Introducing Yext Scout, An AI Search & Competitive Intelligence Agent Redefining Brand Visibility

Rhea-AI Summary

Yext (NYSE: YEXT) has unveiled Yext Scout, an innovative AI search and competitive intelligence agent integrated within its digital presence platform. The new tool helps brands track and optimize their visibility across both traditional and AI-powered search platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity.

Scout offers three key capabilities:

• Comprehensive Search Visibility: Monitors brand presence across AI and traditional search platforms at national and local levels
• Competitive Benchmarking: Analyzes performance against competitors in local and AI search
• Actionable Recommendations: Provides data-driven insights to improve visibility and rankings

The platform enables brands to execute improvements directly through Yext's system, focusing on listings accuracy, online reputation, web content, and social content. Scout builds upon Yext's acquisition of Places Scout, enhancing the company's ability to help brands connect with customers across all search channels.

Positive

• Launch of new AI search visibility and competitive intelligence tool
• Integration with major AI platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity)
• Expansion of service offerings through Places Scout acquisition

Negative

• None.

Insights

Product Strategy Expert

Yext's launch of Scout represents a strategic pivot to address the fundamental shift in consumer search behavior from traditional keyword searches to AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. This product addresses a critical visibility gap for multi-location brands that currently lack tools to monitor how they appear in AI-generated search results.

The integration of Scout as "connective tissue" across Yext's platform ecosystem creates a compelling differentiation in the digital presence management market. By combining monitoring capabilities with actionable recommendations and execution tools, Yext has built a closed-loop system that could significantly increase customer retention and platform stickiness.

This launch follows Yext's acquisition of Places Scout, demonstrating the company's coherent build-and-buy strategy to enhance its competitive position. By focusing on both AI and traditional search visibility at national and hyper-local levels, Yext is hedging against uncertainty in search evolution while positioning itself as a forward-looking platform.

What's particularly noteworthy is Scout's potential to drive cross-selling across Yext's product suite by identifying specific areas where brands need improvement and connecting those insights directly to Yext's execution tools for listings, reputation management, and content optimization.

AI Search Analyst

Yext Scout addresses a significant technological inflection point in search behavior as consumers increasingly bypass traditional search engines in favor of conversational AI platforms. This shift fundamentally changes how brands need to optimize their digital presence.

The product's multi-platform monitoring across ChatGPT, Google, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok represents comprehensive coverage of both established and emerging AI search channels. By providing competitive benchmarking against local competitors, Scout offers actionable intelligence that most brands currently lack access to.

What makes Scout particularly valuable is its ability to decipher the complex and often opaque factors that influence visibility in AI search systems. Unlike traditional SEO where keyword rankings were relatively transparent, AI search results incorporate numerous factors including sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and content authority that are difficult to decode without specialized tools.

The platform's integration of monitoring, analysis, and execution capabilities positions Yext as potentially the first comprehensive solution for AI search optimization at scale. For multi-location brands managing hundreds or thousands of locations, the ability to implement recommendations across their digital footprint from a single platform represents significant operational efficiency.

The latest innovation from Yext delivers AI search visibility, competitive intelligence, and actionable insights to help brands stay ahead in an evolving digital landscape.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Yext, Inc. (NYSE: YEXT), the leading digital presence platform for multi-location brands, today announced Yext Scout, a groundbreaking AI search and competitive intelligence agent. Designed to help brands navigate the evolving search landscape, Scout provides insights into visibility across traditional and AI search platforms, benchmarks performance against local competitors, and delivers prioritized, actionable recommendations. Integrated seamlessly within the Yext platform, Scout helps brands to act quickly on recommendations to improve visibility and perception across traditional and AI-driven search.

(Graphic: Yext)

How AI Search is Changing Brand Visibility

Consumers are shifting from traditional keyword-based Google searches to AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity. This shift is reshaping how consumers discover information, yet most brands lack the visibility to track their presence in AI-generated results or understand why competitors rank higher. Traditional SEO tools were not built for this new landscape, leaving marketers without insights into how their brand is perceived and positioned. By adopting a strategy optimized for AI search, brands can enhance their visibility, relevance, and market position, staying competitive in an evolving digital landscape.

