An Explanation of the Business Listing Problem

People often find themselves coming to Yext after discovering that their business information is wrongly displayed on numerous sites across the internet. For some owners, even sites and directories where they had attempted to correct the information themselves were still showing up as incorrect.

As you can see from David Mihm's depiction of The Local Search Ecosystem below this confusion is rightfully deserved.

The main source of confusion comes from the fact that there are so many different sources a directory or local search engine can get data from. There are a number of data aggregators who receive data from a number of different sources on the internet. They then do their best to clean the data and figure out the reason for any discrepancies between different sources. In general, this becomes a long and time consuming process, with data rarely coming from the business owners themselves.

Sometimes, business owners who run their FREE business listing report and see errors think that Yext is responsible for these errors. This is NOT the case. Yext will never alter the data of a business who is not a PowerListings customer. These errors are a result of local directories and search engines obtaining their data from a number of sources, none of which are the business owner themself.

Yext PowerListings solves this problem by putting the business owner in full control. Once a business owner claims their business listings through PowerListings they have COMPLETE control over their listings. After a business owner begins using Yext PowerListings the Yext Network partner's only source of information becomes the business owner via the Yext PowerListings. The local search ecosystem goes from the complicated mess above to this simple illustration below with Yext as the hub of your local information.

The next question becomes, what happens if a business owner decides to stop using PowerListings? If this happens, which we hope it doesn't, then Yext simply releases control of the listings. The local directories and search engines return to getting their data from data aggregators and other sources on the net, and it becomes incredibly difficult for business owners to maintain complete control of their business information across the Internet.

Now that we've clarified the business listing problem, if you'd like to see how your business appears across the internet you can do so here for free!