October '24 Release Notes

CopiedReserve with Google Integration

Reserve with Google allows consumers to interact with a business straight from a Google listing, with various CTAs to take actions like booking appointments, ordering food online, or making reservations. Yext has now developed a direct integration with the Reserve with Google functionality so that actions taken on listings via Reserve with Google will be tracked accordingly in Yext (for example, a Book Appointment action on Reserve with Google will be tracked in Yext as a Book Appointment click).

The Reserve with Google integration is available as an addition to your Yext subscription. Contact your Yext account team for more information, and see the Yext blog to learn more about the Reserve with Google integration.

CopiedApple Analytics Frequency Update

We have improved our ability to get analytics data from Apple. Instead of updating Apple analytics on a weekly cadence, analytics data from Apple is now fetched 3 times per week.

Copied(Announcement) Deprecated Google and Facebook Metrics and Dimensions

The following Facebook and Google metrics and dimensions have been deprecated. Yext stopped pulling in data for these metrics as of September 16, 2024.

The Google “Business Food Items” metric will be available in Yext to view historical data until March 30, 2025.

The Facebook metrics and dimensions listed below will be available in Yext to view historical data until the next release (December 11, 2024).

• Metrics
  • Facebook Check-ins
  • Facebook Page Unique Negative Feedback
• Dimensions
  • Facebook Negative Action Type
• Dimensions that can no longer be used with Facebook Page Impressions
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Country
  • City
  • Locale
• Facebook Impression Type dimension options
  • Organic

For an overview of the available Facebook metrics, see the Social Metrics for Listings reference. These changes are also documented in the API changelog.

As a reminder, unless otherwise noted, new publishers added to the Yext Publisher Network will go live with our upcoming release on December 11, 2024. Updates to existing publishers will go into effect on October 30, 2024.

CopiedExpanded Listings Support in Mainland China

Yext now supports listings for locations in China through a third-party partner for the following publishers:

• Baidu
  • Supported Entity Types: Location, Hotel, Healthcare Professional, Healthcare Facility, ATM, Restaurant
• Amap
  • Supported Entity Types: Location, Hotel, Healthcare Professional, Healthcare Facility, ATM, Restaurant
• Tencent Map (new to the Yext Publisher Network)
  • Supported Entity Types: Location, Hotel, Healthcare Professional, Healthcare Facility, ATM, Restaurant
• 360 Map (new to the Yext Publisher Network)
  • Supported Entity Types: Location, Hotel, Healthcare Professional, Healthcare Facility, ATM, Restaurant
• Dianping
  • Only available for mutual customers with the Dianping Commercial Product
  • Supported Entity Types: Location, Hotel, Healthcare Facility, Restaurant

The ability to power listings in China requires an additional purchase. Please contact your Yext account team for more details.

CopiedNew Publisher: RatingsMD

RatingsMD will be added to the Yext Publisher Network as a blind submission publisher. This means we will send them data, but it is not guaranteed that they will use or display this information to their users.

• Country Support: US
• Language Support: en
• Supported Entity Types: Healthcare Professional, Healthcare Facility

CopiedGenerative Review Response in Workflows

You can now add workflow rules to automatically leverage AI-generated content to respond to reviews based on your specified criteria. These suggested responses will create tasks in your Inbox for approval. Combining generated responses with workflows, tasks, and approvals enables users to further streamline the review response process while ensuring AI-generated content aligns with the brand and passes approval.

Check out the Generative Review Response unit and the Create Workflow Rules for Review Response help article for more information.

CopiedReview Response Approval Tasks

We have added Review Response Approval tasks to the Inbox. Review Response Approvals allow users with permission to review and approve responses before they are submitted. Two reply types can undergo approval: manual replies from users and AI-generated replies. Once a user or AI suggests a response, the task will appear in your Inbox. You can then modify, approve, or reject the response. The existing Review Response Approvals screen will be deprecated with our upcoming release on December 11, 2024.

