There have been a lot of opinions expressed on the importance of Yext for local SEO (you can read Mike Blumenthal’s and David Mihm’s, for instance). However, I haven’t seen anyone tackling the more fundamental problems behind the platform. I will try to explain some of them in more detail. In this article, I will try to explain them in more details. But first, I should make a clear disclaimer – I do offer manual citation building service, which might be viewed as a “competing” service to the Yext’s core one (although I would argue on this matter, but that’s not the point). Nevertheless, everything I write is from as a neutral point of view as possible.
What does Yext offer?
Yext offers a service called “Power Listings”, which syndicates business information across a network of 40 local search platforms. These platforms include both Internet yellow pages types of sites, such as Yahoo Local, Superpages, Whitepages, Local.com, and social network and review types of sites, such as Yelp, Citysearch, Foursquare, and others. The service includes a neat dashboard, which monitors traffic to each of the listings, as well as reviews on them. However, the biggest advantage of Yext has always been the speed with which the information is being spread and/or rectified across the network.
What are the positives?
As I mentioned above, the speed with which the information is being synced is unique. For most of the sites it goes live practically instantly, and for almost all of the others it gets updated in a few hours. Additionally, the information that could be syndicated includes special offers, photos, and videos, and some of these elements are not available on a number of the local search sites, even for paying customers, i.e. the only way to get them to appear on one’s listing is via Yext. The statistics that the platform provides could also be valuable, especially when considering the service’s value.
What are the negatives?
The positives pretty much end with what I described above. Here is a list of some of the most significant negatives:
1) Service’s updates – Yext’s service is in an ever-going improvement, which by itself is great. New sites are regularly being added to the network. But what happens if you have purchased a package when the network consisted of only 12-13 platforms? As far as I understand, you are going to stay only with these for at least until your one year’s subscription ends. I understand that from Yext’s point of view that makes sense – they don’t have to pay a bulk sum of money to the newly added to the network sites, because of some old customers that would anyway not pay anymore (at least for a year) after their initial payment. However, it totally doesn’t make sense from the point of view of these customers. And if I were them, I was going to be unhappy with the service, too.
2) The network - while Yext’s network includes a number of the most important business directories, it also misses a few important ones. These include Yellowpages, Insiderpages, Kudzu, Manta, to name a few. Furthermore, the network’s size is very small compared to the overall number of local business directories out there. Whitespark‘s Local Citation Finder finds 245 citation sources per keyphrase on average. Of course, some of these are unusable, or not business directories, but even if 50% of them are, this would mean that in any given niche there are at least 100-120 business directories, where a business could get a listing from. Yext’s network covers 40, but this number is rather questionable. A couple of examples: 411.com and Switchboard.com which are advertised as platforms part of the service, actually get data directly from Whitepages and Superpages, respectfully, and there is no way for a business to get a listing on any of them directly. Furthermore, the service won’t work in the cases when one has an enhanced listing for their business on some of the most important websites: Yahoo, Yelp, Superpages, Citysearch, Local.com, Merchantcircle, Ziplocal, Tupalo.
3) NAP consistency – the main advantage of the service is that it rectifies the business information across Yext’s network, thus helping up the local search rankings (I have previously discussed the value of citations for local SEO). I have been “promoting” the Local Search Scorecard, an instant scanning service Yext offers for free, as a useful local SEO tool, too. But if we look deeper, we could see that there are fundamental problems with the Power Listings service and its helpfulness in terms of keeping one’s business NAP consistent. How the service works is:
- It scans all the network’s websites for the specified business information (name, address, phone number).
- It determines the best matching listings (if any) on each website and highlights them.
- It then syncs the data input via the dashboard on all these websites, updating the listings that previously have been determined as best matching, and “filling in” with new listings where it was unable to find matching ones.
The three main problems here – first, it is possible that Yext’s scanning will not find the correct listing (happens often when the same business has two offices in the same city, or when a business has been using the same phone number for more than one of their locations); second, it is possible that Yext’s scanning will not find any listing, although there is one (happens if NAP is very inconsistent); third, it is possible that there are duplicates, and as Yext finds only one listing per website, these won’t be taken care of (happens almost in every single case). What this all means is that the chances for Yext to not clear up your NAP completely, or to actually screw your other location’s NAP, are pretty high. I haven’t made a large scale research on this matter, but according to my observations there are at least a few wrong or correct duplicates for a business in at least 80% of the cases. The sites with most duplicate listings (not just from Yext’s network, but overall) are Merchant Circle, Citysquares, EZLocal, MojoPages, ZipLocal, which are in fact all part of the network. Additionally, at least in one of every 5 or 6 searches via the Local Search Scorecard, Yext finds at least one listing which is either for another business, or for another location of the same business. Last but not least, in almost every search, Yext’s tool doesn’t find at least one listing on one website, where it actually exists.
