Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Yext & Local SEO
Yext is doing local differently. I don’t normally write reviews of commercial products but when they offered me two free listings I decided to explore the value of the service for local SEOs.
In local citation building we have come to expect that it might take 8, 16 or even 20 weeks for a citation to make its way into the search engines. The local ecosystem, a complicated web of relationships and feeds, is to some extent a technology mired in the last millennium. Much of the delay in a citation winding its way through the system has been due to the time it takes the data collectors and aggregators to create their own data builds and move the list to the next point in the local chain.
UBL for example might send data to Infogroup only once every 4 weeks. Infogroup could take as long as 4 to 8 weeks to process and verify a listing. This is particularly true of a new business. Infogroup would then assemble their complete list and feed it to their customer sites periodically, perhaps once a month or even once a quarter depending on the plan that the local directly had subscribed to. Even if the upstream data supplier processed the information more quickly the local directories that utilized this data might only integrate the new listings into their index once a month, once quarter or perhaps only twice a year.
Google, because of their desire to “organize all of the world’s information”, is one of the more proactive local sites at updating their local index and integrating new listing data. But even for them, with all of their processing power, their internal data “pipeline” would take 4 to 6 weeks for data to be pushed into an updated Places index.
Thus if you hit the timing just wrong it might take 20 weeks (or more) for a new listing citation to wend its through the maze that is the local ecosystem and appear in Google’s Places index.
Yext has taken a different path to data distribution. They have built technology that pushes local listing data and its enhanced content to its participating directories in near real time. With their product a local business or an agency can claim and enhance their listing with photos, hours and offers and expect to see it at a number of top tier directories and local search engines within hours or a few days. Participating directories include names like Yelp, Yahoo, Superpages, Mapquest and CityGrid and 28 other directories, IYPs and local sites.
Yext also provides a single login and dashboard, a very fast and functional user interface for data entry, mulit-level management of the listings and some reporting of listing views from the sites that use its service.
Compared to entering the listing data at these many sites by hand, it is both more accurate and a big time saver. But it comes at a fairly steep price. Yext’s business model is to charge $495 per listing. To incent their participating directories roughly 50% of that fee is shared. The service is efficient and there is a certain thrill to watch listings pop up so quickly.
Here is a some of my findings.
Time to live:
Late on January 13th I created two Yext accounts. Every time that a listing goes live with one of Yext’s participating directories and email is sent to the account holder. One listing went live within the hour and over the next 36 hours many of the other listings went live. There were a few stragglers but by January 19th all of the listings had gone live except CitySearch which took 21 days. In the case of Yelp neither listing went live. In Barbara Oliver’s case it was due to the fact that the listing had already been claimed at Yelp. In the case of PBM Elder Law, the client was executing a name change that was not yet reflected on the client website and Yelp rejected the listing. It will be resubmitted once the client side work has been finished.
Total Citations Generated:
I used Whitespark.ca‘s citation measurement tool to assess citation growth in the main Google index (no tool can measure citations in the Google Map index). A regular citation search collects all the citations it can find in Google’s index. A re-run performs the exact same procedure at a later date, compares the old list with the new list, and appends any new citations found to the list. The system does not currently track citations that have dropped from the index (which Google periodically does), but it will soon.
I tracked citations for the following two businesses, Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry where most of the directories in the Yext corral had already been claimed and a virgin listing, PBM Elder Law. The former had a lot of claims the second has virtually none. In both cases it added 5 to a regular run and about 20 to an append and rerun.
