UBL And Yext Join Forces To Offer More Complete Local Data Syndication

Several years ago Universal Business Listing sought to become the “one stop shop” for local business listings syndication. The dream was that small businesses and their surrogates could sign up in one place online and ensure their data were in all the right places across the internet. While that has not fully come to pass, the company has taken a step closer through a deal with former competitor Yext.

Yext began as a pay-per-call network and shifted last year to focus on local listings syndication. Yext works with small businesses but also brands with multiple locations.

Emulating the now defunct Google Tags, Yext developed a real-time data distribution network (“PowerListings“) across the major search engines and local directory sites (including Yelp but not Google). UBL had been trying to develop a similar “real-time” data update capability.

The Yext PowerListings distribution has been incorporated into UBL’s new “UBL Express” product. According to press materials, “The Yext platform allows UBL customers to manage business listings on over 35 search engines and directories via direct-connect instant feeds, as well as view user activity through a monitoring dashboard.”

The combination offers a convenience for many local marketers who might have been trying to choose between Yext and UBL. UBL’s sydnication network fills in many of the blanks in the Yext distribution, which didn’t offer Google Places: “The UBL components will include establishing Google Places profiles as well as syndication of the listings to the databases that feed hundreds of other search engines, social networks and mobile/GPS services.”

The UBL Express package is priced at $599 per year and is the most expensive of the UBL data distribution bundles. Yext is not reselling the UBL product on a reciprocal basis.

Bruce Clay and UBL were embroiled a couple of months ago in a strange controversy over a “Local Paid Inclusion” product Bruce Clay announced. UBL denied that it was involved in any way.