Rebrands and Relocations | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

If you are rebranding or relocating locations, there are several factors to consider to make sure the updated information gets reflected properly on each major publisher. The best course of action depends on how significantly your business is changing. Below we will outline the considerations to help you determine the best course of action for your rebrand or relocation as well as the steps to take.

Considerations

Two of the most important factors to consider when thinking about a relocation or rebrand are:

1. Reviews, Brand Content, and User-Generated Content
2. Customer Experience

Reviews, Brand Content, and User-Generated Content

Consider your existing online reputation. If your business is only changing slightly, you may want to maintain your old reviews, brand content (e.g., social posts, images), and user-generated content.

Some instances of this might be:

• The business went under renovations but there were no significant changes, such as no new changes in offerings or amenities.
• The business is “under new management” but there is no new branding or other changes to the business.
• There was an address move, but the new address is very close by.

However, If your business is changing significantly, old reviews and user-generated content may no longer be relevant to your new business.

Some instances of significant changes might be:

• Moving to another city or state
• Changes in services or amenities offered by your business
• Different branding and naming that isn’t comparable to the old business

Note: Maintaining old reviews and user-generated content is available for Google, Facebook, and Yelp. It is not available for Bing and Apple.

Customer Experience

Consider what is best for your customers and how they will search for you when deciding how to proceed with rebranding your listings.

If your business is changing significantly, customers should know that the old location has been closed and be routed to a new listing.

Process Options for Executing a Rebrand

When executing a rebrand, you have two options available within Yext. You can do one of the following:

1. Mark existing entities as ‘Closed’ and create new entities (Recommended)
2. Rebrand existing entities by updating them with new information

Which option you pick may depend on the publishers you have Listings on. Please read the publisher nuances section to help inform your decision.

Close Old Entities and Create New Entities (Recommended)

Creating all new entities and marking the old listings as closed is the most universally accepted approach, by all publishers.

• Benefits:

  • Clear record of entities and listings before and after.
  • Big publishers like Apple expect this behavior.

• Things to Consider:

  • New listings won’t contain user-generated content, such as reviews and photos.
  • Old listings may not be marked as closed appropriately
    • Yext can reach out to publishers if closure updates aren’t accepted
  • New listings may get marked as duplicates of old listings
    • Yext can provide support when this occurs
  • You may incur a slight price increase as you will want to continue to sync to the closed entities for a short period of time while also creating new ones.
  • You may see a decrease in SEO ranking. You could experience a drop in SERP presence, especially for general or unbranded searches.

Rebrand Existing Entities

• Benefits:

  • Maintains existing user-generated content, such as reviews and photos.

• Things to Consider:

  • Publishers like Apple and Bing control matching and may create new listings anyway.
  • May trigger reverification on Google Business Profile. See the Updates Using a Bulk-Verified Google Account section to learn more.
    • Re-verification will need to be completed manually, auto-verification will not work for these instances.
      • For widespread changes, we recommend testing on a couple of locations first to confirm whether re-verification will be triggered. This way you can make an informed decision.

If you’re unsure which option is best for relocating or rebranding your listings, reach out to your account team and we will help you decide which option is best for your situation.

If you have a business that relocates regularly, please reach out to Yext so that we can ensure your changes won’t cause listing suspensions.

Executing a Rebrand or Relocation

If your business is going through a bulk rebrand with many location changes, you should do the following:

1. Let your account team know as soon as you are aware of the upcoming change
2. Share the following information with your account team:
   • What the rebrand will be (old and new naming conventions)
   • Location count (number of entities included in the rebrand)
   • Any information on the sensitivity of the change
   • Date of the upcoming change and additional timeline if necessary
   • An explanation to pass on to the publishers
   • Any public material regarding the upcoming change
3. Once we receive this information, the Yext team will review and advise on the next steps. If needed, this team will also reach out to publishers (Google, Apple, Bing) to inform them of the change. They can also help you decide on naming conventions and share any necessary timelines.
   • Google-specific: If the plan is to update existing listings during a rebrand, it is recommended to loop Yext in early on so we can inform Google of the rebrand, and request their assistance to get locations verified again if re-verification gets triggered. This would allow for a more seamless rebrand, especially for large chains that are rebranding.
4. Once publishers are aligned on the expected change, Yext will assist with rolling out changes for rebranded or relocated entities. Yext will also monitor whether these changes are accepted and published on each listing.
5. If there are any issues with the rebrand (if the update is rejected, or stuck pending), Yext will work with the Publishers to get the rebrand completed.

Below, we will go over specific publisher nuances and details for rebranding and relocating your locations:

Google

Relocations

Less Than a Mile Way

If you are relocating to an address within roughly a one-mile radius, also known as a “near” relocation, you can simply update the address on your existing profile to reflect the new location.

If you were to create an entirely new profile for the new location, you would run the risk of Google and Facebook marking the new location as a duplicate of the old location. You can learn more about the downfalls of duplicate listings in the Deep Dive into Duplicate Suppression blog post .

As with any major content changes on Google, you may be asked to re-verify your business with the updated information.

More Than a Mile Away

If your new address is more than a mile away, also known as a “far” relocation, you have two options.

1. Update your address and re-verify (same as for a “near” relocation).
   • Recommended if reviews and user-generated content are still relevant to the location and you wish to maintain them, you should maintain and update your original listing.
2. Mark your existing location as permanently closed and create a new listing entirely.
   • Recommended if reviews and user-generated content are no longer relevant given your relocation, this is a good opportunity to start fresh.