| LISTING WITH PREVIOUS CLAIMS | SEARCH DATE | CITATIONS |
| Barbara Oliver ((716) 204-1297) | Feb 22, 2012 | 83 |
| Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry ((716) 204-1297) | Feb 1, 2012 | 79 |
| Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry ((716) 204-1297) | Jan 15, 2011 | 78 |
The rerun/append to comes in at
| Barbara Oliver & Co Jewelry ((716) 204-1297) | Jan 15, 2011 | 99 |
;
| LISTING WITH NO PREVIOUS CLAIMS | SEARCH DATE | CITATIONS |
| PBM Elder Law (716 204-1055) | Feb 22, 2012 | 56 |
| PBM Elder Law (716 204-1055) | Feb 16, 2012 | 54 |
| PBM Elder Law Buffalo | Jan 15, 2012 | 51 |
The rerun and append comes in at
| PBM Elder Law Buffalo | Jan 15, 2012 | 74 |
Listing views:
Yext provides some reporting about total searches and listing views from the sites where they send data. It is minimalist to say the least and, unlike the listing, is delayed several weeks. January 14th Through February 12th the listing had been viewed 27 times.
Site Visits:
Barbara Oliver generates between 800 to 1000 visits a month. Local IYP traffic has always been a very small percentage of that traffic. For example during the timeframe (January 14-Feb 22) during which I measured the citations the site generated a total of 1281 visits. 865 of those coming from Google search and 9 coming from Google Maps. We saw a small uptick in citysearch from one to 6 visits and a small downtick in Yahoo local visits. The sample is much to small to make any conclusions about site traffic value. But that would be true of the traffic from most IYP sites regardless of Yext.
Value:
So whether it is worth $495 or not I am not sure.
Pluses:
-From a management and process point of view for the local SEO the service makes sense. Its fast and efficient and provides some tracking. What would take 6 or 7 hours is done in 15 minutes. If outsourced it would cost in the range of a $100 but the quality and consistency would not be as good.
-It seems to generate between 5 and 6 additional citations that Google thinks are important. Why that should be the case with listings that have already been claimed is not clear.
-The service allows for specials to be easily created and disseminated quickly and things like hours to be changed in a timely fashion.
-There is some reporting and there is decent multilevel management so an SEO can allow clients to access their own reports.
-If a business were to move or change phone numbers it provides a very efficient way of grappling with that issue.
-Whether you use the service or not, Yext’s Local Search Scorecard is a great way to assess NAP consistency across a wide range of sites.
Negatives:
-The reporting is lame. Although in conversations with Yext’s Howard Lerman, they will be adding additional features and color. One of particular interest will be review tracking.
-The cost in and off itself is expensive and it is an annual recurring cost. There is a small reseller discount that starts at only 5% and with enough volume goes up.
– Web traffic from these sites is small compared to Google and even comparing to Bing or Yahoo. But that isn’t Yext’s issue.
My conclusions:
Making Local more efficient is a net plus. Certainly the time saved and efficiencies gained have real value in any busy SEO firm. But given the annual costs, many smaller businesses and a fair number of local SEO’s will find the price too high. A higher volume discount would be compelling as would a second year pricing discount.
If you are managing businesses that do well in these types of directories (lawyers etc) or have very high transaction value then this service makes all kinds of sense. A single sale for a PI Lawyer (for any lawyer for that matter) or a Jeweler can easily pay the annual cost.
Its not for every SEO but I personally find the service valuable and will use it for appropriate clients.
Do you use Yext? What is your opinion of it? Do you find value for your agency?
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
119 Comments
[…] developments in the use of APIs by CityGrid (2010) for their ad network, Yext (2011) and UBL Direct (2012) now remove one level of the delay and push data in near real time […]
Mike, if Yext listings were permanent, then IMHO it is sort of a no brainer.
But we are a small roof cleaning business here in tampa, and work on a very low margin.
Plus, we are not an essential service, and the local economy has not helped us.
I do not wish to be “trapped” into paying 499.00 a year, to keep my data consistent.
It is literally a nightmare trying to get incorrect data changed. Not only is it time consuming, it seems to never get done either.
I have updated my data in several places, but guess what ? It never gets done.
These sites tell you they have received the new data, and will update, but when you check back, even many months later, guess what ?
