Amazon’s Echo personal assistant continues to expand its horizons and get more useful with a number of incremental updates, including the most recent one available now that offers local search results from Yelp.
The update was pushed out over the weekend and should be available to all now.
Echo owners can ask the device a number of questions to find out about local businesses — their phone numbers, address, hours of operation and more. To make it work, you first give Echo your address via its associated app and then start asking things like, “Alexa, I need a plumber in Richland, Washington.”
Restaurants have long been a strength for Yelp, so Echo/Alexa is equally helpful in that vertical. In the videos below, I first asked Alexa for Italian restaurants near me, and then followed up asking for the phone number of one that sounded interesting.
After you ask a question, Echo also offers additional information (sourced from and credited to Yelp) about the resulting businesses in its app.
In an email sent to Echo owners, Amazon promises that more local search features like the above are on the way.
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