20, 2026; Yelp Assistant project share from Yelp’s Q2 2026 shareholder letter.

The common thread is that a homeowner can now go from question to booked appointment without leaving Yelp. According to Yelp’s fall release post, customers can book directly with pros that use ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro from Yelp Assistant, search listings, business pages and Yelp messages, and can submit quote requests for up to five projects in one conversation. Request-a-Quote leads can also flow straight into Jobber and Workiz.

Yelp Assistant is already a measurable lead source. Approximately 10% of Request-a-Quote projects came through Yelp Assistant in Q2 2026, contributing to overall project growth of approximately 10% year over year, according to Yelp’s Q2 2026 shareholder letter. Across 2025, Yelp Assistant drove approximately 5% of projects, according to the Q4 2025 letter. Driven Metrics reads this as Yelp Assistant’s share roughly doubling, though the two figures cover different periods and Yelp rounds them.

Smart Lead Reply is aimed at response speed. It answers a new Request-a-Quote lead inside the message thread, asks qualifying questions and shares a booking link. Yelp lists movers, roofers, plumbers, home cleaners, contractors and electricians among eligible categories. Yelp had not published response-rate or conversion data for the tool as of October 21, 2026, since it rolls out in November 2026.

How often do AI tools cite Yelp for contractors and other local services?

Yelp was the second most cited source behind Google Business Profile in every vertical BrightLocal published in August 2026, and Driven Metrics calculates that Yelp earned 2.6 times as many service-business citations as BBB, Angi, Houzz, Thumbtack and HomeAdvisor combined.

Note: share of citations across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT for 1,355 business locations in the US, UK and Australia, 1,967,762 citations in total. Directory rows show the combined share of the named directories in the Yelp column for comparison. Source: BrightLocal, August 26, 2026.

For service businesses, Yelp took 12.3% of AI citations against 45% for Google Business Profile in BrightLocal’s study of 1,967,762 citations across Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT. The home-service directories trailed far behind: BBB had 1.6%, Angi 1.4%, Houzz 0.7%, and Thumbtack and HomeAdvisor 0.5% each, a combined 4.7%. For plumbers, Yelp’s 13.8% was 3.2 times the 4.3% combined share of Angi, HomeAdvisor, BBB and Thumbtack.

Yelp matters less for contractors than for restaurants and auto shops, though it still ranks second. Its share of citations was 21.8% for restaurants and 19.4% for car repair, compared with 12.3% for service businesses. Across all locations, Yelp received 9.53% of citations and was cited for 84.65% of the 1,355 businesses BrightLocal tracked.

BrightLocal’s sample covers businesses in the US, UK and Australia, and its Services category is a catch-all that overlaps with plumbers. The practical read for a contractor is that a complete Yelp page is the second listing AI tools pull from after the Google Business Profile, which is why Yelp work now sits inside generative engine optimization as well as review management.

Does ChatGPT use Yelp data for local service recommendations?

Yes. Driven Metrics calculates that Yelp’s share of ChatGPT citations among Yelp, BBB and Angi rose from 18.5% in Q4 2025 to 94.3% in August 2026, though the two numbers come from different studies with different samples.

Note: the Q4 2025 and August 2026 rows come from different studies with different prompts, samples and countries. Sources: PPC Land and Foundation Marketing (Q4 2025); BrightLocal (August 2026); Steady Demand (August 2026).

The shift lines up with Yelp’s partnership with OpenAI. Yelp said in its Q4 2025 shareholder letter that it had signed an agreement with OpenAI, and in its Q2 2026 letter that Yelp ratings and reviews had begun powering ChatGPT’s local experience in relevant categories, with a Request-a-Quote integration for ChatGPT coming. In the Q4 2025 data, published by Foundation Marketing with AirOps, BBB led ChatGPT with 68,617 citations and Yelp ranked third with 25,681. By August 2026, Yelp was the most cited source in ChatGPT’s local answers in BrightLocal’s study, appearing in 80% of them.

Being in the data is not the same as being linked. Steady Demand found Yelp in ChatGPT’s business-card grounding data for 95.83% of local responses in August 2026, but Yelp was cited as a visible source in only 1.04%, according to its research index. Yelp shapes the ratings and details ChatGPT shows, while the click may never reach Yelp. Our ChatGPT local business recommendation rate report covers how rarely ChatGPT names any single business.

Across AI platforms, Yelp received 512,680 citations in Q4 2025, 3.4 times BBB’s 149,710, in the Foundation Marketing and AirOps analysis that Yelp commissioned. Google AI Mode produced 340,721 of those Yelp citations and Perplexity 146,196, which Driven Metrics calculates as 66.5% and 28.5% of the total.

Where do homeowners check contractors before hiring?

Yelp is a verification stop more than a starting point: Driven Metrics calculates that Yelp reached 77% as many homeowners as Google when people looked up contractor reviews, and in 2026 most AI users double-checked AI picks against review sites.

Note: platform answers allowed multiple selections, so they do not sum to 100%. Sources: ACHR News; BrightLocal; Yelp.

In a survey of 400 homeowners by Clear Seas Research and ACHR News, published September 17, 2024, 56% said they would likely seek contractor reviews on Google, 51% on the contractor’s own website and 43% on Yelp, ahead of Facebook at 36% and Angi at 32%, according to ACHR News. Respondents could choose more than one platform.

