ChatGPT wants to widen its range of offerings and give users an increasingly complete suite of tools. OpenAI’s ecosystem already provides basic features and numerous extensions designed to keep people inside the chatbot for as long as possible. Consider, for example, the ability to buy concert tickets, book hotels, request specific details about an event, compare the price of an item, and much more.
Along these lines, Axios reported in the past few hours, as an exclusive, that a new partnership between OpenAI and Yelp — the well-known service for finding and reviewing nearby businesses — has come together. The goal is to let ChatGPT tap a new source of real-time data to give users advice on places worth visiting.
Inside the new partnership
The collaboration between OpenAI and Yelp is one more sign of how ChatGPT — and AI chatbots in general — are capturing ever-larger slices of the market, all at the expense of traditional search engines, whose traffic keeps falling.
The average user prefers to put questions directly to their favorite AI for everyday searches rather than run a manual query on Google Search or other engines. That is exactly why integrating Yelp’s data can offer extra help to anyone looking for information on nearby restaurants, things to do in another city, local recommendations, and much more.
ChatGPT will be able to show Yelp reviews, ratings, photos, and other details as part of its answers to user queries. Every time OpenAI uses Yelp’s content, both the Yelp brand and its links will be displayed. A “Request a Quote” feature is reportedly coming soon as well, allowing ChatGPT users to contact local service providers directly.
How the ChatGPT ecosystem keeps growing
This deal between OpenAI and Yelp confirms an increasingly concrete trend: companies built on proprietary data are choosing to become part of ChatGPT rather than compete with it. The same thing is happening with Reddit, which decided to monetize its data through an agreement with Sam Altman’s company. The situation is similar for several news publishers — though some outlets, such as The New York Times, still want to protect their content from large language models (LLMs).
This centralization of services could also become a problem for the big incumbents. Coming back to the Yelp integration in ChatGPT, giving users real-time information and reviews could push them to abandon Google Maps, at least for this use case.
Google has Gemini as its built-in system, but it is clear that the popularity of a platform like ChatGPT could, at the very least, put pressure on Google when it comes to traffic.
Editor’s note
This article was originally published in Italian on money.it by Pasquale Conte on July 24, 2026 as «ChatGPT sfida Google Maps. Accordo con Yelp per cercare negozi e chiedere preventivi via AI». It has been translated and adapted for an international audience by the Money.it International desk.