4) The overall price – the rate is $500 per year. It is advertised as “per month” rate, but it is billed per year. Personally, I believe for what Yext offers the price is rather steep. Here is a sum up of why I think so:
- Yext basically offers a service, which syndicates business data across 40 platforms.
- 3 platforms actually are part of a network of other platforms, and by themselves do not carry almost any value.
- 8 platforms are not compatible with Yext when the business is already advertising on them.
- Yext doesn’t remove duplicates.
- Yext sometimes syndicates data where there is an already existing listing for a business, thus creating a duplicate.
- Yext sometimes updates a wrong listing, thus potentially screwing up the business data for another location.
- Here is one I haven’t mentioned yet: the listings coming from Yext are not owner-verified (in almost all cases), and as the incoming data is standardized, sometimes the listings produced by Yext are not fully completed (here is why it is important for the listings to be as complete as possible).
Conclusion
I do not say Yext is bad. On the contrary, it has many positives, as I pointed out above. It could be very useful and time-saving for businesses with thousands of locations, where manual citations work is simply impossible. It could also be useful for businesses that have higher profit per sale (real estate agencies, insurance agencies, law firms, car dealers) that have opened a new location and want a fast local search boost. However, I don’t think it’s really useful in the cases when:
- You are a small business, with not too high profit per sale, or not too large marketing budget;
- You are a business of any size that has already taken care of their online presence (i.e. your business data is relatively consistent across the board);
- You are a business of any size with significant business data inconsistency problems (very often the case with most of the professional and health related businesses);
- You want a local SEO push, and you are looking for ways to stand above the competition (in these cases, normally the competitor(s) will already have listings on most of the websites included in Yext’s network, so if your only citation building tactic is paying for Power Listings, then this might very well not be the right solution for you).
Time for discussion – have you used Yext? What was your case and has Yext’s service helped?
Update
Howard Lerman, CEO of Yext, contacted me with his POV, and as I always appreciate companies caring about their reputation + sharing as many views as possible, I post his thoughts below:
“I usually enjoy reading your posts and comments as you tend to get the detailed facts actually right.
Unfortunately, your article post Yext today does not meet the Zhekov high standard I have come to expect from you!
Specifically, in your “What are the negatives / 3) NAP Consistency” section, you’ve missed a major, key step in the Yext process. We don’t use the same matches from our scan as the official match to sync with. Rather, upon purchasing our product, we first suggest matches and unless it is an exact match, a business quickly walks through a process for each listing where they have the chance to confirm a match OR re-search on the partners index until they find the listing they’d like to match to. If the listings not there, we add it.
The ability to pick which listing on each site you’d like to sync with Yext is a very powerful feature – no other solution has anything even close to this capability.
I think the entire nature of your article (including the headline) is unfair without this criticism. Your remaining criticisms are that we don’t have enough sites and that we’re too expensive. We’re always adding more sites and stay tuned in that regard. That leaves expense. How much does an average LocalSEO charge per hour? How much junk is there in the market that costs hundreds or thousands of dollars? For a business investing in internet advertising, Yext is very reasonably priced.”
*Note: Our Citation Building Guide features more information, tips, and tactics on how to do local citation building.
I have managed Yext and it has many of the limitations you point out but pricing depends on what services you select. For example one client has a basic package that runs about $200 per month which is pretty expensive based on the limitations. You could get more bang for your buck using different services that are more inclusive but it certainly is a nice starting point.
Nyagoslav:
I couldn’t agree with you more on this topic. When I read all the rave reviews for Yext I was all excited about it until I took a closer look. I just think it’s way overpriced and not applicable for probably 80% of the businesses out there. Whitespark offers manual citations submissions now at $3 per directory. For $500 (the price Yext charges), you could have 166 citations!
Travis Van Slooten
Travis,
Indeed the price is incomparable to any of the manual citation building services available (including the one I offer). However, I believe Yext’s service could be made worth the money with the addition/amendment of some of the things I mentioned in my post. Right now, as you point out, it doesn’t make much sense for a large part of the businesses to use it.
