Local Rank Tracker Overview

The Local Rank Tracker ('Rank Tracker', or 'Ranking Report' for short) is a highly useful SEO reporting tool. By monitoring a business's search rankings in different search engines, it can highlight where the business appears in search at the time that particular report was run.

Up to 100 different keywords (search terms) can be monitored at one time, making it easy to monitor changes and trends in search rankings — this will help to develop your marketing strategy (e.g. which content to include on a website, where to focus link-building activities), as well as improving ranking for underperforming keywords.

If you'd like some help knowing which keywords to track, check out this course in the BrightLocal Academy: How to Master Local Keyword Research.

Want to know how to get awesome local links? Then look no further! In this course, local SEO expert, Greg Gifford, shares his process for local link building, so you’ll walk away with the knowledge of how to structure your link building efforts to be efficient and effective. 

Unsurprisingly, the Rank Tracker is our most popular tool. It is used by thousands of marketing agencies and SEO professionals to monitor performance, and report back to clients (via our white-label options). Local businesses also use the tool to gauge their digital presence, and to help them gain an edge over their competitors.

What makes the Rank Tracker unique?

1) Localized search results

As BrightLocal is designed for local businesses (e.g. plumbers, dentists, lawyers, restaurants, hotels, auto-repair shops etc.) rankings are monitored at a local level, isolating where the business's customers are sourced from.

Each report is assigned a ‘Search Location’ (i.e. town, city or zip code), which recreates where the business and their customers are located. The Rank Tracker tool passes this search location to each search engine, then gets back localized (not national) search results. Essentially, it simulates a customer trying to search for those services within the business's own catchment area.

As a result, you can see how a business appears to searchers in that town / city / zip code, and how well they rank for their chosen keywords / search terms.

2) Local Pack and organic search rankings

The tool monitors where a business website ranks (where it appears) in the search results (i.e. 'organic' results).

It also monitors the ranking of the business’s Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) in Local Pack and Maps results, which gives greater insight into how the business is represented online — helping to shape future strategy.

3) Third-party search results

The Rank Tracker tool also checks for mentions of a business’s name and phone number within the search results to identify when citation sites are displayed in search engines (and their respective ranking). For example, it will illustrate if the business is found on Yelp, or other directories, which is especially helpful if you monitor brand (‘business name’) keywords.

A business can often appear many times on the first page of search results, particularly if they have accurate citations on powerful sites that the search engines have indexed.

In just a single report, you can see:

• How a business website is ranking
• How its GBP listing is ranking
• How its citations are ranking

No other rank tracker tool is able to offer all these combined features.

Which search engines does the Rank Tracker monitor?

• Google Desktop
• Google Mobile 
• Local Pack
• Local Finder
• Bing
• Bing Local

In which countries does the Rank Tracker work?

• USA
• UK
• Canada
• Australia
• Ireland
• New Zealand

Currently, we don’t have plans to extend the Rank Tracker to other countries. Please feel free to sign up to our mailing list, and be one of the first to know when we make any changes.