A directory is a set of hierarchical pages that helps visitors navigate to the location most relevant to them — drilling down from country to region to city to individual location. Directories are recommended for both traditional SEO and AI visibility.

Specifically, directories:

• Give search engines and AI crawlers clear geographic context to serve relevant results for location-based queries
• Create a logical site structure that makes it easier for crawlers to discover and index all location pages
• Power breadcrumb navigation on location pages, providing additional structured data and improving user experience
• Help large language AI models better understand your geographic footprint when locations are organized hierarchically
• Strengthen your site's internal link structure through linking between directory levels

How Directories Are Structured

Location directories in Yext Pages have four levels:

Root → Country → Region → City

• The root page links to a page for each country where you have locations.
• Each country page lists regions (for example, US states) with locations.
• Each region page lists cities with locations in that region.
• Each city page lists all individual location pages in that city.

When you generate a directory, Yext creates four corresponding page groups — one for each level — and automatically generates a hierarchy of directory entities in the Knowledge Graph to represent this structure. Each entity has parent and child relationships.

Automatic updates: The directory stays current automatically. Adding locations creates new directory entities for new geographic areas. Removing locations removes directory entities when no locations remain in that area. Modifying the page group scope updates the directory accordingly.

Note: After generating a directory, you may notice a delay before the page count on the Page Groups screen updates. Directory entities are generated in the background — the count updates once generation is complete.

Generate a Directory

The easiest time to add a directory is when you create a page group — the Generate Directory checkbox is selected by default. If you skipped it at setup, you can add one at any time.

To add a directory to an existing page group:

1. Navigate to Pages > [Your Site] > Page Groups.
2. Click the menu icon in the row of the page group you want to add a directory to.
3. Select Create Directory.
4. Confirm you want to create a directory.

After deployment, which may take a few minutes, four new page groups appear on the Page Groups screen, one for each directory level. Each directory page group inherits the same locales as the source location page group.

Customize Directory Layouts

Each of the four directory page groups has its own layout, pre-built from the starter template. Click Edit Layout next to a directory page group to customize its design, just as you would for any other page group. See Edit Layouts and Map Section Properties for full details.

Delete a Directory

Deleting the base location page group automatically deletes all associated directory page groups and their underlying directory entities in the Knowledge Graph.

To remove a directory without deleting the base page group, delete each of the four directory page groups individually from the Page Groups screen.

Publish

Use Preview Changes in the layout editor to review directory pages before publishing. Click Publish in each directory page group layout to push changes live.

Note: Directory page groups inherit the locale code URL setting from their parent location page group. See Create and Manage Page Groups for details on locale code settings.