“Search has changed,” says Howard Lerman, CEO of Yext. “It used to all be about websites where you’d type in a keyword and you get ten blue links back on a page. Today, when you search you just get an answer. The companies that put answers out there from them are the ones that are going to win in this massive paradigm shift.”
Howard Lerman, CEO of Yext, discusses how Yext helps businesses adapt to the new paradigm in search by inserting brand verified answers into all the major search platforms in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
Yext Delivers a New Paradigm in Search
Taco Bell with they’re 7,000 stores is a partner of Yext. But we don’t just partner with food companies. We added 350 new enterprise logos last year with 128 and Q4 alone. That’s nearly one logo per day. We live in an era of too much information and much of it is wrong. In this era of too much information, Yext delivers a new paradigm in search that enables consumers to get brand verified answers on all the major search platforms like Siri and Google and Alexa even the Chinese search engine Baidu.
So the overseas tourists from China that come and go to luxury brands or need to eat can find information or they can find facts in Mandarin. They don’t use Google when they come to the United States.
The Ultimate Authority on a Business is the Business Itself
Morgan Stanley has over 14,000 Wealth Advisors. They all use the Yext platform to manage all the facts about every one of their advisers. They can log in, update their photo, they can say whether their a CFP and what languages they speak. They put it into Yext and boom it’s updated everywhere. We stand for the truth. The ultimate authority on Old Navy, the ultimate authority on Taco Bell, the ultimate authority on Morgan Stanley or New York Presbyterian Health is the business itself.
So when you look up a doctor and you’re looking up a doctor that treats certain conditions and accepts certain insurances you need to make sure that you get the right answer. The ultimate authority on the doctor is from the hospital and the doctor itself. That’s what Yext stands for. We put customers, the brand itself, with brand verified answers in all these different services. Every customer journey starts with a question and when you use Yext your customers can get a brand verified answer.
Companies That Put Answers Out There Are Going to Win
Yext Brain is an extension of Yext that lets customers create any type of entity they want with custom objects in their platform. They can publish events. They can publish menus. They can publish products. If you’re in the financial services industry you can publish a credit card. These are all new types of entities that companies can put into Yext to deliver answers to their customer at that exact moment of intent. Search has changed. It used to all be about websites where you’d type in a keyword and you get ten blue links back on a page. Today, when you search you just get an answer. The companies that put answers out there from them are the ones that are going to win in this massive paradigm shift.
Does Wendy’s have gluten-free menu items? Do they have vegetarian items? How many calories are in a Whopper? How many calories are in a Big Mac? What about the new Burger King Impossible Burger. These are the types of questions people ask. The number one question someone asks when they visit New York Presbyterian health, that’s one of our customers,