Yext Tips to Go: How to Update the Description Field on Listings to Reflect COVID-19 Information

The effects COVID-19 over the past several months have caused consumers to search for information — and not only about COVID-19 itself, but also how it's impacting their favorite shops: if they have reopened, if they're still delivering items, or how they can purchase from you during this time.

You've most likely already taken action to update your key information, such as opening hours, but did you know that you can also leverage the Description Field for your entities to highlight important information to your customers?

The Description Field for your entities is a great way to highlight important news and information to consumers about your business. The Description Field is a key aspect of your Listing information as well as anywhere else this information is pushed to, such as Location Pages.

During this time, you may want to consider updating your Description Field to include quick, short, newsworthy information, such as:

• New Cleaning Measures
• High Product Availability
• Currently Selling Perishable Items
• Accepting Donations
• We're Closed – Purchase a Gift Card
• Reschedule Your Booked Events
• Highlight New Dates for Events
• Ways to contact us during this time: (X)(XXXXXXXX)
• We're Closed – location is open!

Image: The Description Field for a Location Entity Type.

Note: While the Knowledge Graph now allows the Entity Name and Description fields to be any number of characters, many Knowledge Network publishers still impose a specific character limit on these fields.

To respect the Knowledge Network's differing name and description character limits, we cleaned up the logic to show Unavailable Warnings for entities with description character counts that exceed the publisher's allowed character count. For example, Google allows descriptions up to 750 characters, and Yelp allows descriptions up to 1000 characters. As a result, you may see an increase in the number of Listing Issue warnings in the Listings tab as a result of this change.

We wish you and your teams the best during this critical moment. If you need anything at all, Yext is here to help. Please reach out to your Customer Success Manager as your first point of contact.