Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, April 14

• Yext finishes the day up 21% as IPO window remains wide open: Yext, the company which helps businesses power their location data, went public on the New York Stock Exchange today. After pricing shares above the expected range at $11, the price rose 21% to $13.29 by the end of the first day of trading. With a client list that includes Best Buy, McDonald’s and Marriott, Yext is responsible for the location results that appear on search engines, maps and social media. The company recognized early on that consumers would prefer to find nearby locations without visiting brand websites. In an interview with TechCrunch, CEO Howard Lerman emphasized that Yext plans to evolve beyond location data. They want Yext to be a “knowledge engine,” where they will make it easier to help customers find the best doctor, their ideal automobile, or an event to attend. The IPO raised $115.5 million for the company, and Lerman says they plan to use the capital to further invest in sales and marketing. A large part of their business is convincing large enterprises that Yext provides enough value add to pay for their services. Yext brought in $88.6 million in revenue in the nine months ending in October of last year, with losses of $28.6 million for the same time frame. Revenue is up from the $64 million they saw in the same period the year before and losses narrowed to $18.2 million. Yext previously raised more than $117 million in venture funding at more than a $500 million valuation. The stock market is valuing the company above $1 billion, a favorable sign at a time when there are “down round IPOs.”

• Google is trying to turn Image Search into a shopping tool: Google has added a new shopping feature in Image Search called “style ideas” that shows users perusing fashion merchandise what specific items look like paired with others. A preview of the feature, launching in mobile search, demonstrates a search for a purse from Zara. Below the carousel of products similar to the purse is a grid of photos of various models pairing the purse with a jean jacket, gray suede boots and a pastel pink hijab. The new feature is clearly aimed at getting people looking at products to think of Google as a place to start shopping searches — and to use it instead of shopping portals like Amazon or eBay. Despite its general preeminence in search, Google lags behind Amazon when it comes to product search, and the trend is getting worse for Google. Some 55 percent of U.S. online shoppers start their search for items on Amazon, according to a survey last year by e-commerce startup BloomReach. That’s up from 44 percent when the startup did the same survey a year prior. And in that time, the percentage of shoppers who started product searches on search engines like Google fell from 34 percent to 28 percent. (Another recent survey found similar results.) It’s not just Amazon this feature seems aimed at, but also Pinterest, which offers a tool in its Chrome extension similar to Google’s new style ideas feature. Pinterest’s Chrome extension, which lets users save images they see online to Pinterest without having to return to the site, also lets users select an item and ask Pinterest to surface similar ones based on Pinterest’s image recognition software.

• Nintendo Shares Jump After Switch Sets U.S. Sales Records: Nintendo Co. shares jumped as much as 4 percent after the company said its new Switch console is off to a record-setting pace in the U.S. since its March 3 debut. The new device sold 906,000 units in North America during March, according to industry researcher NPD Group. That means the gaming machine “sold faster in its launch month than any other video game system in Nintendo history,” according to Nintendo. The Switch has received praise for its console-tablet hybrid design that lets gamers play both in the living room and outside the house. While its limited software lineup and limited graphics ability have been criticized, demand has consistently outstripped supply during the first six weeks of sales. That’s buoyed investors who think the Switch is on track to become a bigger hit than the Wii, the company’s best-selling home console of all-time.