“AI-driven search is redefining how customers discover and engage with brands, yet most companies have limited visibility into how they’re being represented,” said Michael Walrath, CEO and Chair of the Board at Yext. “Yext Scout changes that by giving brands the intelligence and control they need to track, optimize, and own their presence across both AI and traditional search. When combined with Yext's industry-leading digital presence solutions, we believe we provide the only end-to-end platform that delivers comprehensive insights, recommendations, and the ability to take action.”

How Scout Helps Brands Compete in AI & Local Search

With this announcement, Yext further enhances its capabilities as a leading digital presence management platform by offering:

• Comprehensive Search Visibility: Monitor brand presence and sentiment across AI search platforms like ChatGPT, Google, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok, as well as traditional search engines like Google and Bing at the national and hyper-local levels.
• Competitive Benchmarking: Understand how your brand stacks up against competitors, uncover why they’re winning, and gain insights to take the lead in local and AI search.
• Actionable Recommendations: Get prioritized, data-driven insights to improve visibility, sentiment, and rankings, ensuring that your brand remains top-of-mind for AI search agents and human consumers alike.
• Effortless Execution: Take action to improve visibility and sentiment directly within the Yext platform, with a focus on the key drivers of online visibility, including listings accuracy, online reputation, web content, and social content.

"Scout is the connective tissue that ties together all of Yext’s products, giving brands the tools to take action where it matters most,” said Chris Brownlee, SVP of Product at Yext. “Whether updating listings, generating more online reviews, posting local social media updates, or optimizing local pages for AI search, Scout makes it easy to do at scale and see real results. By providing clear insights and recommendations, Scout helps brands measure, benchmark, and improve their overall search presence—all from a single platform.”

Scout builds on Yext’s acquisition of Places Scout and expands the company’s ability to help brands connect with customers wherever they search, discover, and engage.

For more information, visit yext.com/scout.

About Yext

Yext (NYSE: YEXT) is the leading digital presence platform for multi-location brands, with thousands of customers worldwide. With one central platform, brands can seamlessly deliver consistent, accurate, and engaging experiences and meaningfully connect with customers anywhere in the digital world. Yext’s AI and machine learning technology powers the knowledge behind every customer engagement, automates workflows at scale, and delivers actionable cross-channel insights that enable data-driven decisions. From SEO and websites to social media and reputation management, Yext enables brands to turn their digital presence into a differentiator. To learn more about Yext, visit Yext.com or find us on LinkedIn and X.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" including, without limitation, statements regarding Yext’s expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding Yext Scout, including expected benefits to Yext’s customers. These statements are based upon current beliefs and are subject to many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, including, among others, the risk that the features and benefits described in this release are not realized and whether all offerings and capabilities discussed in this release will be available as and when stated in this release. All forward-looking statements are based on information available to Yext on the date hereof, and Yext assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250303452300/en/

Investor Relations

ir@yext.com



Public Relations

pr@yext.com

Source: Yext, Inc.

FAQ

What features does Yext Scout offer for brand visibility monitoring?

Yext Scout offers comprehensive search visibility monitoring across AI platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity) and traditional search engines, competitive benchmarking, and actionable recommendations for improvement.

How does Yext Scout help businesses compete in AI search?

Scout helps businesses monitor their presence across AI platforms, benchmark against competitors, and provides actionable insights to improve visibility and rankings in both AI and traditional search results.

What platforms does Yext Scout monitor for brand visibility?

Yext Scout monitors brand presence across AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok, as well as traditional search engines like Google and Bing at national and local levels.

What actionable features are included in Yext Scout's platform?

Scout enables direct actions within the Yext platform to improve listings accuracy, online reputation, web content, and social content management at scale.