Listings
Google Food Menu Clicks
Google Food Menu Clicks is now an available metric in reports, for any menu with five or more clicks. Use the Google Listings Actions metric in combination with the Action dimension to view the breakdown of your click types, or use the Action as a filter to only view Food Menu Clicks. This metric is available now in Report Builder.
Reviews & User-Generated Content
Generative Response Playground
We’ve added a Response Playground for users to test their prompt instructions for generating review responses using AI. While leveraging generative AI to write review responses helps reduce the manual work involved, we want to ensure the content generated meets your brand guidelines. This new tool allows you to test and iterate on the configuration for generated responses easily.
On the Reviews Generative Response configuration page, use the Response Playground to generate a response to the randomly generated review shown. Change the response language to test any of the 51 languages supported. Shuffle the review (choosing positive or negative) to see how it would respond to various reviews. Adjust the response prompt instructions as needed as you test the responses.
For more information on the Response Playground, see the Generative Review Response training unit.
Filter for Reviews without Content
When setting up a workflow rule, notification, labeling rule, or filter, users can now explicitly specify that they want to filter for reviews without content. To do so, add a filter where “Review Content” is empty.
Improvements to Review Language Detection
Users can now generate review responses, create workflow rules, create labeling rules, and filter reviews in Review Monitoring and Response based on review language, with expanded language detection support for 51 languages.
Pages
Entity Views for Pages
In addition to Publisher entity views, users can now leverage entity views for Pages to display the fields on an entity that are powering page templates in Yext. Entity Views for Pages displays the page templates that are applicable to a given entity, based on the site deployment that is currently published to production. For more on using entity views in Pages, see the Entity Views reference and the Using Entity Views help article.
Content
Search, Filtering, and Descriptions on Entity Templates
With this release, users can now search, filter, and add descriptions to entity templates. Entity templates can be filtered by language, entity type, and fields contained in the template. Descriptions can be used to provide at-a-glance guidelines on how a template should be used, to help teams standardize the use of entity templates at scale. This functionality is available now under Content > Configuration > Entity Templates. For more on using and applying entity templates, see the Creating and Using Entity Templates help article.
Olo 86'd Items Are Now Pulled Into Yext
As announced in the July ‘24 release, menu items with the “86’d” status in Olo will now be pulled into Yext. Previously, 86’d items would be removed from the list of menu items in Yext, preventing it from appearing on websites or listings. Now, 86’d items are displayed in Yext, on menu widgets, and in the Yext publisher network.
We recommend that customers using Yext and Olo review their usage of the 86’d status in Olo to ensure that any menu items that shouldn’t be displayed in the Yext publisher network are not pulled into the platform. For more information about Olo, see the Using Yext and Olo guide.
Announcement: Removal of Facebook CTAs
In the Fall ‘22 release, we announced that Facebook pages under the New Page Experience would no longer support CTAs. Facebook has now deprecated all logic that updates CTAs. All Facebook CTA fields will be removed from Yext Content with the next release on September 18th, 2024.
Platform
Automatic License Assignment for Multiple Saved Filters
Users can now assign multiple saved filters to a license pack for automatic assignment. Previously, only a single saved filter could be assigned.
This will allow users with different processes for entities, like banks or financial advisors, to more easily adopt automatic license assignments rather than manually managing licenses. Note that this feature is only available for direct customers.
To do this, navigate to Account Settings > License Packs and select the Assign button next to the relevant license pack. There will be an option to select multiple filters from the dropdown. See the Automatically Assign Licenses to Entities Using a Saved Filter help article to learn more.
In-Platform Help Requests
Users can submit support tickets within the platform from the Help Requests screen. This screen was previously named Support Requests.
Analytics
Search Tracker Available in EU
Search Tracker is now available for customers based in the EU source region. For more information, see the Set Up Search Tracker help article.
Profile Updates Metric Available in EU
The Profile Updates metric is now available for our customers on the EU server. For more information, see the Profile Data Metrics reference document.
For the full list of features unavailable in the EU source region, see the Unsupported Features in the EU Source Region reference doc.
Search
More User Friendly Search Configuration
We’ve made the Search config UI more user-friendly. At a high level, we’ve streamlined the way you configure verticals, consolidated screens to reduce duplicativeness, renamed search algorithms to better align with their purpose, and added more common functionality to the UI.
The changes to the Search config UI screens are:
- The Verticals screen has been completely redesigned. You’ll land on a vertical overview screen that shows all verticals in the experience, the vertical type, and vertical ranking properties. Click into a particular vertical to access the vertical configuration, which has separate tabs for Search Algorithms, Filters, Sorting, Display Fields, and Settings.
- The “Experience Details” and “Additional Settings” screens have been combined into General Settings, which shows key details about your search experience and settings that apply to your whole configuration.
- The “Configuration Versions” and “Configuration Labels” screens have been combined into Revision History, which logs all saved versions of your configuration and allows you to revert to a previous version.
- The Integrations screen was added to provide code snippets for integrating. Previously, the Search Snippet Generator was under “Experience Details.”
