Listings
Google Product Catalog
Google Product Catalog allows you to showcase your products in a carousel on your Google listings.
With Yext, you can easily add and manage these products to display product information directly on Google Knowledge cards. Adding this information helps promote your product offering, increases engagement with your listing and website, and drives more online and in-person sales.
In order to leverage this feature you must purchase the Google Product Catalog SKU and have enough entity capacity to store your products.
See the Google Product Catalog Sync Overview documentation for more information.
New Default Listings Dashboards
The revised default Listings dashboard offers a high-level insight summary about your listings. The updated dashboard removes and replaces Google legacy metrics that were previously deprecated and includes new Total Listings Impressions and Total Listings Actions metrics.
Reviews & User-Generated Content
Generative Review Response
Customers who have the ability to respond to reviews through Yext can now leverage our Generative Review Response feature (formerly known as Content Generation in Review Response) to leverage AI-generated content when responding to reviews. For more information visit the Respnd to Reviews Using Generated Responses help article or the Introduction to Generative Review Response training.
Generative Review Response Support in Configuration as Code (CaC) & API
Users leveraging Generative Review Response in the Yext platform can now also generate responses via CaC resources and the Reviews API. Users can use the CaC API to apply instructions to accounts, then leverage the Comment: Generate endpoint in the Reviews API to generate responses using AI.
Max Contact Frequency per Entity
This Review Generation update gives more control over the maximum contact frequency when generating reviews. Now you can set the maximum contact frequency to apply universally to all entities or make it specific to each entity. This enhancement gives users more control over their customer outreach, and provides businesses with more opportunities to generate reviews. See the Review Generation Settings training unit for more information.
View Invites Page Improvements
We have made some improvements to the View Invites page under Review Generation. The updates include:
- An updated filter bar at the top of the page with additional filter components.
- Applied filters are stored as query parameters in the URL. Refreshing the page will keep the filters applied.
- Sent Invites and Pending Invites appear on the same page, in separate tabs.
- The ability to add and remove columns in the table using a column picker.
For more information, see the Review Generation Metrics training unit.
Review Invitation Follow-ups
You now have the ability to send follow-up review invitation emails automatically within review generation email templates. From the new Email Follow-up tab under each template you can enable follow-up emails, and select the maximum number of follow-ups (3), as well as the number of days that pass before the follow-ups start.
Pages
Apex Domain Creation Support
Apex domain creation support allows customers to deploy websites to the “apex” domain, such as domain.com, instead of www.domain.com. This is useful for any customer that may be deploying their root website on the Yext infrastructure or wants to use redirects and aliasing between a website’s subdomain and apex domain (e.g., if you want www to resolve to the apex, or vice versa).
For more information, check out the Domain Configuration reference doc.
Domain Aliasing
Domain aliasing allows you to serve the same website from multiple domains. This is useful if you want the same content served at different domains to serve various purposes, such as:
- Branding: Capture variations of your brand name or domain.
- Marketing: Create unique, memorable URLs for specific marketing campaigns or promotions to track the effectiveness of each campaign individually.
- Protecting Brand Identity: Register variations of your brand name to prevent competitors or malicious parties from registering and potentially misusing them.
- Easier Access: Simplify access to your website by providing alternative domain names that are easier or shorter to remember, spell, or type.
- SEO: Host at commonly mistyped URLs to prevent potential traffic loss.
For more information, check out the Domain Configuration reference doc.
Active Deployment Management
Active deployment management allows Pages implementers to prioritize which deployments in their site are actively kept in-sync with Content (“active” deployments), as well as reduces the amount of active deployments available on non-production branches to improve page update performance.
For more information, check out the Active Deployments reference doc.
Deployment Error Summaries
Deployment Error Summaries provide an overview of your website pages, highlighting URLs with underlying entity data errors that need your team's attention. This feature is crucial for efficiently managing large websites with thousands or millions of pages, allowing teams to quickly identify and address any errors.
For more information, check out the Data Update Monitoring section of this reference doc.
