Feature
A single rank number averages the streets where you come first with the ones where you don't appear at all. Rank tracking searches Google Maps from dozens of fixed points across your service area and records your position at each one, so you can see both.
For each keyword you track, rank tracking runs the search a customer would type into Google Maps from every point of a grid laid over your service area. At each point it records whether your business shows up in the top 20 results, and where.
The default area is 13 miles across, covered by 49 points about two miles apart. The smallest setting, 6.5 miles across, puts the points about a mile apart. The widest, 26 miles across, uses 169 points. Every search is a live Google Maps search run through a data provider, with ads left out.
The Reports screen draws the grid as a map, each point colored by position: green for the top three, shading to dark red for 20 and below. Beside it are two numbers, your average ranking and how many points put you in the top three, for your first scan and your latest.
Most people pick from the few businesses Google Maps shows near them. Your position depends on where the person searching is standing, so a business can hold the top spot on its own block and be invisible a few miles away. An average hides that. A map shows it.
The map also tells you where the work is. A patch of red in one corner of your area is a specific problem you can point at, not a vague sense that you should be doing better online.
And it answers the question of whether anything is working. The first scan is kept as a baseline, so every later map can be compared with where you started, point by point.
During setup the product suggests keywords from your website and services. The first ten are used unless you pick your own, and you can change the list whenever you like.
The grid is centered on your business, or on the center you set during setup if you travel to customers rather than having them come to you. You choose how wide it is.
Soon after setup every point is searched for every keyword. That first result is kept as the baseline that everything afterwards is measured against.
On the first of each month the whole grid is searched again. Agency staff can run an extra scan in between; clients can't start one themselves.
Each keyword gets its own map, an average ranking and a top-three count, with the baseline and the latest scan side by side.
Check the keywords. The suggestions come from your website, but you know which searches actually bring in work. Replacing a suggested keyword with the phrase your customers really use is the most valuable five minutes you'll spend on this.
Pick the area honestly. If you'll drive twenty miles for a big job but most of your work is close to home, the tighter grid will tell you more about the searches that matter.
When you search, Google orders the results for where you are and what it knows about you. Rank tracking searches from the same fixed points every month, as nobody in particular, so one month's map can be compared fairly with the next.
Google says it ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence. You can't change how far a searcher is from you, so the map shows where relevance and prominence have to do more of the work: a fuller profile, more reviews, more photos.
The search at that point didn't come back with a usable result, so the point is unknown. It's left out of your average and your top-three count instead of being treated as a bad position.
Yes. You can track up to ten. The product suggests them from your website, and you can edit the list at any time. Each one is searched together with your primary city.
A baseline scan runs soon after your profile is connected and set up. After that a new scan runs on the first of each month, and the Reports screen keeps the baseline next to the latest one.
Tell us which business. We run the audit and send you what we find.