Awesome Data – Yelp Dataset Challenge

Curated entry in the Awesome Data collection pointing to the Yelp Open Dataset, a large, real-world dataset commonly used for data science and machine learning projects involving local businesses, reviews, and user-generated content.

• Source: Yelp Open Dataset
• Brand: Yelp
• Category: Themed directories
• Tags: datasets, machine-learning, business

Features

Dataset scope

• Educational / research focus: Intended for educational and research use (e.g., data science, machine learning, information retrieval, recommendation systems).
• Real-world business data: Captures real Yelp business and review activity.

Contents & scale

• Reviews: 6,990,280 reviews
• Businesses: 150,346 businesses
• Geographical coverage: 11 metropolitan areas
• Photos / pictures: 200,100 pictures
• Attributes & metadata (via JSON files), including for example:
  • Business hours
  • Parking availability
  • Ambience and similar business attributes
  • Check-ins

File structure & formats

• Main JSON bundle (business/review data):
  • 1 compressed TAR archive (≈ 4.35 GB)
  • Uncompressed contents (≈ 8.65 GB):
    • 1 PDF (documentation)
    • 5 JSON files (core dataset files)
    • Documentation included
• Photos bundle:
  • 1 compressed TAR archive (≈ 7.45 GB)
  • Uncompressed contents (≈ 7.11 GB):
    • 1 JSON file
    • 1 text file
    • 1 PDF (documentation)
    • 1 folder containing ≈ 200,000 photos
    • Documentation included

Access & downloads

• Data download (JSON): Download JSON
• Photos download: Download photos

Use Cases

• Academic coursework and projects (data mining, statistics, ML)
• Research on recommendations, NLP, sentiment analysis, and ranking
• Analysis of local business ecosystems and user behavior

Pricing

• Presented as an open, educational dataset; no pricing information is provided in the source content.