Universal and Vertical Search

Universal search provides the ability to search through all databases from a singular search box. When you type a question into the search box, every single data point linked to that ecosystem is crawled. Regardless of whether the result comes from a different database or index, all results show up in one place. If you searched for "burritos", you might get a map of Mexican restaurants nearby, burrito recipes, or a popular food newsletter.

When it comes to vertical search, rather than searching through every single data point, the search zooms in on just that vertical. A vertical is a class of results such as locations, jobs, products, services, articles, and much more. By turning on vertical search, you allow the user to search through their vertical of interest, giving more accurate results. Vertical Search also allows you to provide a specific experience depending on what the user is searching for, for example if a user is searching for products, there might be facets on the side for size, or locations may have a map.

While the majority of verticals will be powered by Yext Content, you can also return results not stored in Content in the form of links via a Third Party Backend. A Third Party Backend surfaces links from across your domain based on the query input, made possible by Search's federated architecture. Third Party Backends through Google Custom Search Engine, Bing Custom Search, Zendesk, and more are supported as backups to your structured Content results.