Whether a citation builder is worth the money or not depends on what you're using it for (in full disclosure, I'm a part of Local Listing Ninja, a Yext competitor).

If you're using it for Local SEO then yes, a citation service is worth it. Is Yext specifically worth it? It could be. But you can also build almost all of Yext's most important citations on your own. Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Superpages, Yelp, Yellowpages.com etc. etc. can all be built by you just signing up for the sites themselves. They're free and open to the public.

However, Yext does submit to 2 big directories directly than you can't directly submit yourself to: Yahoo and Citysearch. But even then there are ways around this. Yahoo and Citysearch takes submissions from ExpressUpdate, a big data aggregator which is free to submit to. Once you sign up for ExpressUpdate they will put your information on Yahoo and Citysearch within 90 days typically. Now, that's not a guarantee but Citysearch does say if you want to get on Citysearch, use ExpressUpdate (or Yext of course). Yahoo is mum on sources they use but ExpressUpdate has confirmed to us they still submit to Yahoo. In addition, Yahoo also takes data from Yelp. There's a rumor they also take data from Yellowpages too although we can't confirm that quite yet.

So, you can either do this all on your own and save $500 a year or if it's worth it to you, you can use Yext.

You can also look into competitor products to Yext as well to see if you can get a better service at a better price.

I did write a blog post about Yext awhile back. I can't remember WF's policies on linking to yourself so if this violates anything, just take the link down. But here's the link to the article I wrote:

https://university.tutelarymarketing...al-businesses/

Hopefully it's enlightening.

Again, I'm obviously very biased here as the provider of a competing product but I think the article makes sense.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Correct, Yahoo can't be done directly without Yext. You need to use ExpressUpdate or Yelp (and again, maybe Yellowpages) to update the data.

ExpressUpdate is its own entity and still allows you to edit your listings for free. They don't like agencies (in fact, they're downright rude to them) but they'll play nice with the local business themselves. They're having a bit of an issue at the moment though. If your listing is already in their database then you can phone verify and be done. If the listing is not in their database, the "add listing" function doesn't currently work. You have to email in or have the local business themselves call in. They take down your info and then supposedly submit it to their database and in 2 weeks it will show up. Although sometimes, I wonder if they actually do enter it in or if they do, if it somehow gets lost in translation. It works most of the time I think but it's so janky you never really know.

ExpressUpdate is still their own entity. In fact, I don't even see them on the list of Yext partners:

http://www.yext.com/en/products/listings/network/

Hope that helps!

On ExpressUpdate?

Can you put a link in here to an example?

Unless they've changed something in the last couple of weeks, it's every year. You have to pay recurring for the relationships they maintain with the directories they put your information on. Yext pays them for this privilege so it makes sense why they have to charge every year. There's a few issues with Yext but one of them is not necessarily that you have to pay every year, it's about how much you have to pay every year. There are, of course, a few other issues with Yext as well but that's one of the bigger ones.

I can't confirm that myself but there's 2 problems with this:

1) I've heard a lot of stuff from Yext salespeople (second hand though, to be fair) promising a lot of things and saying a lot of things that simply aren't true. Without a press release or something on their blog, I don't know if I would believe that.

2) And honestly, this is even worse than removing your listings. At least if your listings are removed no bad information is floating around out there. Now if you need to change your listings after you cancel they're stuck and you have no access (unless you want to pay $500 to Yext again to make one change). If you don't want to pay that or can't, your listings are stuck and have no username/password for you to access them. They're just out there, floating all alone. Now Google is indexing bad information and you can't do anything about it. Again, it would be better if they just removed the listings. No listing is better than an incorrect listing.

Does that make sense?

I would consider using a different company that won't charge you $500 to change your listings. That's just me though. And in full disclosure, I work for one of those "other" local listing companies myself so take my advice with a grain of salt