Update as of February 2023: Since first publishing this blog post, we have updated the consumer notice that appears on business pages categorized as Crisis Pregnancy Centers to state that these businesses do not offer abortions or referrals to abortion providers. This change helps us further maintain the quality and integrity of our content and better surface actual healthcare services that consumers may be looking for. While some people may come to Yelp to find businesses that offer pregnancy resources, there are others who turn to Yelp to find reliable information about abortion providers.
Following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the ability to access safe abortion care has become more limited for millions of women across the U.S. – making access to information about businesses that offer reproductive health services more important than ever. At Yelp, the trust and safety of our community is a top priority, which is why providing consumers with reliable and useful information to help inform their decisions is critical to our mission – this includes access to reliable information about reproductive health services.
Yelp has a consistent track record of supporting access to reproductive healthcare for our employees, underserved communities and our users. For years, we’ve invested in helping consumers find trusted information when seeking reproductive health care. And over the past several months, as the fate of abortion rights hung in the balance, we’ve increased our efforts to protect our users and provide them with access to the information they’re looking for, which includes better matching them with reproductive health services that actually offer abortions when they are searching for abortion services and making it less likely they will see crisis pregnancy centers that don’t.
To further demonstrate this commitment, today, we’re introducing a new notification on Yelp business pages for Crisis Pregnancy Centers that informs consumers these businesses typically offer limited medical services. In addition, we’re expanding our manual recategorization effort for those businesses.
Providing Users With Reliable Information on Reproductive Health Services
While some people come to Yelp to find businesses that offer pregnancy resources, there are others who turn to Yelp to find reliable information about abortion providers. To provide consumers with helpful information when looking for reproductive health services, Yelp’s new consumer notice will appear on Crisis Pregnancy Centers’ business pages, informing consumers that businesses in those categories typically provide limited medical services and may not have licensed medical professionals onsite. It’s well-reported that crisis pregnancy centers do not offer abortion services, and it’s been shown that many provide misleading information in an attempt to steer people seeking abortion care to other options. With this new consumer notice we’re aiming to further protect consumers from the potential of being misled or confused.
Recategorizing Business Pages to Distinguish Crisis Pregnancy Centers from Other Reproductive Healthcare Providers on Yelp
Since 2018, Yelp’s moderators have manually evaluated tens of thousands of business listings and recategorized businesses that do not offer actual abortion services as Crisis Pregnancy Centers. Our moderators conduct thorough investigations by scouring businesses’ websites, social media pages, “About the Business” information contributed to Yelp by the businesses themselves, Yelp reviews from consumers, and more.
We’ve continued to regularly audit and investigate these businesses – in 2022 alone, we have proactively evaluated nearly 33,500 U.S. business pages and recategorized nearly 470 business pages as Crisis Pregnancy Centers (as of August 8, 2022). Yelp’s moderators are continuing these investigations in the coming months, with plans to evaluate a total of 55,000+ business pages across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.
We take transparency seriously, especially around sensitive healthcare decisions. These updates further demonstrate Yelp’s commitment to maintain the trust and safety of our users, and quality and integrity of the information we provide them.
