Our Speed Obsession: Why We’re Building the Fastest Local Information & Commerce Hub on the Planet

When we first decided to make a huge investment to build our blazing fast Turbo listings network, a lot of people questioned why it was critical that listings be able to update instantly. After all, they said, how often does a business change its phone number or address? What's the big deal if it takes a few weeks or a month to correct it everywhere? The short answer: It's a huge deal. Here's why.

First, PowerListings guarantees that your information will be corrected very quickly. We utilize a special two-way connection architecture we call "Direct Sync" with each publisher to ensure that your listing is locked down and sync'd with your correct information. Getting it updated right away lets us check and make sure that it actually worked. We then provide you with URLs and screenshots of your correctly updated listings.

Second, PowerListings get your listings more than just basic information like name, address, and phone number. With PowerListings, your basic listings get powered up with enhanced content like photos, descriptions, videos, and an exclusive special offer field. Not only do these enhanced fields make your business stand out from the pack – they also signal to search engines that you're an active business. Frequent updates to your PowerListings can often have a positive impact on how your business ranks for queries important to you. Being able to quickly update descriptions, specials and photos signals you as an active business, and can help drive rank.

Lastly, pricing is all about speed, and PowerListings makes it possible to push time-sensitive specials out there. If it takes weeks or months to publish information, there's no way you can put out pricing info. Who wants last year's pricing floating around the internet? With the speed afforded by PowerListings, you can take advantage of fluctuations in inventory to set different prices and get the word out there. If you've got empty seats at your restaurant or Spa, this means you could temporarily drop prices and let people know – instantly. On the flip side, if you're totally full – raise your prices, and let people know. If you are a store manager for a retail location and you get an extra shipment of items – snap a picture of it with the PowerListings smartphone app, and run a special on that item until they are gone.

At Yext, we've always viewed listings as your highly transactional commerce engine. Whether you get address look-ups, phone calls, Web site visits, or brand impressions, users visit your listings at the exact moment they are about to make a purchasing decision. The listings of 150 years ago had no phone numbers (because there were no phones!), and the listings of 30 years ago had no Web site URLs. The listings of tomorrow will be commerce enabled, with real-time inventory and pricing as the centerpiece, which is all enabled by speed. In this way, listings are highly transactional, but transaction agnostic. We don't know what will be on them in the next 100 years, but we do know they will exist.

Our obsession with speed means you get confidence that your listing updates actually worked, you get a mechanism to easily update enhanced content that can help your rank, and you can get real-time offers out there. Bringing you these amazing features is why we push every day to bring you the fastest and most reliable local information and commerce hub on the planet.

If you'd like to see this speed in action, please join our President's Day Webinar: The History of Local Search on Wednesday, February 15th at 1pm EST. It's rumored that our VP of Sales Abraham Bryan Rutcofsky Lincoln may offer one a heck of a special…