Article owner is Rik Dale
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- What is Extended Distribution?
- What are the benefits of Extended Distribution?
- Who can buy Extended Distribution?
- How many Extended Distributions does a customer need?
- How Does Extended Distribution Work?
- What is Extended Distribution Analytics and what does it tell me?
- Useful Resources
What is Extended Distribution?
Extended Distribution creates and/or claims listings for a customer across a Network of up to 48 main publisher sites based on the address details on their Free Business Profile.
We also provide customers full support in the setting up and linking of a Google Business Profile.
The Network at the time of writing this (July ‘23) is as follows:
*48 plus 2 new publishers
*X (formerly Twitter) is currently unavailable
What are the benefits of Extended Distribution?
- Creation and/or Claiming of Business Listings across a wide publisher Network to help a business be found consistently across the Web providing quick and easy functionality within the customer online account to update these in bulk saving businesses hours of time and money attempting this manually.
- Set-Up and linking of Google Business Profile ensures Businesses have improved Local Google Search visibility which is important for any Business Marketing Strategy. Extended Distribution helps you keep this maintained as part of the updates made to the Yell Business Profile.
Who can buy Extended Distribution?
Extended Distribution is available to all customers either as a Bundle, part of a customer’s multi-product holding or individually.
How many Extended Distributions does a customer need?
Extended Distribution is sold at branch level so one per branch.
It is possible to for customers to have different subscriptions for each branch. i.e. some have Extended Distribution and some have Reputation Manager. Each branch will have the appropriate feature set.
You can’t have multiple subscriptions for the same branch.
How Does Extended Distribution Work?
Following the customer approving their eContract for Extended Distribution, (as long as the attached branch has been adopted i.e. Validated by our FBP Team and system processed overnight), we will place an order with Yext for the Extended Distribution subscription (Yext call this “Professional” in the Yext platform.
After a quick system review the customers details start to push out to all eligible and relevant publishers checking for a matching listing. If a match is found we claim that listing, if not we create one.
Different publishers on the network accept differing levels of content of which some take this as soon as available or an update to the customers Yell Free Business Profile has been made where some pull this information when they make updates, this can vary between a few days to a few weeks. (It is typically the Sat Nav & Map based listings that take longer)
You can see what content fields we offer the Extended Distribution network at the top of the Overview Page on Editbiz à Profile Summary
Why would a business not be eligible or relevant for a listing?
There are a few reasons that listings may show as unavailable or not show at all on a customers Extended Distribution Listings dashboard, the most common are:
- Supress Address – Several publishers (20 Approx) do not allow businesses to Suppress their Address and therefore if Suppress Address is active for a branch these publishers will show has unavailable on the listing’s dashboard with a supporting message to indicate why.
- Category – Some publishers do not support certain categories and will show the listing as unavailable or not at all on the Customers Dashboard. An example of this will be Trip Advisor who do not support all trades services and are relevant for restaurants, accommodation, or attractions.
What is Extended Distribution Analytics and what does it tell me?
Accessing Extended Distribution Analytics
Customers from their online account (Desktop or App) and Internal users of C4C (Unified Tools) can access the Extended Distribution Analytics from the report options available in Performance Analytics
The default data shown is based on the “Data Available Through Date” and the Date Range selected at the top of the report.
When is Extended Distribution Analytics data available?
The Data Available through date is set based on the oldest date of all the data feed dates available then the Date range setting looks at data counting back from this date. In this example, the Google Search Keywords data is the oldest data last updated 31/5/23 and the 12 week data range set looks at all date available 12 weeks before that date.
The data range can be modified to look at an end date of today but that means it will not include any data for Google Search Keywords as it has not had any since 31/5/23 unless the start date of the date range is set to before that date.
Google data starts to be available about 48-72 hours after linking with tiles 8&9 pulling historic data but tiles 4-7 can take between 2-4 weeks to show capturing data from when Google is live on the dashboard.
The first 3 tile which are all Network related will start collecting data from the date the dashboard is live and listings start to publish and be found but will only show data is the Extended Listings Network data shows a date in the information box next to the Data Available Through Date (see example below)
The Extended Distribution Reporting Tiles
The Listings Overview Tile
The Listings Overview Tile shows the number of listings the customer has live from their potential 48 (Address Supressed customers probably have a maximum of around 25 as they will be the only publishers that allows listings to not show an address). Details of what listings are not live and how they can be resolved can be found on the listing’s dashboard. The listings updated field shows how many listings have been updated by content we have send from the customer Yell profile to their listings network. So, each update during the selected data range shows the number of amendments a customer would have to make manually if they didn't have Extended Distribution.
Total Listing Impressions Tile
The Total listings Impressions Tile shows over a full year how many times each month customer listings have been seen based on a search by a consumer on one of the publisher sites and shows (if available) a comparison against the previous year.
Listing Impressions by Device Tile
The Listings Impressions by Device tile simply shows a diagram of what devices the searches that returned the customers listing were found using. Either Desktop or Mobile.
Google Search Term Impressions Tile
The Google Search Term Impressions Tile shows what search terms have led to consumers finding the Google Business Profile
Google Search Term Impressions by Term Type Tile
The search terms are then classified on the Google search Term Impressions by Term Type Tile as either branded (search for the business) or unbranded (search for a product or service).
Customer Actions Tile
The Customer Actions Tile then shows what actions consumers have taken on that Google Business Profile. If they have used the Get Directions feature, Made a Phone call to the business or clicked through to the customers website.
Listings Actions by Week Tile
The Listings Action by Week Tile then takes the Customer Actions data and lays it out over a longer time frame so a week-on-week view of these actions can be seen.
Review Distribution Over Time Tile
The Review Distribution Over Time tile then shows over the last 6 full months how many reviews have been left on Google and how these are broken down by rating. Reviews Management is not a feature customers get with Extended Distribution but we do just show them a simple view of how many reviews have been left on the Google Business Profile we may have created but have linked to the Extended Distribution Product.
Reviews Overview Tile
The final tile, Reviews Overview, simply shows a total number of Google Reviews, an Average Rating and a break down by stars.
Example of a Extended Distribution Dashboard.
Useful Resources
Yext Publisher Wiki – See more information on each of the publishers within the Extended Distribution Network
https://search.yext.com/publishers.html?query=&referrerPageUrl=&facetFilters=%7B%7D&filters=%7B%7D