Nothing has been changed!
It is almost a conspiracy it seems Mike ?
These Yext Partner Directories seem to have found a new income stream, pay to get your incorrect info changed, or else!
Then, Yext gets it’s hooks in you for 500 bucks, every year!
@Chris
The core listing data IS permanent. The only thing that gets pulled if you pull your contract is the enhanced data.
Mike, great re-cap. Well done sir!
This article is eight months old now. Can you comment on how (if at all) your views on a strategy for managing directory listing data might have changed in that time? I have +-30 locations from one company that I’m trying to create a directory data management strategy for.
If Google+ Local was my primary concern for accurate data, with “feeder” sites/directories would be the first two or three to tackle?
I’m having issues with my changes to my +-30 claimed listings not being reflected on the on the final Google+ Local page, so I’m hoping that cleaning up data on some other directories might help.
Keep up the good work!
@Mark
In the US there are three primary data suppliers to the Google Local index that need to be “clean” for Google to have a hope of getting it right; InfoUSA, Localeze & Google MapMaker.
In addition to those 3 there are local sources that syndicate content widely or are highly trusted by Google and thus can have an impact beyond their specific reach; Acxiom, Superpages, CitySearch.
Beyond that the many directories will mostly pick up their data from one of the above but the obvious suspects like Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, Thumbtack etc etc etc would be next in line.
Mike, I just signed up for CityGrid. They seem different in that they make enhanced content ads on their network. The CityGrid sales rep told me these ads count as, and are even better then citations, because they have much more content, and Google Loves Content!
They are on a PPC Bassis, and presumably Geo Targeted ?
LOL, I sure hope so! I clean roofs here in Tampa. I sure as heck can’t go to NYC.
The CityGrid sales rep did tell me that the listings are permanent across their network, once the ads are cancelled. PPC scares me to death, to be honest.
Also, I read somewhere that Google loves CityGrid data ? So, what quicker way to get my data to them is there, besides taking out their PPC Ads ?
LOL, after I signed up with them, I did see some truly awful reviews on them.
Why not monitor my business Mike, and see if my citations increase, or get corrected by the CityGrid PPC ads ?
Here is my information
Apple Roof Cleaning Tampa Florida
711 Westbrook
Brandon, Florida 33511
813-655-8777
http://www.saferoofcleaning.com
The CityGrid ads have not started yet. So, perhaps Whitespark me, see how many citations I now have, then let the CityGrid ads start, and Whitespark me again ?
IF what the CityGrid sales rep said is true, it could be a fast way of getting citations, and/or overwriting old data, right ?
And I think that will be a benefit to us all.
Please remember Mike, that not everyone who reads this great Blog are SEO Guys. Many of us are very small business owners like myself, who simply can’t afford you “SEO Giants”.
@Chris
Citygrid charges WAY too much for very little value… its PPC but with a $320 minimum….
As to working on your behalf I would love to at my normal hourly rates.
Whoa Mike, a 320.00 a Month MINIMUM for City Grid ?
Good Lord, I have been forced to run adwords lately, and my total budget of 150.00 a month is never exceeded. The ads have not actually run yet, how do I cancel this nightmare ?
There’s really a terrific opportunity out there for someone to offer a similar service to Yext, but at a reasonable price.
Anyone aware of a service that’s the same level of coverage and quality, but at a price that’s more reasonable?
I’ve got 3 businesses that I would sign up right now if someone offered it up for $99 or so. Seeing that it’s a service that’s fairly easy to automate, I don’t see why some entrepreneur couldn’t make money at that price.
Yext should be charging a one time fee. The yearly fee is ridiculous. Once you pay the initial payment, your listings should be good to go and stay online. Manually building links is better for the client and you have more control.
Yext introduces PowerListings+
An improvement, but still just 1 small piece of the Local SEO puzzle.
I continue to be amazed at how many local businesses believe that this 1 service will solve all their online marketing needs.