Rebrands

Minor Brand Updates

Be careful with creating a new listing in a rebrand for businesses that did not undergo any significant changes.

For example, If your business has undergone an ownership change, but the business itself remains the same (same branding, same services, etc). then a new listing should not be created.

If you create new entities these will almost always get flagged as duplicates by Google.

Significant Brand Updates

If there are significant changes to the business then new listings should be created.

For example, if the ownership has changed and the business has changed significantly (e.g., naming, services and amenities offered, branding) then your old reviews may likely no longer apply. Therefore the old entity should be closed and replaced with a new entity.

Note: If you decide to create a new listing as part of your rebrand, it may be marked as a duplicate, especially if your locations are hotels or financial institutions. Since restaurant rebrands are more common, a new listing for a restaurant likely will not be marked as a duplicate. Yext can escalate your duplicate issue to Google, but Google reserves the right to approve or deny this request.

Chain Businesses

Chain businesses are allowed to rebrand their existing listings if they wish to maintain the same listing. This is relevant to businesses that acquire and rebrand another business.

For example, large chains (vaguely defined here, but think Walgreens, Verizon, etc.) can choose on their own what they’d like to do:

• If new profiles are created, reviews can be transferred if there is public-facing proof of the business acquisition/rebrand.
  • Note: Google does have final say on whether or not a review transfer is possible. Reach out to Yext before implementing a rebrand so we can confirm with Google if they will assist with a review transfer before proceeding with this option.
• If they keep the original profile and update the name/address, Google will not assist with removing old photos/reviews.

Reorganizing Google Location Groups

After a rebrand, you may also want to reorganize your Google location groups to reflect the new branding.

Re-verification and Making Updates Using a Bulk-Verified Google Account

If maintaining historical listing data (UGC content) is not a priority, creating new listings with the rebrand can be a more seamless process with a bulk verified account since new listings will get auto-verified.

A risk with updating existing listings is re-verification (i.e., Google may require you to re-verify that listing with the new information.), which can be caused by a business name/address update.

Bulk verification does not circumvent re-verification, so if re-verification gets triggered, you may need to complete manual verification to publish the updates.

For widespread changes, we recommend testing on a couple of locations first to confirm whether re-verification will be triggered. This way you can make an informed decision.

Note: If a whole chain of businesses is facing a rebrand, notify your Yext account team ahead of time so we can reach out to Google and ask for their assistance in getting your listings verified again if re-verification does happen.

Facebook

Relocations

Facebook treats relocations similarly to Google. You will want to choose how you want to update listings based on how far the business is moving from its original location. See the Google Relocations section above for more details.

Rebrands

Facebook treats rebrands similarly to Google. How you update your location entities will depend on the scale of changes you are making to the business:

• For minor brand updates, we recommend updating existing entities.
• For major brand updates, we recommend creating new entities and closing old entities.

After a rebrand, be sure to reorganize your Facebook brand pages to reflect any changes.

See the Google Rebrands section above for more details.

Name Change

If you are changing the name of your brand page and child pages for Facebook, we recommend that you reach out to your Facebook CSM for assistance before doing so. Name changes must be made in the Facebook UI.

If you change the brand page name and it populates to the child page then no further action is needed.

However, if you change the brand page name and that change is not populated to the child page then you will need to create a new location structure. That means you will need to create a new brand page. Yext will then create new location pages which will be linked to the brand page.

Old location pages can be deactivated through Facebook directly.

Bing

If your business is rebranding or relocating, Bing will accept updates to existing listings. Please notify Yext so we can notify the publisher of the changes being made.

Apple

Non-Delegated Accounts

Apple does not want businesses to update their name or address. If a relocation or rebrand must occur, you must:

1. Mark your location as permanently closed
2. Create a net new entity in Yext

If an update to the name or address was already made, you must do the following:

1. Change the name and address back to its original value
2. Update the status to permanently closed
3. Create new entities in Yext

Existing local listings often pull business information from other data sources. If you change the name or address of your business, but these other sources remain linked, then your listing will receive conflicting information that could lead to data inaccuracy.

Relocating and rebranding listings both indicate a major change according to Apple. We do not control matching on Apple, so many times when locations change names, new listings will be created. As a result, duplicates and listings with old branding may remain on Apple Maps.

Typically, the two listings will show together for about a month. After that time period, the old branded listing should no longer appear in generic search.

Furthermore, Apple does not support Duplicate Suppression, which limits our ability to systematically clean up duplicate records.

Delegated Accounts

For delegated accounts, the process listed above for non-delegated accounts remains the same if there is an address change.

However, if there is a name change to location(s), you will need to do the following:

1. Create a new brand in your Apple Business Connect account with the new branding
2. Update the Brand ID in Yext for the locations that are changing

Once this is complete, this will move the locations into a new brand folder and the new name will reflect on Maps

Yelp

If the address substantially changes, there will need to be a new listing createrd.

If the business has not moved but the name and ownership have changed, there must be a new listing created.

For more information, see What are the guidelines for substantial business changes? on the Yelp Help Center.

Additional Best Practices

• If you decide to create a new location in Yext Knowledge Graph as part of your relocation, we recommend keeping the old location synced on Listings for one month. Keeping the old location data synced to publishers for a short time after it has closed helps ensure that the old location cannot be marked as reopened by a user.
• In the case of a rebrand, you should be sure to reexamine your Yext Content configuration. You may want to update fields or entity templates to reflect the new business name or any other major changes to your business.
• Finally, any major change to your locations could have an impact on user access in the Knowledge Graph. If necessary, you should update your Yext Content folders to ensure all users have access to the correct locations.