Great analysis, Nyagoslav! IMO Yext has the most appeal to in-house marketers and agencies who don’t have a deep understanding of Local Search and are taking a stab at doing something for their business or for their clients that would benefit from ranking better in the Google Local Pack. It’s a quick solution that doesn’t take any expertise. Most of them can also make a buck by setting up some kind of reseller relationship with Yext. It’s certainly better than doing nothing, but those who want/need to rank in the Local Packs can do much better by engaging a Local SEO specialist to assist them in that quest.
I agree with you, Mary. And this is the main purpose of the article. Yext is very appealing to some particular segments, and it totally makes sense in some cases, but in others, it is just plain waste of money.
The response from Howard Lerman, CEO of Yext, was disappointing to me. I felt he came across as extremely defensive and whining rather than someone who could take some suggestions and constructive feedback to improve their service.
It is his right to respond when the article is related to the company he leads. I would not like to publicly comment his response, though, but I definitely appreciate your opinion, Ryan.
Nice article and kudo’s for giving yext’s CEO an opportunity to comment. As usual deep analysis.
So many local smb’s and so many different scenario’s and situations allow for a lot of different alternatives.
But frankly, I agree with Mary Bowling’s analysis. It is a quick response. My experience is that most of these quick systemic responses don’t provide the expertise, or hands on time invested to generate better results.
From an SMB perspective getting enough expertise or time invested to push those rankings up can make enormous positive differences in more calls, more leads, more everything.
But it is there…and it is an appropriate alternative that gets a business in the “game”.
Thanks for the comment, Dave. As I mentioned in the article, the tool is simply not suitable for most SMBs. I would assume the largest part of their profits are anyway coming from large national companies, so I don’t think this is anything new to them, either.
One thing I dislike in their strategy, however, is that their sales approach is quite aggressive and very often misleading. But well, isn’t this the approach of every large company that is in infinite profits growth cycle? :)
I am very interested in a service or tool to find and/or ‘correct’ duplicates across multiple IYP sites / networks.
As an SEO Account Manager for an Internet marketing company, I have been finding that there are 4 or 5 or even 6+ duplicate listings for some of our clients on some of the IYP sites mentioned in this article.
Is there a recommended method to search/destroy duplicates on these sites? I have mostly been manually contacting tech support for various websites to have the duplicate listings merged or deleted.
Some of the sites have responded back to me and their pages either now 301 redirect to the proper listing’s URL or they now 404. On some IYP sites, the ‘fixed’ duplicate pages remain in existence, but say something to the effect of ‘business closed’ (or such).
In the last case I was assured that those particular pages would eventually be dropped from search engine indexes and they would not return a result on the IYP’s internal searches, though the pages still technically exist if you have it book marked.
Side note: Do they actually mark the page as noindex/nofollow? I’d think 404 or 301 would work better than keeping the old page live with a ‘close’ or ‘XXX-XXX-XXXX’ status (as one major aggregator did for one of our listings.)
Russ Offord
Hi Russ, thanks for your comment! Unfortunately, there is currently no tool that automatically removes duplicate listings from any site. As I mentioned in the article, Yext doesn’t do it either. There is right now just one tool that specifically deals with duplicates by marking them for you as duplicates – the Sweet IQ’s one. Whitespark also shows duplicates in some situations, but they are not specifically tagged as such. All other tools do not find duplicate listings.
We do all the research and duplicate removing manually, too. Hopefully, there will soon be a tool that will deal, at least partially automatically, with the process of removing duplicates, because this is a very serious one. As you noted in your comment, in some cases there are 5+ duplicates for a single business, which could be very frustrating.
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.
Their underhanded tactics show a complete lack of professionalism and gives good reason not to trust anything they say or do. Constant harassment using bogus scan results to try to push you into using their services seems to be the norm. A quick check with the listing sites that claim to be incorrect shows the truth about their completely false claims!
Their are plenty of legitimate companies who do far more then just listings for your money without the need for bogus reports!
This company is HORRIBLE! We signed an agreement for one of our three locations, and discovered months later that they illegally took all of our numbers from a different location (outside of the radius we agreed upon) and were charging us for calls that should not have been routed thru them. I have been going in circles trying to get them refunded and haven’t heard back in weeks, despite having left numerous voicemails and e-mails. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THEM! They will steal your money, and not respond to your concerns.
Thank you for writing this detailed assessment. The CEO’s response seems like a good indication of the company’s attitude, which is condescending. Rather than saying ‘Yes, our service is a bit pricey.. Let’s offer a discount!’ he seems to take offense to what I view to be a minor point. And yes, it IS pricey for what they offer.