Yelp vs Expertise.com: The Two Directories AI Engines Trust Most

Yelp: 115 mentions. Expertise.com: 113. Across 750 AI queries, these two directories accounted for more organic citations than the next five combined.

But they don't compete. They dominate completely different territories. Yelp owns local services and healthcare. Expertise.com owns professional services and tech. Knowing which one matters for your industry changes how you allocate your directory budget.

This analysis comes from our AI Citation Study where we queried Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity across 50 commercial categories. Every directory mention was unprompted. We never used the word "directory" in our queries.

The Overall Scoreboard

Two points separate them. But the distribution is completely different.

Yelp's Territory: Local and Healthcare

Yelp received 62 mentions in Local Home Services alone. That's 54% of its total. Add Healthcare (27 mentions) and you've accounted for 77% of every Yelp mention in the study.

Categories where Yelp dominates Expertise by 3+ mentions:

13 categories where Yelp leads. In 7 of those, Expertise.com scored zero. When AI engines advise buyers about plumbers, dentists, or moving companies, Yelp is the default trust signal and Expertise.com doesn't register.

Expertise.com's Territory: Agencies and Professional Services

Expertise.com received 46 mentions in Professional Services and 30 in Tech & SaaS. That's 67% of its total concentrated in two verticals.

Categories where Expertise dominates Yelp by 3+ mentions:

14 categories where Expertise leads. In 8 of those, Yelp scored zero. For tech agencies, consultancies, and B2B professional services, Expertise.com is the reference point AI engines use. Yelp is irrelevant.

The Engine Split

This is where it gets interesting. Each AI engine has a favourite.

ChatGPT is the Expertise.com engine. 77 mentions. Nearly 4x what Claude gives it (21). If your buyers primarily use ChatGPT and you're a tech agency not on Expertise.com, you're invisible to the AI engine that recommends it most.

Claude is the Yelp engine. 57 mentions versus 21 for Expertise. Claude trusts Yelp's review infrastructure for consumer-facing businesses more than any other source.

Perplexity splits evenly. 15 Expertise vs 11 Yelp. No strong preference.

This means: which directory matters more for your business depends partly on which AI engine your buyers use. A ChatGPT-heavy audience (most consumers) rewards Expertise.com investment. A Claude-heavy audience (increasingly common in B2B research) rewards Yelp and Clutch.

The Template Test

We ran five types of queries. How Yelp and Expertise performed across each reveals what kind of buyer question triggers each directory.

Two standout findings.

Template 4 ("How would you verify this provider?") is where Yelp crushes it. 55 mentions vs 26. When AI engines answer trust-based questions, Yelp is the default verification source. This makes sense: Yelp has the largest consumer review corpus, which AI engines treat as ground truth for legitimacy.

Template 2 ("Compare the leading providers") is where Expertise.com has a complete shutout. 22 mentions vs zero for Yelp. When AI engines build comparison frameworks, they reference Expertise.com's structured rankings. Yelp doesn't generate comparative content the same way.

Traditional B2B: the One Vertical Where Neither Wins

Dead tie at 15 each. Traditional B2B (fleet management, industrial furniture, waste management, wholesale) is the only vertical where neither Yelp nor Expertise dominates. BBB actually takes the lead here at 17 mentions. This vertical has a directory vacuum that neither consumer-facing platform fills effectively.

What This Means

If you run a local service business or healthcare practice: Yelp first. Always. It accounts for 54% of all AI directory recommendations in your vertical. Add BBB and Angi to complete the stack.

If you run a tech agency, consultancy, or professional services firm: Expertise.com first, especially if your buyers use ChatGPT. Add Clutch for tech. Add G2 if you're a software product.

If you run a traditional B2B company: neither Yelp nor Expertise will save you. BBB is your best bet, followed by industry-specific directories. The AI directory infrastructure for B2B barely exists.

Full data from this analysis is available in the AI Citation Study CSV download. For a category-by-category breakdown of which directory wins each vertical, see AI Recommends Clutch for Tech, Yelp for Local, RealSelf for Health.