At Yext, every new year brings new growth, opportunities and challenges. In the 10 years since we started working in the local space (you read that right, we've been at this for a decade!) there have never been more tools, devices, apps and platforms to help you do your job.
And we're seeing big players making even bigger investments – like Google's new public API for Google My Business that allows businesses of all sizes more control over their presence across the Google Maps, Search and Ads ecosystem by adding automation to this process for the first time.
That isn't to say it's become easier to navigate the market and make critical decisions for your business and career, which is why we're here to help. And we're kicking off 2016 with product updates for enterprise customers that will help you win in this increasingly complex space.
Pages innovations
With the rise of mobile, you want your website to drive not just brand-level awareness, but foot traffic in your local stores. New Category Pages and Multi-Language Pages will take your local strategy to the next level to help you get found.
- Category Pages let you create up to 3 additional pages atop each of your location pages so your business can rank for more unbranded searches based on product lines or services you offer. For example, if you own a department store, Category Pages will help you create a more detailed presence in order to expand outside of the branded department store search arena and actually outrank local competition that focuses exclusively on a particular product, such as furniture or footwear.
- Multi-Language Pages allow you to reach all your local audiences in the language they prefer, creating significantly more customer engagement opportunities tailored to their preferences and search terms.
More menu support in the PowerListings Network
In today's fragmented search environment, it is imperative that brands maintain accurate and detailed content about their locations everywhere they appear online in order to maintain high visibility and improve local engagement. Today, we're also excited to announce two new menu publishers in the PowerListings Network specifically for food services businesses: Allmenus and MenuPages.
- Allmenus is the largest local menu guide website in the USA, providing its 5 million monthly site visitors with menu information and online ordering for over 255,000 restaurants nationwide.
- MenuPages also provides free menu information and online ordering services, as well as reviews, for over 50,000 restaurants across the US.
In addition to menu content, both sites showcase local data that includes a restaurant's name, address and phone number, which are vital to make sure that patrons can call to make reservations and navigate to the restaurant in person.
Yext currently powers menu content across the PowerListings Network via proprietary integrations with sites like Bing, Facebook and Yelp and today's addition of Allmenus and MenuPages enhances the coverage Yext provides for food services brands to make sure that their business information appears everywhere customers search for local restaurants.
And this is just the start. We look forward to going places together in 2016.
Onwards!
Howard Lerman