For more information, check out the Review Response Approvals unit.

CopiedReview Invitation Short URLs

We deployed link shortening to our SMS links, resulting in a 70% character reduction in links. With this change, users can easily create SMS review invitation templates that only count as one text message (or two if you want to use an image).

Check out the Review Generation Templates unit to learn about text message invitations.

CopiedNew Review Monitoring Publishers

As of October 30th, the following publishers will now be available for Review Monitoring through the Yext platform:

• Uber Eats
  • Country Support: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan (ROC), United Kingdom, United States
  • Entity Support: Location, Restaurant
• DoorDash
  • Country Support: US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
  • Entity Support: Location, Restaurant
• GrubHub
  • Country Support: US only
  • Entity Support: Location, Restaurant
• Hotels.com
  • Country Support: All
  • Entity Support: Location, Hotel
• Expedia
  • Country Support: All
  • Entity Support: Location, Hotel
• Kayak
  • Initial backfill limited to the latest 70 reviews
  • Country Support: All
  • Entity Support: Location, Hotel

CopiedMark and Filter Reviews Removed by Censoring

First-party reviews automatically removed by a content filter (i.e., those containing inappropriate or vulgar content) are now marked with “Banned Word” under the status Removed. This allows users to easily differentiate between automatically removed and manually removed reviews. Additionally, you can filter for reviews that are automatically removed. Use the filter “Automatically Removed” and select Yes or No. If the review content is updated, this field will be recalculated.

CopiedNew Connector App: Upload New First Party Reviews

With the release of generic Connector destinations, we have created new apps to support use cases for updating data in Yext from any API source.

Use the Upload New First Party Reviews app to add new first-party reviews to Yext — using data from any file.

The Upload New First Party Reviews app is available now. For more on generic destinations in Connectors, see the Connectors Generic Destinations: Send to API release item or the Create a Generic Destination Connector guide.

CopiedComments AI & Asset Responses

We have added several new features that will make responding to comments on social posts quicker and easier.

When you respond to a comment, there are buttons at the bottom of the text box that give you the option to generate a response using AI or apply a text asset.

When generating a response, you can provide written instructions to inform how the reply should be structured or select the default prompt. You will also be able to transform the text to reword, translate, shorten, or change the tone of your comment.

To select a pre-saved Text Asset to include in your response, you can click to apply a Text Asset stored in the Asset library.

CopiedAdd an Assignee to Social Tasks

You can now assign specific users to Social tasks, ensuring the right person is accountable for approvals, reviews, or edits. Assigned users will receive notifications about their tasks, keeping everyone informed and on track.

To assign a user, open a task and use the dropdown selector in the Task Details tab.

CopiedAdditional Social Analytics Metrics

We have added 6 new analytics metrics for Social. The following metrics will be available to use when creating reports:

• Facebook Post Total Likes
• Facebook Post Total Comments
• Facebook Post Total Shares
• Instagram Post Total Likes
• Instagram Post Total Comments
• Instagram Post Total Shares

See the Social Metrics and Dimensions document for all available social metrics.

Copied(Announcement) Deprecated Facebook Metrics

The following Facebook metrics have been deprecated. You will be able to view historical data until the next release (December 11, 2024).

• Facebook Check-ins
• Facebook Page Unique Negative Actions
• Facebook Page Impressions (Demographics)
• Facebook Page Clicks
• Facebook Post Engaged Fans
• Facebook Post Unique Negative Actions
• Facebook Post Unique Clicks

See the Social Metrics and Dimensions document for all available social metrics.

CopiedNew Connector App: Upload New Social Posts

With the release of generic Connector destinations, we have created new apps to support use cases for updating data in Yext from any API source.

Use the Upload New Social Posts app to add new social posts to Yext Social — using data from any file.

The Upload New Social Posts app is available now. For more on generic destinations in Connectors, see the Connectors Generic Destinations: Send to API release item or the Create a Generic Destination Connector guide.

