Customer Spotlight: See How Sweetgreen and Top GMB Contributor, Joy Hawkins, Use Yext’s Google Integration

In today's digital world, mobile-empowered consumers expect information about their local environment to be at their fingertips wherever, whenever. In order for businesses to keep up, they need to invest in a digital location management solution that powers real-time updates to ensure customers find the information they need and receive the best possible consumer experience.

On February 16th Yext launched its integration with Google, giving customers unprecedented control over how their business listings appear across Google Search, Google Maps, and ads, in addition to the 100+ other publishers in the PowerListings Network. See how the popular national restaurant, sweetgreen, and local SEO expert, Joy Hawkins, are already using our new integration.

How sweetgreen, the Fast-Casual Restaurant Chain, Leveraged Yext's Google Integration to Reach Customers In Real-Time During Winter Storm Jonas

The value of being able to sync business information in real-time across Google's properties is most apparent during time-sensitive situations, such as the holidays and weather emergencies. Sweetgreen, the seasonal fast-casual restaurant chain, felt the full benefit of Yext's integration in January when Winter Storm Jonas struck the East Coast. The company used the Yext platform to update its business listings immediately across Google and the other publishers in the PowerListings Network to reflect weather-­related store closings and reduced hours of operation.

"Without Yext, we wouldn't have had any way to update our store hours across Google, which we now rely on to serve our community of customers with transparent, real-time updates specific to their neighborhood stores," said Farryn Weiner, sweetgreen's VP of Marketing and Brand Strategy. "And the addition of Google to the PowerListings Network enables us to enter new communities with all of the critical location and contact information, so we can connect with the local neighborhood the moment our doors open."

Joy Hawkins, Top Google My Business Contributor, Reviews Her Experience with Yext for Google

Joy Hawkins, one of Google My Business' top contributors, has already begun leveraging Yext's Google integration for her own small business customers. Joy has worked in the local SEO space for nearly a decade and currently serves as a product consultant for Imprezzio Marketing, where she helps customers troubleshoot ranking issues on Google, trains employees on how to use Google products, and sells and manages Local SEO, Social Media, and AdWords accounts for small business owners.

Joy uses Yext's integration to instantly update her customers' business location information across Google's key properties, including Google Search, Maps, and ads. "The platform is really easy to navigate, and everything updates extremely quickly," praised Hawkins.

Like sweetgreen, Hawkins knows the importance of having correct hours listed on Google listings in order to improve the customer experience and drive more foot traffic. "I used the holiday hours feature to mark that we were closed on Monday for Family Day," shared Hawkins. "This is great because we are in Canada, but most of our clients are in the US and they wouldn't realize it's a holiday here on Monday."

Joy also uses the integration to easily add and edit rich content, such as photos, which are a critical source of engagement on Google My Business listings. "Yext's integration provides a really seamless way to distribute photos to tons of sites all at once and remove them all quickly if we need to pull them down later. The photos I added published on Google within minutes, which was fantastic."

"Both photos and hours are very important items for a listing on Google," noted Hawkins. "Having opening hours listed on Google results in a 13% increase in driving direction requests, and a 42% increase in clicks to your website. Having photos on the listing results in a 42% increase in driving direction requests and 35% increase in clicks to your website."

Hawkins concludes, "Yext's Google integration will be a huge benefit for big brands because they no longer will have to update Google in addition to Yext." With Yext, businesses can now control and update their entire digital presence in real-time, across Google and 100+ other publishers in the PowerListings Network, from one comprehensive dashboard.

Click here for more details on Yext for Google and learn how you can start leveraging the service today to gain control of your location information across the web!