Attests to the marketing job Howard has his team doing.
http://searchengineland.com/yext-reinvents-the-local-business-listing-with-new-rich-content-options-145164?_tmc=oZvCTwnE6DQfhDB6AF6LgZmGDSvWy-Td4HMSvecZ0a8
I just revisited these comments after posting last year. What great feedback by everyone! I’m now scrapping my Yext account after having it for a year with relatively insignificant results. Now I’ll be going with the 6 main listing services Mike mentioned (InfoUSA, Localeze, Google Mapmaker, Acxiom, SuperPages, and CitySearch).
Did I miss anything here that could help a local B2B company get some SEO benefits? Any additional recommendations are welcome.
God HELP you, if Yext gets ahold of your Email address!
They are spamming me daily with deceptive emails, like I am some big account they want to sign up.
I have emailed them back to assure them I am not a big account, just a small roof cleaning company here in tampa, who can not afford or wants their services.
The degree of Spam Yext stoops to is unprecedented, in my experience.
They send out emails that deceive you.
Their sales team has no idea what they are talking about… They start their poor 1990 sales pitch about local directory submissions that you can actually do for free if you take the time to do it.
They try to tell you how your website is not showing up on Google, Yahoo, and Bing when it really does. Like they know exactly what your target audience, keywords, and goals are for your internet marketing campaign. The guy “Josh” even gave me a keyword suggestion that was search 0 times according to Google’s Keyword Tool. Thanks Josh for the great advice, you just told me how to make my company fail.
They get an attitude with you over the phone when you ask them a question because they do not know how to answer it. Then they try to call you over and over again until you have no choice but to call authorities to get them you remove your number.
I had a different experience than John, but the price is just too much and I am looking for something more affordable. In fact, I can do it myself, but I was impressed with the results they showed me in my sector. Admittedly only 3-4 of their channels seem terribly relevant to my field.
If we made that type of investment with minimum results, as somebody else reported on this threat, that would be terrible. And I also think the annual fee is a bit much.
Does anyone know of anything comparable, but more affordable?
I have to take issue with “SEO” being anywhere near a realistic discussion on Yext. While there may be some value in the increased citations, your website link will be replaced with a tracking URL belonging to Yext! Absolutely no organic SEO value to me.
That being said, I could see a time-saving value of having them update all my listings. However, they aren’t updating MY listings, they seem to be updating THEIR listings with my name on them, because they have the ability to destroy them if I don’t pay their fee.
I was wondering if anyone has had any experiance or has tested Bright Local? I have been looking for some performance reviews but come up short. They seem to have some nice features.
I have been using Bright Local since they have been out. I can honestly say without hesitation they are one of my favorite online tools. I find their ranking reports to be the best laid out of any of the ranking reports and their white label capabilities allow me to present these reports to my clients. I have used their citation service which is pretty good as well. Myles is very customer service oriented. For the money you can’t beat em.
I’m definitely looking into BrightLocal now. I don’t know if they’ll be substantially better than Yext and the like, but I just put BrightLocal through the first of my new vetting processes and they passed.
I did a google search on “brightlocal scam” and couldn’t find anything.
I only wish I had googled “yext scam” before I signed with those people. 🙁
Excellent and informative article. I just got to it by researching “yext reviews” and am considering their services along with others.
One question. When you did your test you reviewed two businesses, one with extensive citations one without . The distribution of citations occurred quickly.
Did the business without widespread citations see an improvement in rankings either getting into the PAC in its location and/or show an improvement in internal maps.google.com rankings following the usage of yext?
I really studied everything about the “partner” sites. The only thing that I was concerned about while researching yext was if their services actually work and if I could achieve those results without their help. I’ve done a very in depth study to see which of their business listing sites were free, and I posted my results on this page:
http://www.heritageins.net/yext
My conclusion was that at least 21 out of 46 of the sites that they listed were free, and 13 others I couldn’t find how to create a business listing. Check out my page and scroll to the bottom for the list of free business listings that they want you to pay for…
Hi Mike (and fellow readers),
I have been looking into the listing reversion and deletion issue quite a bit lately, as I have several clients who’s Yext service will expire soon.
