Hi Hitchhikers,
I wanted to share the following post in relation to the Yext-provisioned Google Maps API Key that is often used on our Pages sites. For those wondering whether that API key can be used elsewhere on your site, well this is the topic for you. Please do comment with any follow-up questions.
This topic is of main relevance if you’re using the Yext-provisioned Google Maps API Key on your site as opposed to one provided by yourself during the Implementation process. If you’re unsure, this can be determined by contacting your account team.
Unfortunately, due to the nature of our contract with Google, we’re prevented from being able to allow clients to use the Yext-provisioned API key anywhere else on their site, such as during an ordering or booking flow. This is something that Google mandate as we’re only able to use the API on Yext-hosted properties.
If you’re interested in adding an interactive map-like experience into an ordering or booking flow, then you will need to provision a new API key to use. Google has some great resources on this, such as here.
Moreover, if you just want to display a simple dropdown on your ordering flow, allowing a user to select their nearest entity from a list, then you could actually use the Yext Live API (assuming it’s included in your Yext package) for that as opposed to Google - given we already have all your entity information stored in the Knowledge Graph. That being said, if you did still want to display the entities on a map experience you’d need to provision a new Google API key. Here is the Yext API documentation, feel free to leverage “apisupport@yext.com” for any follow-up questions on our APIs.