Empowering Information Discovery: Extracting Meaning from Yelp Reviews

Yelp, Inc. Computer Science, 2015-16

Liaison(s): Colin Pollock, Mohini Thakkar, Phillip Zukin
Advisor(s): Julie Medero
Students(s): Chloé Calvarin (PM-F), Dani Demas (PM-S), Josh Kutsko, Won Kyoung Park, James Saindon

The goal of this project is to explore new ways in which Yelp can help its users glean information from an overwhelming number of reviews for a business. To that end, we have implemented a system that automatically identifies important characteristics of a business and the reviewers’ opinions of these characteristics. With this information, we group these characteristics into high-level categories so that users can quickly find the information they’re looking for.