Comparison Between Manual Citation Building and Yext by Nyagoslav

[Linda Buquet]

Nyagoslav, just posted an article I know consultants here will be interested in.

Comparison Between Manual Citation Building and Yext

One of the most frequent questions I get (especially after this review on Yext) is how a manual citation building services, such as ours, compares with an automated listings distribution service, such as Yext. I will cover the comparison points one-by-one below.

 

[Nyagoslav]

Thanks for the mention, Linda! I have actually mostly been getting questions from business owners that have been asking me about the positives/negatives of hiring me for manual citation building vs. subscribing to Yext. So I believe SMB owners might also be interested in this.

 

[ARKlady ARKtechCo]

Nice to see.

We tend to prefer manual but in some markets where we need thousands of listings, we've done a variety of different combinations.

One of the things I liked about your training was some of the options that were mentioned, including NGS.

 

[Marie Ysais]

Perhaps he can read our minds??!! this was a topic for discussion yesterday and I had just logged back in for more information and clarification!! SO glad you pointed out this out!!

 

[Laustin1878]

I echo Marie's statements as I too, was recently talking about this [more if Yext is worth it] with a friend. This article certainly clears the air when it comes to value of Yext's service vs hiring a firm to do it for you.

As always, thanks for your insight Nyagoslav.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I didn't even think there were thousand of local directories to get profiles on. I was thinking 200-300 general local search directories (not taking into account local search directories).

Anyone have a good number? Just for curiosity sake?

---------- Post Merged at 02:40 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 02:32 PM ----------

Also, I'd like to see an article on UBL. I think UBL is a waste of money as the main draw is Acxiom (which you can now publish to directly). The other search directories they push info to all seem to grab that info from Localeze, InfoUSA or Acxiom. They just seem like an incredibly unnecessary middle man.

What do you think Nya?

 

[russofford]

Also, I'd like to see an article on UBL. I think UBL is a waste of money as the main draw is Acxiom (which you can now publish to directly). The other search directories they push info to all seem to grab that info from Localeze, InfoUSA or Acxiom. They just seem like an incredibly unnecessary middle man.

Hi Joshua,

In my experience, with using UBL for 9 different clients, I have seen in every case that UBL causes duplicate listings in about 1/2 of their 'direct' publisher venues. This created a LOT of extra work for me to have to go back and find/destroy all the duplicate listings in the various IYPs that UBL caused.

The only time I would recommend to use UBL is for a brand NEW business with little to no NAP citation footprint. That way you can 'hopefully' get listed in the major aggregators that they say they work with, too.

Take a look at the case-study article I just wrote on UBL's service here:
UBL.org Review & Case Study – On Correcting (or Adding) Business Info Online | Orion Group LLC. Please let me know what you think.

Russ

 

[SEOBandwagon]

UBL is powered by Yext.

At least that's what I was told by a UBL rep. And I'm a Yext Certified Partner today.

 

[Ashwin]

I've been running a few Yext customers on Synup and have seen a whole host of duplicates and listings with wrong info. I'll publish a study with that data in November.

It appears like Yext is not really what they appear to be. Moreover, if we can create a "consortium", we can pretty much get API access from all of Yext's partners. I was speaking to a couple of them and they are willing to offer up access for a price. The only deterrent is that I'm currently broke and they charge a steep price (between $2500 - $5000/mo)

 

[SEOBandwagon]

That's a little disappointing to hear, but I had those suspicions all along. It's probably best for new businesses starting out and need to get their information out all at once and be consistent. I'd be willing to offer up some data on my clients that use Yext for your study.

 

[Ashwin]

I ran what appears to be a Yext client, according to these records on the Synup tool.

Here's the overall snapshot (the tool is still being tested, hence I've only plugged in 70 sites; in reality, this list should be about 300 personalized sites per business)



A look at the overall listing card -



It's interesting that there are a lot of sites with a 100% completion score. This is very rare for normal non-Yext clients that I've run using the tool.

Just filtering out the duplicates (and, there are many!)



Interestingly a lot of the sites Yext claims to manage have duplicates in them. Google says it has 8 duplicates, but I think that's primarily because our API link with them is messed up.

A look at listings with wrong information (again, many)



In a nut-shell - there is something seriously wrong with the way Yext merges duplicate listings and it also appears like there are NAP inconsistencies; but, the NAP inconsistencies could just be because the business I ran stopped using Yext or is subscribed to a smaller plan which syndicates to fewer sites (unlikely)

If you want me to run any of your current Yext clients, I'll be happy to do so!