Howard (from Yext) seems to indicate in his comments above that in ‘most cases’ their partners would continue to treat the Yext data as “the new ‘active’ record” after a account is cancelled. (I wonder what exactly ‘most cases’ means.)
Howard also said that Yext’s data “generally trumps after a subscription expires, until the partner feels they have a fresher source.” (I wonder what ‘generally trumps’ actually looks like.)
What is not mentioned in Howard’s replies is that there have been verified cases where many listings have disappeared altogether from Yext’s partner websites after cancellation of service.
I plan to do a deeper case study in the coming months comparing several Yext customers who’s service will expire soon, however, for now we can look at a case study provided by Nyagoslav Zhekov of NGS Marketing.
In Nyagoslav’s August 2013 article entitled What Actually Happens When One Cancels Yext, he speaks in detail of one case where someone cancelled their their Yext subscription.
He states that this resulted in 19 listings disappearing and 4 listings reverting back to ‘old’ data.
I checked the data in his spreadsheets and noticed that 6 of the 19 were listings that were hosted on Yext.com itself. Yext support told me that these page URLs “are actually screenshots of mobile apps and not actual links to listings.” Yext went on to say that they “only do this for our mobile app partners.”
The partner pages listed on the Yext website are also not indexed in search engines, perhaps because the data is only there to show what the info looks like on their partner’s mobile app, anyways (screenshots).
Though the ‘listings’ were removed from Yext’s own website, we can not really confirm if those 6 listings were actually ‘removed’ from the mobile app venues to which they were originally distributed. (I have emailed Yext tech support to inquire what happens to the mobile app venue data upon listing cancellation.)
I re-checked all the links in the spreadsheet to confirm the most current listing statuses and found 1 more venue that deleted a listing. I also searched each venue for the company NAP info to confirm if perhaps the listing URL had only changed. I found 1 venue had the listing at a different URL (but I’m not sure if it was re-created by the user afterward).
So we definitely know that at least 12 or 13 listings were deleted on the IYP venues after cancellation with Yext.
One of the 4 listings that Nyagoslav showed to be ‘reverted’ to old data appears to be ‘owner verified’ now and is showing the proper NAP info again. As for the other 3, I confirmed that they have certainly reverted back to the old data!
What I noticed when looking at the listings post-cancellation is that at least 5 of the IYP website listings that actually remained operational had no website URL anymore and 1 of those had no phone number listed either!
What I am very interested in knowing is ‘WHY’ the 4 listings reverted and WHY the 12 or 13 listings were deleted completely from Yext’s partner IYP websites.
What I don’t know at this point is:
– how long this customer actually used the Yext service before cancelling (How long were the Yext-synced listings in place before cancellation?)
– how many listings did or did not already exist before Yext performed their sync. (Were the listings that disappeared newly created by Yext or were they preexisting?)
– how many listings were already drawing from incorrect data sources to begin with (Were the major aggregators updated/corrected before or during the Yext sync?
If a lot of ‘bad’ data still existed in the major aggregators and other IYP sources, it is quite possible that venues such as InfoGroup, Localeze, Acxiom, D&B, Factual, and a plethora of other data sources were still trying to push what appeared as ‘authoritative’, though old/bad, data to these IYP venues.
I look forward to digging deeper into this issue. I also look forward to hearing more from Yext on this issue.
@Howard, can you shed some light as to why these listings disappeared from the IYP venues only days after cancellation of Yext service?
Sincerely,
Russ Offord
Russ
I have forwarded your comments off to Howard to see if he would respond.