AI is now part of that research path, and it sends people back to reviews. 45% of US consumers used an AI tool for a local business recommendation in the 12 months before BrightLocal’s 2026 survey, up from 6%, which Driven Metrics calculates as a 7.5x increase. Among AI users, 88% said they check whether a review is legitimate or look at the source. In a Yelp-commissioned Morning Consult survey of 2,202 US adults in February 2026, 57% said they use AI tools to find local businesses at least monthly and 76% said seeing where the information comes from is important.

Yelp also tested an HVAC search directly. In a Yelp-commissioned design test of 200 US adults on April 2, 2026, 77% preferred an AI answer that showed ratings, review snippets, citations and a quote-request button over a plain text answer, and 81% said links to well-known platforms made them more confident. These are small, sponsor-run tests, so they show direction rather than market size. For the wider picture of how AI answers change clicks, see our AI search statistics 2026 report, and for the Google side of local visibility, our SEO services page.

Frequently asked questions about Yelp for contractors

Methodology

Sources combined: 12 published sources dated September 17, 2024 to October 20, 2026, including Yelp’s Q4 2025 and Q2 2026 shareholder letters and Q2 2026 Form 10-Q, Yelp’s October 2026 product release, a Yelp-commissioned Morning Consult survey (2,202 US adults), BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey (1,002 US adults) and AI directory study (1,967,762 citations, 1,355 locations), Steady Demand’s ChatGPT grounding test (2,880 prompts plus a 1,728-prompt cross-check), the Foundation Marketing and AirOps citation analysis (Q4 2025) with PPC Land’s report on it, and ACHR News’ homeowner survey (400 homeowners).

Formulas: revenue per paying location per month = quarterly Services ad revenue / monthly average paying Services locations / 3 (for example, $240,963,000 / 259,000 / 3 = $310); share = part / total (for example, 240,963 / 342,495 = 70.4%); year-over-year change = current quarter / same quarter a year earlier minus 1; ratio = value A / value B (for example, 12.3% / 4.7% = 2.6x); citation share among three platforms = platform citations / sum of the three; price-to-revenue multiple = purchase price / annual recurring revenue.

Limitations: Yelp’s Services category includes auto, professional, pet, real estate, financial and event services as well as home services, so spend figures are category averages, not contractor quotes. AI citation studies are point-in-time snapshots with different prompts, samples and countries, and two of the AI studies (Foundation and AirOps, and the Morning Consult survey) were commissioned by Yelp. Driven Metrics did not run its own survey or crawl for this report.

Have Yelp, lead or AI citation data for service businesses you can share for the next update? Contact Driven Metrics.

Sources

1. Q2 2026 Letter to Shareholders (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.2). Yelp Inc. Jeremy Stoppelman and David Schwarzbach. August 6, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1345016/000134501626000059/yelpq22026ex992lettertos.htm
2. Q4 and Full Year 2025 Letter to Shareholders (Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.2). Yelp Inc. Jeremy Stoppelman and David Schwarzbach. February 12, 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1345016/000134501626000011/yelpq42025ex992lettertos.htm
3. Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2026. Yelp Inc. August 2026. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1345016/000134501626000066/yelp-20260630.htm
4. Do more on Yelp: Smarter AI answers, seamless reservations, and automated tools for businesses. Yelp (Official Blog). Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh. October 20, 2026. https://blog.yelp.com/news/fall-product-release-2026/
5. Americans Use AI But Don’t Trust It. That’s a Problem Worth Solving. Yelp (Official Blog). Craig Saldanha. April 14, 2026. https://blog.yelp.com/news/americans-use-ai-but-dont-trust-it-thats-a-problem-worth-solving/
6. Local Consumer Review Survey 2026: Star Ratings Keep Rising, Old Reviews Don’t Cut It. BrightLocal. Rosie Murphy. February 11, 2026. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/
7. Nearly Half of Consumers are Asking AI for Business Recommendations. BrightLocal. Rosie Murphy. March 10, 2026. https://www.brightlocal.com/research/lcrs-ai-trust/
8. Top sources and directories for local AI search: What 1.9million citations across 116,670 domains tells us. BrightLocal. Mike Hawkes. August 26, 2026. https://www.brightlocal.com/resources/ai-directory-sources/
9. Steady Demand Research Index: AI and GBP Stats (ChatGPT’s local results aren’t coming from Foursquare, August 21, 2026). Steady Demand. Ben Fisher. August 29, 2026. https://www.steadydemand.com/steady-demand-research-index-ai-and-gbp-stats/
10. The LLMs Have Spoken: Yelp is the Top Source for AI Local Search. Foundation Marketing (with AirOps). Ross Simmonds. May 28, 2026. https://foundationinc.co/lab/yelp-ai-local-discovery/
11. Yelp gets 3.4x more AI citations than any rival in new local search data. PPC Land. Luis Rijo. May 30, 2026. https://ppc.land/yelp-gets-3-4x-more-ai-citations-than-any-rival-in-new-local-search-data/
12. 91% of Homeowners Rely on Online Reviews Before Picking Contractors. ACHR News (Clear Seas Research). Dylan Kurt. September 17, 2024. https://www.achrnews.com/articles/155206-91-of-homeowners-rely-on-online-reviews-before-picking-contractors