Today's consumers are constantly connected to their smartphones, causing some to believe that the value of physical location will dwindle as mobile technology becomes more prominent. But that assumption could not be further from the truth. In fact, the accessibility of modern consumers via mobile technology has only elevated the importance of location data — or geodata.
Geodata consists of geographical location information, held in a digital format. When looking at a business listing online, the geodata on that listing can be anything from its NAP data (name, address, or phone number) to its enhanced content (hours of operation, photos, videos, menus, product offerings, or special discounts). Geodata helps to enrich local listings with details that shape and communicate a business' brand, credibility, usefulness, and relativity to a consumer and their needs.
While seemingly simple to integrate into a business' online content, managing geodata across the search ecosystem is not easy. Adding geodata to individual listings across thousands of directory sites is time consuming and tedious. Not to mention, each map, app, GPS device, or location service hosts different types of geodata. We all know what it is like to find bad information in a map, and often this bad information comes from geodata errors a business may not know they even have. For example, the pedestrian lat/long needed by a map for a store in a mall or a gate in an airport is very different from the driving lat/long needed by navigation apps or GPS devices. At Yext, we have an entire team dedicated to what we call Geocoding, where we help our customers speak the language of the location services that direct traffic to their doors and create great customer experiences.
Incorrect or outdated information confuses and misleads the consumer and lowers the credibility of the listing. A business's local SEO is significantly accounted for by the accuracy of its listings across the web, as search engine algorithms find sites with consistent geodata across the web as more favorable and reliable sources to share with users.
As a global digital knowledge management platform, Yext specializes in geodata and helps its customers guarantee that their location information is always consistent and up to date. Geodata is key to driving customers to brick-and-mortar locations and to bring businesses face-to-face with consumers, and Yext gives businesses the ability to sync 45 core geodata fields across more than 100 publishers. With consumers depending so heavily upon sites advertised with rich geodata, the Yext Knowledge Graph facilitates business' digital presence by offering a single source of truth for geodata.