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Guide
Get Started with Search Tracker
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Introduction
Introduction
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Step 1
Enable Search Tracker for Your Locations
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Step 2
Set Search Tracker Preferences
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Select Competitor Names and Websites
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Step 4
View Search Tracker Data on Listings Insights
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Step 5
FAQs
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Step 5: FAQs

Do I need to be live on Listings before using Search Tracker?

No — Search Tracker can be enabled as soon as you add your location entities to the Knowledge Graph.

However, Search Tracker insights are stronger with Listings - the availability and consistency of your business information across third-party publishers are likely to directly impact your performance in search results.

Which custom keywords should I track?

When choosing custom keywords to track, you can use unbranded and branded keywords.

Unbranded keywords are broad search terms that pertain to your business category. They typically appear in searches at the start of the customer journey, before a conversion. For example, unbranded keywords for a company like Apple might include terms like “best smartphone,” “computer repair,” “tablet”, etc.

Unbranded keywords can be helpful for evaluating how your locations directly compare with competitors for searches at the top of your marketing funnel.

Branded keywords are proprietary terms specific to your business. For Apple, this might include terms like “newest generation iPhone”, “MacBook”, “Apple Store”, etc.

Branded keywords are less useful for direct competitor comparison (for instance, Apple can be expected to outperform other companies in searches for “iPhone”), but they are helpful for more specific insights about your locations. Here are some examples of questions that branded keywords can help answer:

  • Out of all the people searching for my store, how many actually have a store near them?
  • How well does my own site rank for branded keywords compared to my third-party retailers?
  • Is my business appearing in searches for terms related to a key competitor’s branding?

Which competitors should I track?

When setting up Search Tracker, you can select a combination of local competitors to a specific region, or competitors across your entire business presence.

When choosing competitors to track, keep in mind that Search Tracker automatically detects local competitors that regularly appear in search results on an individual location level. For this reason, it is recommended that you primarily select competitors for your entire business when setting up Search Tracker.

How do I know if my Share of Intelligent Search metric is good?

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 your competitors, both at a local level and across your entire business. A reliable benchmark of your search performance is whether your Share of Search is higher or lower than your competitors (for unbranded keywords in particular).

Second, you should look at how your Share of Search compares across different keywords, locations, and search queries. You can view individual searches (under Analytics > Search Tracker > All Searches) to evaluate how your locations are ranking.

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

Search Tracker metrics will fluctuate for a number of reasons, 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.

The most common reasons for sudden and significant changes are:

  • Changes made to Search Tracker settings (e.g., keywords, templates, competitors, etc.)
  • Changes to alternative names and/or websites that Search Tracker uses to match location entities to results

When making changes to any Search Tracker fields, it’s important to note that all Search Tracker data from before the change was made will still reflect the previous settings.

How does localization work with query templates?

Localization behavior in Search Tracker depends on the search engine used. When a search is run on a search engine, Yext passes the location information for any entities appearing in the results for that search. The search engine then uses this information to determine if the location of that entity is relevant to the user performing the search.

When a search is run on Google, Yext passes the city, postal code, region, and locale listed on the entity. For instance, if a location entity were located in Brooklyn, New York 11217, Yext would pass Google a value of "geo": "11217 brooklyn ny usa". For Japanese locations, Yext sends the exact latitude/longitude of the entity.

Searches on Bing are localized at the level of the country specified in the entity locale. This means that Bing searches do not get localized to the state, city, or zip code level, so there is less granularity than Google searches.

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