Overview of Consumer Authorization with Yext | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

What You’ll Learn

In this section, you will learn:

• An overview of the available Consumer Auth options with Yext
• Key terminology and basic use cases

Overview

Yext supports the ability to create sites and search experiences where they can control who sees what content. Using authentication, you can do any of the following:

• Create a site that is locked down to only the set of users you want to have access to view.
• Choose which information can appear in search results depending on who executes the search on a Search experience.
• Ingest external documents from sources such as Google Drive or Salesforce and have your Search experience respect the permissions of the external source.
• Track every search and conversion on your site dimensioned at the visitor level.

The system is designed to offer as much flexibility as possible. When exploring consumer authorization with Yext, you have the option to leverage both Authenticated Sites, and Authorized Search — or just one or the other. You can also choose exactly how you would like your users to authenticate and how to integrate permissions with your search experience.

For a deeper introduction, see the Consumer Auth Overview guide.

Terminology and Use Cases

Here are the main options for creating secure sites and search experiences with Yext, and when they might be used:

Authenticated Sites or Secure Sites

A website that is locked down to only the set of users you want to have access to view it.

If a business wants to create a private website that requires a login to access, they would use Authenticated Sites.

Authorized Search

A search experience where each user can see different results for the same query based on which entities or documents they have access to.

If a business wants to create a help center where customers can use publicly available help resources, but employees can also access internal resources, they would use an Authorized Search experience.

Authenticated File and Image Hosting

A process where images and files stored on custom fields in Yext can be hosted on a private URL, in order to keep assets secure for use on authenticated sites and authorized search experiences.

Any businesses using Secure Sites or Authorized Search should also use private URLs to host file or image content stored in their custom File or Rich Text fields.

Visitor-Level Analytics

Analytics that use individual user identities to track how users are interacting with secure sites and search experiences.

A business using a secure site or search experience can choose to leverage this data as an extra layer of security to analyze specific user behavior.