Search Tracker FAQs | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

How do I pick the right keywords?

There are a few different ways you could go about deciding the keywords you wish to track in Search Tracker. The main decision you should make is whether you want to include unbranded or branded keywords.

Most commonly, you might want to select the main, unbranded keywords that pertain to your business. These are broad, category searches that might be the start of the customer journey that ends with a conversion for your business. For a company like Apple, for example, this might be terms like “smartphones”, “computers”, “PCs”, etc.

Choosing unbranded terms can be helpful for evaluating how your locations compare head-to-head with competitors in terms of ranking for these searches that are all potential conversions.

Alternatively, you could also choose branded keywords specific to your business. For Apple, this might include terms like iphone”, “mac”, “apple store”, etc.

The purpose of choosing branded terms is less so the same head-to-head comparison mentioned for unbranded terms, because branded terms are obviously more specific to your business, and you will generally expect to outperform your competitors for those searches. E.g., you would not expect Samsung to outperform Apple for the keyword “iphone”.

Instead, there are other insights that you can glean from branded terms in Search Tracker, for example:

• A grocery store chain might want to see, out of all the people searching for their store, how many actually have a store near them
• Apple might want to consider with how well their own site ranks for the keyword “iphone” compared to third-party sellers, like Best Buy or Verizon

You might also want to adjust the list of competitors you choose for these terms to account for whether you are primarily using branded or unbranded keywords.

You can always choose to change keywords later down the line. But if you do, please note - the keywords define the scope of searches that Search Tracker scans, and therefore, obviously have a huge impact on the metrics you might see in Yext. As a result, if you ever go back and change these keywords in the future, you might see a sudden shift in Search Tracker metrics as a result.

How do I pick the right competitors?

The competitors that you select when setting up Search Tracker can be either local competitors to a specific location, or competitors across your entire business.

When choosing what competitors to track, keep in mind that Search Tracker does automatically detect local competitors that regularly appear in search results on an individual location level - these are available in the Local Competitors section under the Search Tracker Overview screen.

As such, it is recommended that you primarily select competitors for your entire business when setting up Search Tracker. This is because depending on your and their locations, automatic detection of these competitors may be more irregular at an individual, local level.

Finally, also keep in mind when setting up Competitors, be sure to use the competitor’s main website domain. Search Tracker will then detect all results that appear from that domain.

Is my Share of Intelligent Search good?

There is not a straightforward answer to whether your Share of Search is good or bad - that’s a question you have to answer holistically, relative to your competitors, and across your locations.

Keep in mind that the goal is not to achieve 100% Share of Search - there will always be other results and other brands that return in search results alongside your locations.

First, you should compare your Share of Search to competitors, both at a local level and across your entire business. Whether your Share of Search is higher or lower than your competitors (for unbranded keywords in particular), is the best way to benchmark your search performance.

Second, you should look at how your Share of Search compares across different keywords, locations, and search queries. You can look at individual searches, for example, from the All Searches screen within Search Tracker, and evaluate how your locations are ranking. This will help you find areas where you are performing well, and areas where you are underperforming.

How do I interpret the Search Tracker metrics?

In order to interpret the various metrics returned by Search Tracker, it can be helpful to group the metrics into categories and understand what each of the categories means.

On top of these, Search Tracker also provides general metrics such as Search Requests (the number of searches evaluated by Search Tracker) and Total Matches (the number of matches found with your locations), which can be used to understand the overall volume Search Tracker is producing.

Why was there a sudden change in my Search Tracker metrics?

There are many reasons why Search Tracker metrics may change, including changes to your or your competitor’s SEO performance, changes to Google’s search algorithm, new results ranking for the selected search queries, etc.

For sudden and significant changes, the most common reason is that a change was made to either the keywords or templates Search Tracker uses to determine the scope of search queries to evaluate, or to the alternative names / websites that Search Tracker uses to match location entities to results.

If you make a change to either of those groups of fields, it’s important to note that all Search Tracker data from before that change was made will still reflect the old scope of search queries and match fields; as such, you may observe a significant change in Search Tracker metrics before and after the change.

Do I need to be live on listings before I turn on Search Tracker?

No; Search Tracker can be run as soon as you add your locations to the platform. You do not need to be live on Listings or any other Yext products before running Search Tracker.

That said, many of the important benefits of Listings - such as the availability and consistency of your information across third party listings sites - are likely to directly impact your performance in search results and in Search Tracker.