Yahoo Local Switch to Yext: What you need to know!

So the frustrating world of managing your Yahoo local listing for your business has taken yet another turn, and  unfortunately it leads us to Yext.  Yahoo has announced that it will be outsourcing their local search listings to the somewhat spammy (my own personal opinion) Yext in November. Below are some things to keep in mind and be attentive to in this process.

• Yext will have a dashboard to manage your basic listing coming in November: This will hopefully the best part of this situation. In the past Yahoo has been difficult to deal with to manage these listings, and I’m giving Yext the benefit of the doubt that the process will be made easier for the average business owner.  If Yext can do anything, it is speed up your distribution.
• Any edits that are being considered will still be considered by Yext: If you are waiting on an edit to go through and are worried it will get lost in the shuffle, they are claiming to pass on to Yext for review anything that is currently being considered.  That being said, these things don’t always go smoothly, so if you don’t see the changes go in to place when the new dashboards come out, I would say claim it and try it again now that you own the listing.
• You don’t have to subscribe to the Power Listings: One of my biggest gripes with Yext is how they make business owners think that they have to use their services.  I’m sure that this venture will lead to them trying to upsell their Power Listings to every business owner.  If you need your info out there immediately,  Yext can do a good job of getting your listings out and published, but there are much less costly alternatives out there if you can wait for your data to be distributed organically to the myriad of data suppliers.  You can still claim your specific Google and Yahoo listings individually and immediately. Yext is all about distribution speed, but they are not required and I don’t particularly recommend them except in specific situations where you need immediate data placement. That is very rare from my experience with smaller businesses.

Make sure you keep an eye on your Yahoo listing and hopefully this is a step forward. Just be aware that your local listing is supposed to be free, so you don’t need to buy other services to get your Name, address, and phone correct.