CopiedSite Health and Overview Page UI

The new Site Health and Overview Page UI ensures essential site information is surfaced front and center, enabling users to improve the quality of sites implemented using Yext. Each Pages site in your account now has an Overview Page that includes site metadata and health:

• Production Deployment Status
• Analytics Status
• GSC Registration Status
• Key Analytics
• An overview of all the templates that make up the site

To find the Overview Page, navigate to Pages, click on the desired site, and then click Overview. This update only applies to React Pages and sites on the new Pages infrastructure, not Classic Pages or Page Builder. For more information, check out the Types of Pages reference doc.

CopiedNew Connector Apps: Update Text Assets and Upload Text Assets

With the release of generic Connector destinations, we have created new apps to support use cases for updating data in Yext from any API source.

Use the Update Text Assets app to update any of your existing text assets in Yext Content, and use the Upload Text Assets app to create new text assets in Yext Content — using data from any file.

The Update Text Assets and Upload Text Assets apps are available now. For more on generic destinations in Connectors, see the Connectors Generic Destinations: Send to API release item or the Create a Generic Destination Connector guide.

CopiedConnectors Generic Destinations: Send to API

You can now use generic destinations (also referred to as the Send to API destination) in a connector to send your ingested data to any API, in Yext or any third-party system. This enables users to take advantage of new use cases in Connectors, such as:

• Uploading, updating, or deleting Social Posts in bulk
• Uploading, updating, or deleting Reviews in bulk
• Uploading, updating, or deleting Assets in bulk
• Sending Yext Content to a 3rd-party API

The following Apps are also available now in Yext to support these use cases:

• Update Text Assets
• Upload Text Assets
• Upload New First Party Reviews
• Upload New Social Posts

Connectors already offer tons of sources, transforms, scheduling functionality, run results screens, and more, which can now be extended to any use case that requires moving data between two systems.

Resellers can also utilize this feature for schema inheritance in client accounts.

For more information on using generic destinations in Connectors, see the Create a Generic Destination Connector guide.

CopiedExport Yext SAML Metadata

We have added the ability to download a metadata file with Yext’s SAML configuration from the SAML Configuration page. 

If you use Identity Providers who support uploading this metadata, this feature will make configuring SSO with Yext easier.

CopiedSupport CloudChoice in Search SDKs

We now support setting the cloud choice in the Search SDKs. The default configuration uses any of our consumer-serving regions powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). We have added the option to limit queries to only use the GCP-based regions.

To set cloud choice in the Hitchhiker Theme, add the cloudChoice property in the global_config.json file and set it to multi for the default configuration or to gcp to only use GCP-based regions. For more information, see the Global Settings and Local Configuration reference doc.

To set cloud choice in Search UI React, add the cloudchoice property in the HeadlessConfig and set it to CloudChoice.GLOBAL_MULTI for the default configuration or to CloudChoice.GLOBAL_GCP to limit to only GCP-based regions. For more information, see the Setting Cloud Region reference documentation.

CopiedSearch Platform Debugging Improvements

We’ve continued to improve the search log details page to better support debugging search queries. If relevant to the search query, you will now see the following:

• The distance from the filter or user per result
• Search operators
• The minLocationRadius and locationRadius
• The scores for each field ranked with match query tokens

To learn more about using the Search Log Details page to debug experiences, check out the Debug the Backend unit.

CopiedDeprecate Third-Party Verticals (Bing/Zendesk/Algolia)

We no longer support the ability to use Bing, Zendesk, and Algolia to power third-party verticals in Search. The only third-party vertical Search now supports is Google Programmable Search Engine, which is most commonly used to power a ‘links’ vertical.

For more information, see the Third-Party Verticals reference documentation.

CopiedMigrate onto New Models

We have upgraded Chat to utilize the most recent Open AI models, including GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini.