January ‘23 Release Notes

Apple announced its new Business Connect APIs on January 11th, 2023. These new APIs allow businesses to sync data to Apple Maps via Apple Business Connect accounts. As a result, Yext now offers a direct integration with these Business Connect APIs so that users can seamlessly sync Knowledge Graph data directly to their Apple listings.

This direct integration makes it easier than ever to push real-time updates — giving Yext platform users greater control over their information on Apple Maps. To learn more, please visit the Apple Integration Overview reference article.

Yext’s direct integration with the new Apple Business Connect APIs allows users to manage Action Links on their Apple Maps listing via Yext. These Action Links are the call-to-action buttons at the top of an Apple Maps listing within the the “Action Row”.

Action Links are an important element of an Apple listing, because they nudge customers to take key next steps like scheduling an appointment, placing a takeout order, or checking pricing. Providing end-users with these Action Links at the moment of their high-intent searches encourages clicks, and ultimately helps to drive conversions.

The following types of Action Links can be configured in Yext:

• Activities
• Amenities
• Appointment
• Availability
• Book
• Book (Hotel)
• Book Ride
• Book Tour
• Book Travel
• Careers
• Charge
• Check in
• Coupons
• Delivery (Restaurant)
• Delivery (Retail)
• Donate
• Events
• Fees Policies
• Flight Status
• Front Desk
• Gift Card
• Gift Card (Restaurant)
• Menu
• Order (Restaurant)
• Order (Retail)
• Other Menu
• Parking
• Pickup (Restaurant)
• Pickup (Retail)
• Portfolio
• Pricing
• Quote
• Reserve (Restaurant)
• Reserve (Parking)
• Schedule
• Services (Retail)
• Services
• Shows
• Showtimes
• Sports
• Store Orders
• Store Support
• Support
• Takeout
• Tee Time
• Ticketing
• Tickets
• Waitlist

To learn more about Action Links, please utilize the Apple Action Links reference article.

This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

Yext’s direct integration with the new Apple Business Connect APIs allows businesses to now create “Showcases” on their Apple Maps listings via the Yext Social Posting UI. This is a brand new Apple feature that allows businesses to share promotions or announcements that are meant for a particular moment in time with their customers.

Showcase posts will appear in the “From the Business” section on Apple Maps.

Creating Showcases with Yext is currently only available via the Yext Social Posting UI. Posting via the Yext Social Posting API is not currently supported.

For more details about Apple Showcase Posting, please utilize the Apple Showcase Posting reference documentation.

This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

In the Fall ‘22 Release, Yext announced the Listings Verifier, Listing Accuracy, & Listing Detail Pages for select publishers. With the January ‘23 Release, MapQuest is now a fully supported publisher.

The Listings Verifier is a system that automatically scans the web and determines the accuracy of your listings. This system proactively flags any discrepancies between the data you provided and the data a publisher is displaying, removing all ambiguity and manual review from the process.

The data fetched by the Verifier is presented as a comprehensive table, with a side-by-side comparison of the Knowledge Graph data and the publisher’s data for each field, which allows you to assess Listings Accuracy for each individual listing.

Note: The Listings Verifier is currently only supported for select publishers, such as Google, Facebook, MapQuest, and Yelp. For a full list of supported publishers, please visit our reference documentation.

For more information about the Listings Verifier, Listing Accuracy, & Listing Detail Pages, utilize the reference documentation.

Google will be deprecating and modifying a series of older metrics on February 20th, 2023, in favor of updated analytics that were introduced in the new Business Profile Performance API in July 2022.

Once a metric is deprecated by Google, it will no longer return data.

Yext will keep all historical data for previously supported Google metrics. The start date will be the earliest date Google provided data for each business. The end date will be February 20th, 2023.

Yext will still display historical data for the following deprecated metrics in Report Builder and the Reports API:

• Location Listings > Google Search Queries
• Location Listings > Google Customer Actions
• Location Listings > Google Map Views
• Location Listings > Google Search Views

The following new metrics now replace the existing legacy metrics:

Yext will continue to populate data for all new metrics as part of the Google Performance API.

