NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar 3, 2025--
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.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250303452300/en/
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:
"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 acquisitionof 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.
(Graphic: Yext)
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday that “there will be very serious retaliation” after two U.S. service members and one American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blames on the Islamic State group.
“This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” he said in a social media post.
The American president told reporters at the White House that Syria's president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was “devastated by what happened” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops. Trump, in his post, said al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”
U.S. Central Command said three service members were wounded in an ambush Saturday by a lone IS member in central Syria. Trump said the three “seem to be doing pretty well.” The U.S. military said the gunman was killed.
The attack on U.S. troops in Syria was the first with fatalities since the fall of President Bashar Assad a year ago.
“There will be very serious retaliation,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
The Pentagon's chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said the civilian killed was a U.S. interpreter. Parnell said the attack targeted soldiers involved in the ongoing counter-terrorism operations in the region and is under active investigation.
The shooting took place near historic Palmyra, according to the state-run SANA news agency, which earlier said two members of Syria’s security force and several U.S. service members had been wounded. The casualties were taken by helicopter to the al-Tanf garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force.
Syria's Interior Ministry spokesman Nour al-Din al-Baba said a gunman linked to IS opened fire at the gate of a military post. He added that Syrian authorities are looking into whether the gunman was an IS member or only carried its extreme ideology. He denied reports that suggested that the attacker was a security member.
Later al-Baba clarified that the attacker was a member of the Internal Security force in the desert adding that he “did not have any command post" within the forces nor was he a bodyguard for the force commander.
Al-Baba added in an interview with state TV that some 5,000 members have joined Internal Security forces in the desert and they get evaluated on weekly basis. He added that three days ago, an evaluation was made for the attacker and it turned out that he might have extreme ideology and a decision was expected to be issued regarding him on Sunday but “the attack occurred on a Saturday which is a day off for state institutions.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X: “Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.”
The U.S. has hundreds of troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting IS.
The U.S. had no diplomatic relations with Syria under Assad, but ties have warmed since the fall of the five-decade Assad family rule. Al-Sharaa, made a historic visit to Washington last month where he held talks with Trump. It was the first White House visit by a Syrian head of state since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946 and came after the U.S. lifted sanctions imposed on Syria during the Assads’ rule.
Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled Bashar Assad in December 2024 and was named the country’s interim leader in January. Al-Sharaa once had ties to al-Qaida and had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.
Last month, Syria joined the international coalition fighting against the IS as Damascus improves its relations with Western countries following the ouster of Assad when insurgents captured his seat of power in Damascus.
IS was defeated on the battlefield in Syria in 2019 but the group’s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in the country. The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.
U.S. troops, which have maintained a presence in different parts of Syria — including Al-Tanf garrison in the central province of Homs — to train other forces as part of a broad campaign against IS, have been targeted in the past. One of the deadliest attacks occurred in 2019 in the northern town of Manbij when a blast killed two U.S. service members and two American civilians as well as others from Syria while conducting a patrol.
Mroue reported from Beirut and Seung Min Kim from Washington.
An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect reference to Iraq.
President Donald Trump talks to reporters as he departs from the South Lawn of the White House, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025, in Washington, en route to Baltimore to attend the Army-Navy football game. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