- IP Filtering has moved from the Analysis section to the Configuration section.
The functional changes are:
- Configuring algorithms has a new paradigm: Rather than configuring a bunch of algorithms per searchable field, users will now configure fields per algorithm.
- We’ve renamed several search algorithms to better match what the algorithm does:
- NLP filters are now called inferred filters.
- Text search is now called keyword search.
- Semantic text search is now called semantic search.
- Inferred filter (previously NLP filter) order and facet order can be set directly in the UI rather than just the JSON editor by changing the order they’re displayed on the Filters tab.
- You no longer need to set a field as “sortable” as all fields are sortable by default.
- Display fields can now be edited in the UI, rather than just the JSON editor.
- The “staging” label has been renamed to “latest” and is always tied to a configuration’s most recent changes. You can toggle between the Latest and Production versions of the configuration in the top right to view and test the changes. Note you can only make changes while you are on the latest version.
- Test search is now collapsible, optionally giving users more configuration space.
While we’re renaming some features in the UI, the JSON config property names will stay the same: nlpFilter, textSearch, semanticTextSearch, nlpFilterOrder.
Check out the Search Backend track for the most up-to-date training on configuring Search.
Indicate Nearest Location for Linked Location Searches
It is now easier to display the nearest location for linked location searches. People entity types, such as healthcare providers and financial professionals, may work at multiple locations within your brand. For these instances, you may want to prevent showing duplicate result cards in your search results and only surface the nearest location in the results. You can now do so using new properties returned in the search API response.
To do so, link location entities to the main entity and make the geolocation of those linked entities searchable. Within each list of linked entities, the API response will indicate which linked location is closest to the user (by setting nearestToUser to true) and which is closest to any searched location filter (by setting nearestToFilter to true). nearestToFilter will only be populated if there’s a matched location filter for the search, such as “doctors in Arlington” matching on Arlington.
For more information on implementing this, check out the Geolocation Search for Linked Locations guide.
Authenticated File and Image Hosting for Authorized Search
The Authorized Search feature now has additional functionality to host images and files on private URLs when they are uploaded to fields in Yext. Previously, any files or images uploaded to and hosted on Yext did not support authentication. When a file or image was uploaded to a field on an entity, Yext would generate a publicly accessible URL to host that content.
Now, clients who have the Authorized Search feature enabled in Yext will see a toggle in Field Settings to enable Private URLs for a field. Toggling this on will create a private URL to host any file or image content uploaded to that field, for use in a fully authenticated search experience. Currently, this feature is available only for custom fields of the Rich Text (v2) or File field type.
This feature is available for clients who have the Authorized Search feature enabled in their Yext account. To enable this feature, navigate to Account Settings > Account Features and turn on the Authorized Search option. For more on using Authorized Search and private URLs for file and image hosting, see the Consumer Auth Overview guide or the Consumer Authorization training module.
Chat
Yext Advisor Ticket Creation
We have launched Yext Advisor within the Yext platform, which allows users to ask questions and submit support tickets.
You can access Yext Advisor by clicking the Yext icon on the bottom right corner of the screen. Select the “Get Help” prompt to be directed to the ticket submission flow where you can describe your issue in detail.
Note that this feature is only available for direct customers.
Zendesk Live Agent Handoff
We have a new Zendesk integration with Yext Chat that enables live-agent handoff with the Yext Zendesk Support workspace. Users can engage with a Yext-powered Chatbot for support and be seamlessly connected to a live agent within Zendesk upon request.
Read the Zendesk Integration with Yext Chat guide to learn more.
Publishers
As a reminder, new publishers added to the Yext Publisher Network will go live with our upcoming release on September 18th, 2024. Updates to existing publishers will go into effect on August 7th, 2024.
Google Video Gallery Syncing
We have added a new built-in field called Google Video Gallery. This field allows users to add videos to Google listings.
New Publishers
We are excited to announce that the following publishers will be available on September 18th:
- Quinceanera.com
- Country Support: US only
- Language Support: English and Spanish
- TikTok
- Country Support: BR, CA, DE, FR, GB, ID, IT, JP, MX, TH, US, VN
- Language Support: English only
- Note: Currently, this is a blind submission integration. Yext will send data to TikTok but posting is not supported at this time.
Event Listings (Eventbrite Enhancements)
We have added additional functionality and fields to the Eventbrite integration. Users can now un-publish events as well as specify information for the following new fields:
- Eventbrite Description. Add the description of your event to display on your Eventbrite listing.
- Event Capacity. You can specify the number of tickets available for reservation on Eventbrite.
- Eventbrite FAQ. Add FAQs to your event to display on your Eventbrite listing.
- Eventbrite Organization ID. Add the ID of your Eventbrite organization.
- No action is required for users who have previously set up a custom field to power this information. Otherwise, users should prioritize this new built-in field going forward.
- Eventbrite Organizer ID. Add the ID of your Eventbrite organizer
- No action is required for users who have previously set up a custom field to power this information. Otherwise, users should prioritize this new built-in field going forward.