Page URL Writebacks
Page URL writebacks ensure that each page URL in your Pages site is published to the entity profile that powers it, and is kept in-sync over time. This helps customers that are using both Listings and Pages keep the two systems in lockstep. When a Pages URL is published or updated, the URL is automatically updated in the URL field for the corresponding entity in Yext Content. From there, the URL can be syndicated to the Listings network in real-time.
For more information, check out the Page URL Writebacks reference doc.
Content
Single Entity Add - Configuration Reorder
The Single Entity Add experience has been reordered so that the configuration options (such as the country and entity template) are prominently displayed at the top. This change will simplify the process of adding a single entity by ensuring that the most impactful configuration options of a new entity are indicated first. To see this change, navigate in the Yext platform to Content > Entities > Add Content and choose an option under Add Single Entity.
Add Field for Entity Created Date
With this update, you will easily be able to see the date that an entity was created in your Yext account. The Entity Created Date has previously been stored as an Entity History event, but this update will allow you to see this information displayed in a field on the entity, without having to look up the entity history. This field is now available to view, export, and display on all entities.
Scheduled Updates at a Specific Time
The existing scheduled updates feature lets you make edits to entities to be applied on a future date. With this release, you will now be able to choose the time at which to apply a scheduled update, as well as the time zone. You will also be able to apply a relative time zone to scheduled updates in bulk, allowing you to apply updates to entities located around the globe all at the same time. See the Create Scheduled Updates help article for more information.
Connectors
Change Entity ID via Connectors
With this release, you can now use a connector to change the entity ID of an existing entity. When mapping information in a connector, map the new entity ID to the “Entity ID (Updated Value)” field, in addition to mapping the existing entity ID, to change the entity ID. For more information on mapping fields in Connectors, see the Map Fields reference.
Connector Transform Improvements
This release includes updates to a number of existing transform options to make them easier to configure, add flexibility, and to reduce the number of steps required to execute a transform. These improvements include updates to the Find and Replace, Fill In Empty Cells, Format Dates, Format Times, and Split Into Rows transforms. For more information on available transforms, see the Transform Options reference.
Platform
Additional Ownership Detail in Rejected Add Request Statuses
Specific to Yext Resellers: We have added additional status details for rejected API requests made to an Add Requests endpoint. These details can help you take action on instances of duplicates by informing you whether:
- The duplicate(s) are in your own account
- The duplicate(s) are in another account
- The duplicate(s) are in your own and another account
For more information, visit the Add Requests API Documentation.
Search
New Prop for Tracking Filter Search Bar Analytics
We have added flexibility into our Search UI React SDK that will help developers using our Filter Search component. The new prop, afterDropdownInputFocus, can be used to add interactivity to your frontend and notably track analytics events when a user clicks into the Filter Search component.
For more information, check out the FilterSearch component reference doc.
Publishers
As a reminder, new publishers added to the Yext Publisher Network will go live with our upcoming release on June 26th, 2024. Updates to existing publishers will go into effect on May 15th, 2024.
Apple Additional Category Support
We have more than doubled the available categories you can choose from when selecting a category for your brand on Apple Maps. With this update your Apple listing categories will now be more specific to help accurately reflect your brand. Choosing a precise category makes locations more discoverable to customers via search on Apple Maps. No action is needed to adjust these categories for existing locations.
New Publishers for Chinese Tourists
The following publishers will now be available through Yexsys for listings outside of mainland China:
- Baidu Maps
- Mafengwo
- Ctrip (http://Trip.com)
In order to sync your data to these new publishers you must purchase a separate Listings SKU.
New Publishers for South Korea Locations
The following publishers will now be available through Yexsys for locations in South Korea:
- Naver
- KaKao
In order to sync your data to these new publishers you must purchase a separate Listings SKU.
Yalwa Deprecation
Yalwa will be shutting down their services and will be removed from the Yext Publisher Network on May 17th. This means that we will no longer sync data to these sites, but you will still be able to see historical data in the platform.
Locanto Deprecation
Locanto will be deprecated from the Yext Publisher Network on May 17th. This means that we will no longer sync data to these sites, but you will still be able to see historical data in the platform.