Metrics for Google Local Posts are not included in the new Google Performance API, and will no longer be provided in any capacity by Google. Yext will continue to display historical metrics for Google local posts within the Social Posting UI and API, but these will not be updated after February 20th, 2023.

Google Business Profile’s Lodging API now supports “Kid Activities” as an attribute under “Families”. There is now a field in Knowledge Graph called “Activities for Kids” that maps to this Google attribute, so that hospitality brands can promote their family-friendly services to prospective guests.

In order to standardize the Entity UID (immutable ID of the entity) field across all interfaces, we have updated the Entities API & Webhook to return the standard Entity UID, replacing the previously returned hashed version of the Entity UID. Now, users will see the same Entity UID in their application and other entity interfaces (i.e., Entity URL and export).

In the Fall ‘22 Release, Clustering was introduced in four new languages: Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. As of this January Release, Clustering for Italian is now available as well.

Clustering helps you compare performance across different “clusters” of semantically-similar search terms. With Clustering Internationalization, administrators across the globe can now better understand search trends at scale.

For the latest information on availability of advanced search features in specific languages, check out this reference doc.

Yext now supports local development URLs that exactly match URLs in your production environment, making it easier to test links in your web application.

With this release, the CaC API will now support the ability to delete Pages resources. This will allow users to control sites and domains without using the UI for at scale use-cases. Yext strives to enable fleet management of thousands of websites and this additional functionality further facilitates API control for Pages functionality.

Yext now supports notifications for Connector runs. This new notification sends an email and/or in-platform alert to users so they can quickly know the status of their Connectors — especially for those running on a schedule or via Push requests — without manually checking the Connector Summary screen.

Users can optionally filter the notifications based on the following criteria:

• Run status such as failed or completed
• Entity count of a type (e.g., notifications for runs with a certain number of entities failed, created, updated, or deleted)

For example, if you have a Connector that is set to run on a regular cadence, you can configure a notification for runs with a failed entity count greater than 0. With this feature, you are able to easily monitor errors and take action if needed, in real-time.

To turn on this feature in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Spring ‘23: Connector Run Notifications (early access).

In addition to populating category data to the base list for Yext Categories, users now have the ability to set Category Overrides within the Connectors framework.

For example, users can pull in their Google Categories (via the Google Business Profile native source in the Connector) and directly populate/map to their Google Category Overrides. This ensures that any subsequent changes to the base Yext Categories do not impact the user’s verification with Google when it comes to category assignment.

This feature was automatically enabled in all accounts, so you can start taking advantage of it today.

Unless otherwise noted, all Publisher Network updates are effective immediately and changes will automatically be reflected in your account.

For a full list of available publishers, and additional details on the integrations, visit the Publishers verticals in our search experience.

Updated: Bing

• Improved Integration Reliability: Yext’s integration with Bing has updated API endpoints which helps improve the reliability of the integration.
• Expanded Country Support: Yext’s integration with Bing now supports listings in all countries, except France.

Updated: HERE

HERE now Supports listings for locations in Japan.

• Territory: Global

Updated: MapQuest

MapQuest now supports Japanese language profiles.

• Territory: Global

Updated: Yahoo

Yext’s integration with Yahoo is transitioning from an API to a submission-based integration. As a result, Yext will no longer be able to support analytics or real-time updates.

• Territory: United States

Updated: Yelp

Businesses with unclaimed Yelp Listings will now see a Call-To-Action in the Publishers and All Listings tab where they can complete a claim. When a business owner claims their Yelp listing, they unlock additional functionality that allows them to improve the quality of their listing and stand out from competitors. See business.yelp.com/ for more information about the benefits of claiming a Yelp listing.

• Territory: Canada, United States

Removed: LocalPages

As of January 1st, LocalPages is no longer part of the Yext Publisher Network.

• Territory: United States

Removed: Speisekarte

As of January 13th, Speisekarte is no longer part of the Yext Publisher Network.