Hi Mike,
I heard by from Yext regarding the ‘mobile app’ listings that I mentioned in comment #82.
The mobile app publishers apparently “leave the listing up with the correct name, address, and phone number”, though the listings are deleted from the Yext website.
‘Kelly S’ from Yext PowerListings support told me this:
“When you click View Listing for one of our mobile publishers, you see a screenshot of what the listing looks like on the app. When you cancel your subscription, we release the lock that we have on the listing and any content lists will be removed. Each publisher handles cancellation differently, but all of our mobile publishers leave the listing up with the correct name, address, and phone number. The links are deleted from our website, but the listings are not removed.”
Russ
Russ
Thanks for the update!
Im doing some freelance work for a group of carpet cleaning franchises throughout the Midwest and Florida. Was considering Yext, but now not so sure. One of their franchises in particular has a lot of duplicate/incorrect entries that I figured Yext could clean up.
You wrote this somewhere above:
“In the US there are three primary data suppliers to the Google Local index that need to be “clean” for Google to have a hope of getting it right; InfoUSA, Localeze & Google MapMaker.
In addition to those 3 there are local sources that syndicate content widely or are highly trusted by Google and thus can have an impact beyond their specific reach; Acxiom, Superpages, CitySearch.”
Are these alternatives to Yext, or are they separate sites where I would need to create an account for each? It wouldn’t be duplicating efforts to create accounts with each one, correct? These should all be done before considering Yext?
Im just getting started with SEO – I understand content creation for a website, but this business listing thing is out of my range of current experience.
@KB
Are these alternatives to Yext, or are they separate sites where I would need to create an account for each? It wouldn’t be duplicating efforts to create accounts with each one, correct? These should all be done before considering Yext?
They do things that Yext doesn’t do. You would need to create accounts in each. I think that these are first priority sites (along with Superpages & Factual now as they are the source for bad data/
Hello,
I have been trying to promote a local nonprofit by updating the information on several websites. However, several of the listings require a yext signing to be able to update….???? Is there any way around it?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
JC
JC
If the business is already claimed via Yext then you need to get their Yext log in and change it at Yext. Yext data overrides any other data at a directory site but can only be updated via the yext.com interface.
Hello,
Quick question, is there any way to not join yext and still be able to update business information? Some of the “local directories” require a yext log-in. I’ve tried to contact them via phone and email without success. Thank you in advance for your time and input!
ps I am trying to help a nonprofit become more visible online. Any links to websites with information, blogs, or articles are greatly appreciated.
jc
okay…thank you… sorry for the duplicate post
@JC & Mike,
I spoke with a couple members of the Yext team regarding the fact that some venues ‘force’ you to use Yext to update info.
Yext support mentioned that some of their partners never had a system in place to handle NAP data corrections before joining Yext. So now that they are a part of Yext network, they at least have a way to get data updated now.
If you really do not want to pay for Yext… I have had ‘some’ luck hunting down contact information for various venues.
If there is not a web form available on line, there may be a support email address listed somewhere. (or perhaps the venue has a twitter account that mentions contact info, or a Facebook account that you could contact.
If that fails (which it often does), I have ‘sometimes’ had luck doing a WHOIS look up to see if there is some sort of contact info in the domain registry.
Russ Offord
Orion Group LLC
Yext looks like a pretty compelling product to me. They have some good tools for evaluating your listings and seeing where you stand.
Mike, have the reporting tools improved? Need to be able to show something to clients that actually makes sense, is easy to understand, and clearly shows the value of this service.
If someone were to use Localeze for 12 months and then not renew for the next year, would the business listings that Localeze was feeding revert back to what they were before Localeze started being used?
@Danielle
Yes
You could spend the year locating the source listings at the primary data suppliers and fixing them. And that would improve the situation.
mapquest clearly had a free and premium model of business for 15+ years
in the last few weeks, it has gone all premium with yext.
this is gonna start smelling like a lawsuit or some sort of regulatory action… yext just cant extort money like this from business owners and SEOs who do not have corporate bullying power like they do.
highly disruptive to the market, time to bring some government or industry regulations to this wild west of SEO market.
