In 2019, we launched the Women-Owned Business attribute in partnership with Rebecca Minkoff and the Female Founder Collective to help people find and support women-owned businesses on Yelp. Today, more than 310,000 businesses have adopted the women-owned attribute on Yelp. We recognize the vital role women business owners play in their local communities and are committed to supporting these businesses, which is why we held our inaugural Women in Business Summit in 2021 and look forward to Yelp’s 2022 Women in Business Summit on March 24th.
In honor of Women’s History Month, we are sharing an update on how our users interacted with Women-owned businesses on Yelp in 2021. We’ve also compiled a list of Women-owned businesses to watch, highlighting standout businesses in food, beauty, and home and decor across the country.
In 2021, Yelp data shows that consumers were proactively looking to support women-owned businesses at an increasing rate – searches on Yelp for women-owned businesses increased by 137% in 2021 compared to the average of the previous 3 years (2018-2020). Similarly, mentions of women business owners in reviews rose by 64% in 2021 from 2020.
Notably, businesses identified as women-owned on Yelp have an average rating of 4.41, surpassing the 3.64 average rating for all businesses listed on Yelp. This ratings edge existed prior to when the businesses adopted their identity attribute – demonstrating that the higher rating more likely reflects a great customer experience than any correlation to the identity attribute. In fact, in 2021, women-owned businesses responded to reviews at a rate 41% above the average response rate for all business owners on Yelp.
The states with the most women-owned businesses on Yelp are California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Georgia and the cities with the most women-owned businesses on Yelp are Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Miami and Chicago.
Update: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the number of Women-owned businesses on Yelp. The number of businesses who have identified as women-owned on Yelp is 310,000.
Methodology
Consumer Interest Before and After Attribute Adoption
Yelp’s consumer interest metric is measured as the count of three of the many actions consumers take on Yelp: page views, posting reviews, and posting photos. To measure the impact of adoption of identity attributes on local business, the difference in average consumer interest is measured between total businesses in the category and women-owned businesses, during a specific period after the attribute was selected and the same length of time before the attribute was adopted.
Identity Attribute Counts Nationally and by State / Metro Areas
Geographies with a high prevalence of businesses that adopted the women-owned attribute are identified by calculating the geography’s share of total women-owned businesses nationally.
Response to Reviews and Review Mentions
To compare response rates across business owners, Yelp first calculates the average rate of review response for businesses during a specified time period (all of 2021 in this case). Then we calculate the response rate from women-owned businesses.
Review mentions of women-owned were counted for calendar years 2021, 2020, and 2019.
Consumer Searches
We compare the frequency of “identity attribute” words (including “women-owned” and similar words) relative to all searches 2018 through 2021. Both searches where consumers directly type a search into the search bar and where consumers click on a suggested term or phrase are included.
