Support for Black-owned businesses skyrocketed to historic levels in the last 2 months, according to a new Yelp report

• Interest in supporting Black-owned businesses has skyrocketed to historical levels, according to a Wednesday Yelp report.
• Search activity for Black-owned businesses on Yelp increased by over 7,000% in the last two months compared to the same period last year.
• Justin Norman, Yelp's vice president of data science, told Business Insider that Yelp had never seen such a large spike due to a social movement.
• Norman also said that the data indicates a lasting shift in consumer behavior, and that Yelp expects higher interest in Black-owned businesses to persist.

Interest in supporting Black-owned businesses has never been so high, according to a Yelp report released on Wednesday.

Search activity for Black-owned businesses on Yelp increased by 7,043% in the last two months compared to the same period in 2019. Yelp users searched for Black-owned businesses over 2.5 million times between May 25 to July 10. In 2019, there were around 35,000 similar searches during the same period.

Justin Norman, Yelp's vice president of data science, told Business Insider in an email that Yelp has never seen such a significant increase in support for Black-owned businesses.

"In general, most of the spikes we see are tied to holidays and events," Norman said. "We haven't seen a previous movement-based spike to date and we're thrilled and inspired by the continued support and increase in searches for Black-owned businesses."

Black-owned businesses have been some of the hardest-hit by the pandemic. However, the death of George Floyd in late May sparked the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement as well as an interest in supporting Black business owners. And on July 7, many people celebrated "Blackout Day," urging people to shop only at Black-owned businesses for the day.

According to the Yelp report, people have been especially interested in Black-owned restaurants and bookstores, with restaurant searches up by 2,508% and bookstore searches up by 1,437% compared to last year. Norman said that he views this as a lasting shift and expects the interest to continue.

"We do expect to see continued elevated interest in Black-owned businesses," Norman said. "There has been sustained interest in Black-owned businesses since the initial peak at the end of May and beginning of June, and this interest is diversifying past the initial generic searches for Black-owned businesses and restaurants into a wider range of business types. To me, this signals a shift in consumer behavior and habit that I expect will continue."