• Territory: Austria, Germany

All new Apps and App updates are automatically available in all accounts.

To view the full list of Apps that are available in your account click here .

Salesforce Service Cloud for Reviews App Update

We’ve added the ability to filter by folder when configuring review workflows in the Salesforce Service Cloud for Reviews app. Now support teams have more control over which reviews reach their agents as tickets in Salesforce, helping to ensure accurate and effective coverage of all high priority reviews.

Rebrand: Google Data Studio is now Google Looker Studio

As a result of Google’s efforts to unify its business intelligence products, Google rebranded Google Data Studio to Google Looker Studio. There are no functionality changes with this update.

Vidyard Data Connector

Vidyard is a video tool for virtual sales to provide customized messaging by sales representatives to prospective clients. ​​Businesses that use Vidyard now have the ability to seamlessly integrate their content with the Yext platform to power Search, especially for Support and Workplace use cases. The Vidyard Connector supports Yext clients in expediting their Knowledge Graph setup and streamlining the creation of a Search experience when integrating Yext onto their website. Vidyard themselves have requested a connector to be able to pull their own content into their Yext account.

JIRA Data Connector

We’ve added a dedicated JIRA Data Connector to ingest JIRA data into the Knowledge Graph. Now, customers can easily pull in Boards, Epics, Issues, and Sprints from their JIRA Cloud, making this data readily available in Yext-powered Search and Knowledge Base experiences.

Included OOTB Entity Preview Configurations for Solution Templates

Entity previews help users view what’s important to them while navigating the Knowledge Graph. In this release, we’ve added CaC files for entity previews to our existing custom solution templates to improve how entities appear out-of-the-box. This will help business users quickly view data available in the Knowledge Graph according to their use case, without needing to navigate into individual entities.

Eco-Movement Data Connector

Eco-Movement is the leading charging station data quality platform. It’s our mission to make charge point data simple and accessible. The app is a connector that pulls data on geographical information, such as coordinates, address and the name of the location, and is targeted at electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. Data being synced from Yext to Eco-Movement includes the name of the location, address details of the location, and coordinates of the location.

Updated: Skilljar Connector

In the Spring ‘22 release, we introduced the Skilljar Connector, allowing customers to add their Courses in SkillJar as structured data in the Knowledge Graph. With the January ‘23 release, the Skilljar Connector can also ingest Skilljar Lessons. This will allow customers to more comprehensively manage and deliver data from Skilljar throughout their Yext experiences.

All new Data Connector Sources and Source updates are automatically available in all accounts. To view the full list of Data Connectors sources that are available in your account, click here .

New: Skilljar Source Native Source

In addition to our existing Skilljar Connector, we’ve added Skilljar as a native source in the Connectors framework. Like the Connector, this source allows customers to ingest both Courses and Lessons into their Knowledge Graph — however, with Skilljar now available as a native source, customers are afforded additional flexibility to configure how this data is structured in Yext.

In the Fall ‘22 Release, we introduced new functionality that allows users to schedule license unassignments and view the list of pending updates within a dedicated UI. This January, we’ve expanded upon this feature to officially provide users a way to manage licenses via API.

The License API will enable users to take the following actions on existing entities:

• Assign licenses across product areas (i.e., Listings and Reviews)
• Execute immediate license removals
• Schedule future license removals (and cancel if desired)
• View a list of all active license packs on the account
• View a list of all licenses that have been assigned to a specific entity

To turn on this feature in your account, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and select Spring ‘23: Managing Licenses via API (early access).

We made updates to our rate limiting system to further strengthen the availability and reliability of our API-based services. These enhancements will be gradually rolled out to users between the January ‘23 Release and Spring ‘23 Release dates.

The following improvements will help police traffic and disallow large bursts from single businesses:

• Starting hourly quota window on the first request, instead of at the top of the hour
• Implementing a new algorithm which better protects against activity spikes

Note: This will not impact any existing integrations. For more details and developer guidance, please visit our reference documentation.