Listings Verifier | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

Overview

Yext Listings syncs facts about businesses to 200+ publishers in the Publisher Network. The Listings Verifier is a tool that helps to ensure listing accuracy at scale by periodically scanning information on entities in Content and comparing it to the corresponding listings across the Publisher Network.

This reference details how listing accuracy is determined, which publishers and fields are supported by the Listings Verifier, and details on what occurs when a data mismatch is found.

Supported Publishers, Fields, and Languages

Not all publishers support real-time scanning or provide a time-of-receipt of the exact data they are showing on their listings. Because of this, listings accuracy verification is not available for some publishers.

Scroll horizontally to view all supported publishers in the table below.

Field Name	Apple	Google	Facebook	Yelp	Bing	MapQuest	AroundMe	Cylex	Gelbe Seiten	iGlobal	BundesTelefonbuch	Dialo
Name
Address
City
Region
Country
Postal Code
Lat/Long
Phone
Hours
Closed Status					Yes
Website URL

The Listings Verifier is supported globally. However, for listings in languages other than English, the system may be prone to lower determination of accuracy. This may occur on fields where the formatting typically varies by country (such as Address, Postal Code, Phone Number, etc.)

Listings Scanning Process

To ensure the most up-to-date listings data possible, the Listings Verifier scans publisher data in two ways:

• A real-time scan is initiated every time an entity is updated in Yext and that change is sent to the Publisher Network.
• A backup scan runs automatically, regardless of changes made to entities. High-trafficked publishers, like Google, are scanned very frequently, while publishers with less traffic are scanned less frequently.

The latest data collected from the scanning process is compared with the data in Yext Content to determine listing accuracy and flag any data mismatches.

Listing Details

Once a listing is scanned, the results are displayed on the Listing Detail page in the platform, under the Verifier tab.

The following columns are displayed for each field on the Listing Detail page:

• Field: The display name of the field in Content.
• Entity Data: The current value stored in the platform for this field.
• Publisher Data: The latest verified publisher data.
• Status:
  • Verified: The current data in the platform matches the data on the publisher site.
  • Processing: A scan is in progress.
  • Field Not Synced: The data is not being synced based on the Field Syncing & Mappings settings (found in the Configuration tab of the Publisher Detail page).
  • Data Mismatch: Data in the platform does not match the data on the publisher site.

Note that if a field is not supported by a certain publisher, it will not display in the table.

The table will only appear if the listing itself has a status of Synced. Note that the status of the listing is separate from the individual field statuses shown on the Verifier tab for a given listing.

If the listing has a status of Processing, Opted Out, or Not Synced, only the current listing status will be displayed on the Listing Detail page.

Data Mismatch Details

• If a field in Content is blank, and the publisher data is not, you will see <No value> in the Entity Data column.
• If a field in Content is filled out, and the publisher data is blank, you will see <No value> in the Publisher Data column.

Other Actions

• Force Sync: Resend data from the platform to the publisher.
• View Listing: View the listing on the publisher site.
• Scan: Fetch the publisher data and re-verify.
• Opt In: Opt-in to this listing (only appears for listings that are currently opted out).

Data Mismatches

Data mismatches occur when the data on an entity in Content and the data on a corresponding listing do not match. Possible reasons for data mismatches, and the actions that can be taken, are detailed below.

Publisher Transformations

Oftentimes, publishers will transform data when syncing with listings. A common example of this is whether or not a publisher removes business suffixes such as “LLC” or “Inc.” from the end of a business name.

For a full list of how certain publisher transformations are handled by the Listings Verifier, see the Data Transform Logic section below.

Listings Accuracy in Report Builder

See the Location Listings Metrics reference for details on the Listings Accuracy metric.

Publisher-Specific Logic

Data guidelines and specific changes pertaining to certain publishers are below.

Apple

• May remove geomodifiers from business names
• Does not allow tracking parameters on URLs

Facebook

• Does not accept Name field from Yext
• Any desired changes need to be updated directly on the Facebook listing

Yelp

• Frequently interchanges http and https in the Website field

Data Transform Logic

Details on how specific data transforms are handled by the Listings Verifier are below, broken down by field.

Name

Address

This refers to the combination of the address and address2 fields in Yext.

Hours

Country Code

Phone

Website URL

Lat/Long

The Lat/Long field is verified by checking for the distance between the two sets of coordinates. The Listings Verifier uses these guidelines:

• If the business address is visible in Yext (e.g. non-service area business): confirm the sets of coordinates are less than 500 meters apart
• If the business address is hidden in Yext (e.g., service area business): confirm the sets of coordinates are less than 5,000 meters (five km) apart

City

Region

Postal Code

Closed Status