Report: SEO Firm Yext Considering Sale After Attracting Takeover Interest

Search engine optimization (SEO) firm Yext is reportedly considering a sale.

The company has hired investment bankers after attracting takeover interest, Reuters reported Friday (June 7), citing unnamed sources.

It is only in the early stages of exploring a sale and it may choose not to proceed with any deal, according to the report.

Reached by PYMNTS, Yext declined to comment on the report.

The firm’s shares have lost more than half their value over the last 12 months amid a decline in revenue, intense competition and advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the report said.

Yext will release its latest quarterly results Monday (June 10), according to a May 29 press release.

In May, the company introduced a solution called Listings Recommendations that uses AI to provide actionable insights and advance to help brands enhance their search strategies.

The solution provides proactive recommendations, insights supported by data science and listings monitoring that identifies underperforming business listings and suggests ways to improve them.

“With the ability to give customers deep insights and take action much faster, it’s a new day in the listings space,” Jason LaFollette, chief technology officer at Yext, said in a May 13 press release announcing this new offering.

In March, Yext expanded its service and support portfolio to include a new customer success program featuring a team of digital marketing experts who use AI to identify insights and solutions to help customers capitalize on opportunities.

Business leaders are rethinking their digital strategies after Google’s latest unveiling of AI-powered search tools sent ripples through the business world, PYMNTS reported in May.

Companies are struggling to understand and adapt to the tech giant’s new features that promise to disrupt online information retrieval.

Another player in the SEO space, Constructor, unveiled a solution in July designed to optimize product discovery and search relevance on its platform for enterprise eCommerce companies.

The company’s Attribute Enrichment combines raw product catalog data with buyer’s behavioral data to correct and auto-enrich product attributes.

Among the benefits of this solution are more accurate product descriptions that increase their SEO rankings.