Once trained, Hitchhikers — whether they are developers, digital marketers, SEO specialists, IT professionals, or another profession — become official Yext administrators and have the skills to build custom search solutions that meet their brand’s unique needs. As part of this launch, Yext is also offering its revolutionary site search product, Yext Answers, in a new self-serve format to allow for more autonomous and faster learning, development, and deployment.

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The program is inspired by Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — specifically, “The Ultimate Question of Life” that is discussed in the iconic novel. Yext’s mission is to put more truth online by enabling businesses around the world to directly answer their customer’s “ultimate” questions about them with official answers.

“The trifecta of Yext’s Knowledge Graph, Answers, and Pages products allowed Yext to become a full-fledged technology platform, opening the door to a limitless number of solutions that brands can build on top of it,” said Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer at Yext. “We’re thrilled to launch Hitchhikers — another major milestone in Yext’s history — because it marks the first time that anyone in the world can specialize in implementing tailored solutions with our platform, no matter what their role inside the company might be.”

Hitchhikers will be able to guide themselves through detailed, interactive modules and participate in hands-on challenges related to the full suite of Yext products. Whether a healthcare organization needs to make doctors easier to find on its website, a CPG company needs to accelerate its hiring, or a bank needs its branch locations and hours of operations to be correct across the Internet, Hitchhikers within those organizations will learn the specific skills to solve for their company’s unique priorities and business objectives.

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The self-serve version of Answers connected to the program allows Hitchhikers to immediately start adding their brand’s information to a brain-like database of millions of facts called the Yext Knowledge Graph, and is available as a 90-day free trial at yext.com/free-trial. Users can upgrade to a paid account with no additional setup or integration needed for the Answers experience they build.

In addition, Hitchhikers will get access to special content, community forums, and virtual events to help them as they embark on developing solutions for their respective businesses.

“One of the most important aspects of this program is the community,” said Liz Frailey, Vice President of Developer and Admin Experience at Yext. “We envision Hitchhikers becoming the epicenter for innovation, and we’re thrilled to see what our clients and partners start building.”

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