@John S… YES! That’s exactly I how I feel! I’m in an unfortunate position where my business name and business phone number are inconsistent across the web. I’ve been slaving away to correct everything, but today I found “new” inconsistencies and it makes me feel like these listing sites are possibly colluding with YEXT.
My SEO is dependent on having correct NAP, and the only way to get many of them corrected is to PAY Yext. I think calling it “Grey Hat” is being kind, especially when you write that Yext is “sharing” our membership with the sites.
HI Mike or others,
I’m starting a new swimming pool building business with a partner of mine and am in the process of setting up the local citations.
My goal is to get the best bang for my buck. Any advice on where to start? I’m willing to pay some annual fees however it seems that alot of them are starting to charge annual fees.
Would it be best to set up some of the main ones myself and then use UBL or other company to help with the rest?
So far I have set up accts at infousa (aka expressupdate), angieslist, yelp, yahoo,
I think it is imperative that you claim all of the sites listed at getlisted.org
Does anyone else find it more than just a little bit disturbing the way these listing sites like local.com have “partnered” with Yext. They have incorrect info about my business posted, and the ONLY way to get it fixed is to pay Yext… and the listing company gets a cut of that payment!!!! They actually benefit from bad data in their system! Every time I run a “getlisted.org” search and find one of these sites, it makes my blood boil!
@rebecca you are right it is a huge conflict of interest. But you can probably fix these listings at the source where they are bad and not have to pay Yext.
I appreciate your objective review of YEXT in local search. We work with YEXT as a VAR with local SMB clients and also have the benefit of working with the YEXT Enterprise Division.
Large multi-location enterprises with 500+ locations are greatly challenged in getting their locations populated and maintained with accurate branding, location, and operational information.
I bring up the large enterprise businesses for a reason. They have the ability to measure fairly precisely the before and after impact of a YEXT implementation, or often times in a pilot test they can even have a comparative analysis with a set of test and control locations.
An excerpt from one of their case studies on the impact demonstrates this:
• Updated correct location information on over 36,000
listings
• 20% lift in branded and non-branded search impressions
• Over 4,000 Featured Message clicks
• 57% of users who made a service appointment came in
to their local store
• Revenue from online service appointments alone
exceeded total cost of Yext program by over 50%
Scale gives the enterprise business the ability to measure impacts from YEXT, which is precisely what you were demonstrating with your assessment.
Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.
Herb Young
I just signed up for the service and asked the tech support what kind of lead generation I should expect and they will not give any answers and I still do not know what to expect and wonder if I wasted my money. Do you have any in site my jobs generate 500 annually and was looking for 200 leads and 100 cistomers
@john
My two clients that are using it have seen nowhere near those kinds of numbers.
Does anyone know how does Yext verify the Merchant address and Phone #? Let us assume that I am a business ABC with XXXXX98 phone number however just to take advantage of/ruin reputation of other business I list my business as XYZ (more popular one). Does Yext verify this data and if yes, how long does this take? Have you come across any clarification by Yext on this?
Rajeev
The verification process is monetarily based. They assume that since you are paying so much money per listing that you will not be placing a million fake listings.
Yext has improved my standings by 75%. I plan to re-sign again.
I love yext.
@James
How much site traffic do you get from the directories that Yext supports?
I’d be very interested to know how that 75% ‘standings’ improvement was measured.
Yext has really improved over two years. I am a Yext Certified Partner, so for what it is worth, I would recommend it.
There are different reasons for different verticals to use Yext. Restaurants will probably find menu publishing handier than most, for an example.
I actually did notice that a client {attorney} of mine has shot up for a bunch of rankings a few months after signing up for Yext. There are also several improvements showing in Google WMT.
