Powering Multi-Language Listings | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• How our system powers Listings in multiple languages
• When to create multi-language profiles for Listings

Overview

The Yext Knowledge Network includes publisher sites across the globe, to provide information to users in different geographies, and across different languages. It is important that the information you are pushing out to these listings is targeted to the language of the users on that site. Also, in some instances, in order to go sync to a publisher, you must send content to the Listings in the specific language that the publisher supports.

Publisher Behavior

Publisher behavior varies by site. The locale behavior is broken into the following categories:

• Supports all locales
• Does not support multi-language profiles
• Support Multi-language profiles
• Hybrid

We will go into detail about each type of support below.

Supports all locales

In this case, the publisher supports all locales, meaning they can accept content in any language, and have no preferences set in terms of what languages they will accept. One example of a publisher that falls into this category is Google.

For publishers with this integration, we will only send the primary language profile. Meaning, in the example below, although there are five language profiles for the entity, we would only send the English language content to the publisher.

To learn more about how to adjust which language is the primary profile for an entity, visit the Multi-Language Profiles in Content module.

Does not support multi-language profiles

In this case, the publisher only supports specific locales, and they are not set up to support multi language profiles, meaning they will only take one profile. In this case, they will take the profile in the supported language, or they may take a merged profile if content is missing from one supported language, but exists in another supported language. One example of a publisher that falls into this category is Yelp.

The languages these publishers support are often in a ranked order. For example, in the image below the publisher in question prefers content in Germany, then English, then French.

These preferences determine in what order we will pull data from location profiles.

So, our system will pull all the available fields it can for the first locale, if any are missing, it will try to pull those from the second locale in the list. If any fields are still missing, then it tries to pull those fields from the 3rd locale, and so on down the list of locales.

Meaning, if a location has French, Dutch, and German profiles with the description field only filled out in the Dutch and German profiles. If the locale preference looks like: [fr, nl, de], the merged profile would include the Dutch description but every other piece of data would be from the French profile.

Then, all the data in the combined, or merged profile, will be sent to the publisher.

If an entity does not have a profile with a locale in the supported locale list, an Unavailable Reason will display for that entity, and you will need to create a profile with content in the supported language in order to send content to that publisher. You can learn more about unavailable reasons in the Unavailable Listings module.

Supports Multi-language profiles

If a publisher and the locales are set up as multi-language, then each locale is treated as a separate thing. Similar as the example above, the languages these publishers support are often in a ranked order.

However, for these publishers, instead of merging the content the system pulls the profile for each of the support locales. One example of a publisher that falls into this category is Bing.

At the end of this, we have a list of profile data for every corresponding locale profile that the entity has. Ultimately, the system will determine the primary profile according to the preferences, but also include a complete list of all the profiles as “variants” that will be sent as separate items to the publisher.

Hybrid

There could be cases where only some of the locales supported by a publisher are marked as multi-language.

In cases where the publisher is set up in a hybrid approach, the system does a mix of both approaches. For all the locales that are not marked as multi-language, the system pulls the merged or combined profiles. For everything that is marked as multi-language, the system treats them separately, the same way as in the multi-language approach.

In the end there will be a list of separate profiles for each supported language, but one of those profiles would be the merged profile of all the non-multi-lang locales.

When to Create Multi-Language Profiles for Listings

We just reviewed all of the publisher behavior when it comes to multi-language profiles, and multi-language content. However, the most important thing to remember is that because certain publishers prefer certain profiles, you should always attempt to fill out the local profile if you can. Additionally, when thinking about the ‘local profile’ this is not the local profile to the business, but the local profile to the publisher.

Meaning, if you are a business headquartered in the United States, but you also have locations in China, you will want to have Chinese profiles for these locations. That way, customers searching on Chinese publishers can find content about your business in their location language.

Another example would be, if you are in the United States and you serve a lot of Spanish-speaking customers, you may want to create a Spanish language profile for sites like YaSabe which is a bilingual directory in the US that allows users to search in both English and Spanish.

Tourist Publishers

Additionally, Yext also pushes content to Chinese publishers that are used by Chinese tourists. This is because many Chinese tourists use these Chinese-based publishers when they travel, so it is also beneficial to create profiles to provide content for tourists using these publishers when they travel to any locations outside of China.

Additionally, sites like Yandex, a Russian publisher, is also commonly used by users that speak Russian, regardless of where they currently live.

How to Optimize your Brand’s Content

Overall, it is important to look at the language of the publishers, and your customer-base so you can create language profiles in the appropriate languages. You can find a full list of publishers on The Yext Knowledge Network page on our website.

Most importantly, if you create a profile for another language, you should always put that language’s content in the profile.

You should never have a Russian profile with English content in it, or vice versa. The content should always align with the language of the profile.

Because the Yext system sends alternate language profiles to publishers, you want to make sure that you are putting your best foot forward and sending the correct content to these sites, and to your audience online.