We haven’t done much else for them SEO wise, but they have noticed an uptick in phone calls, and the Yext reporting does back that up.
Phone calls are up, and that is the true value of Yext. It is good for your NAP, so it might (watch out for duplicates!) help your rankings. But it doesn’t drive traffic that I have seen yet.
Also, it’s cheaper to buy Yext from a Cert. Partner than from Yext.
I just started building my website and was approached (and still get calls/emails from) by Yext. We are a small business who are moving to web advert only as we could no longer afford the $1500/yr in print yp. I began scouring the web and subscribing to any and all free info to help me do SEO myself and instead of paying Yext their $495 (annually I understood at first, but today a sales rep told me it was a one time charge?) I decided to go to all the local listings and claim my business myself (sheesh where does the time go..lol) but this Yext rep today said my doing that was putting me at the back of millions of pages of business listings and while he cannot guarantee a 1st page run, I would be up towards the front. I told him I was considering hiring out just the SEO part as it’s all I can afford for now, and he told me I didn’t even need SEO servicer. In other words, Yext believes that local listing sites are all people go to in order to find a local business. He even said you don’t need a website. Just listing your info with Yext will get your place of business found and your phone number called. I find this hard to believe. Is it possible to achieve the same results by listing your business on all sites yourself and bypass Yext and get the same results? I got immediate replies from all the majors out there once I claimed and updated my business listing.
1- Yext is annual
2- they do only work on lesser sites
3- the rep is full of it
I am looking into becoming a partner, I’m not so concerned about loosing the money i’m initially investing as I would be about getting any kind of negative results from the service, or from withdrawing from it once I have listed with them. I’m curious to know if you have actually built anymore listings for other companies other than the original two and how it has gone since then? Just looking for some honest reseller feedback. Also, they would do well to offer their partners the ability to have higher profits – going up against their rock bottom yearly for retail of 500 really isnt much of a benefit – Thanks.
Hi Mike. Just read this older article, along with all of the comments. Good stuff!
Would you just address the comment someone made that basically the Yext URL isn’t the business URL, but rather a Yext URL for analytics, which would seem to completely destroy SEO value, so who cares about consistent NAP at that point?
I was seriously considering Yext, but that fact alone seems to make any other benefit irrelevant.
Am I missing something?!
@Tina when Yext was found out they stopped that practice. I have not gone back and checked what they are doing today.
Redirects are still used in some IYP venues, however, it is not Yext doing the redirecting in those cases. For example, SuperPages uses this tracking code URL (numbers fudged here):
http://clicks.superpages.com/ct/clickThrough?SRC=sebpall&target=SP&PN=1&FP=profile&PGID=yp607.80845.1430792614693.158122530884&ALG=113&TS=nbt&OF=1&ACTION=log,red&LID=0121815941&TR=50&bidType=FLCLIK&PGSN=B5&FL=profile&TL=off&LOC=http://www.example.com
Also, a Yext rep with username ‘themistocles’ replied to a thread on the Local Search Forum back on 8-19-2013 confirming that a fix was implemented: http://www.localsearchforum.com/google-local/9819-yext-yahoo-localworks-messing-up-my-local-ranking.html#post24083
Russ
Hi,
I think there are decent providers on Elance like (provider: labdhie guess i spelled it right) to list on about a 100 tier 2 and 3 directories for just $0.40/ citations. I have used them for about 35 different clients and they have been spot on. Their search for existing citations is far better than whitsparks or yext or moz’s to be honest.
Chris
Very Confused if Yext will help my business or not. Seems that there is only a couple good sites like yahoo,and Yelp but a lot that I have never heard of and I think no one else uses either. A lot of what yext has to offer you can do yourself. Has anyone had good success with them.
I certainly see where there is or can be some value offered by data aggregators but I sure wish they would make it a little easier to work with them. I have found that Moz Local is about the best route if NAP citations are your goal.
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