BrightLocal is a search engine optimization tool that tracks search rankings, builds citations, and monitors online reviews and stresses local search performance.
$39
per month
Google Search Console
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Google Search Console is a search engine optimization software solution offered by Google.
N/A
Pricing
BrightLocal
Google Search Console
Editions & Modules
Track Plan
$39
per month
Manage Plan
$49
per month
Grow Plan
$59
per month
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
BrightLocal
Google Search Console
Free Trial
Yes
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
BrightLocal offers custom enterprise plans for businesses with more than 50 locations.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
BrightLocal
Google Search Console
Considered Both Products
BrightLocal
Verified User
Executive
Chose BrightLocal
BrightLocal was the best value I found for local SEO research and reporting features at a price that worked for a startup agency. The features are surprisingly robust for the price point, and I was able to service multiple clients from my account.
BrightLocal's local ranking reports are the best ones out there. For everything else, they're just "similar" to the others and don't stand out from them. BrightLocal's online client report dashboards are also nice and not matched by the competition.
If you are a local business owner or marketing agency catering to local businesses, BrightLocal is a must have software. It has everything you need to track your local marketing efforts and to identify opportunities to make improvements, all at a very reasonable price point. You can also create nice looking reports to send to clients which are simple to create.
Google Search Console is helpful to understand what terms customers search for and click onto your website from. However, it's not helpful if you're looking for deep competitive insight on search terms people are using and how that impacts your website.
When we use BrightLocal's citation building service, I know that we're getting quality citations done right. Their staff will email you with any questions and always double check the information before creating inaccurate citations.
I love that BrightLocal is very quick about making changes when requested. For example, if we can't find a city on the drop-down list, you can chat them and they'll add it. Or if a report is pulling incorrectly, they'll re-run it within a reasonable timeframe.
BrightLocal has a lot of different reports that are easy to send to your clients. You can even add them to a web-viewable dashboard so that your client can simply bookmark a link and view their reports when they please.
More training resources would be an asset. A beginner is given the power to completely destroy a sites search results at the push of a button. Likewise it is a powerful tool to enhance search results also.
An option to take care of multiple versions of the same site simultaneously would be helpful. An option to use the same validation script across all versions and administer them simultaneously would be a time save (i.e. non-www, www, http://, and https:// versions of the same site).
Google Search Console is a simple program that allows organizations to get a solid understanding of the way their site functions and how users land on it. It can be used for making critical business decisions regarding marketing budgets and that within itself is why it deserves a 10.
Although their customer support has always contacted me, they have not always been helpful. Many times I've had reports or information disappear with them telling me they had no record of it, even when I had reports that the information was in there. There are times when their system did have bugs and the support was able to help me there. Overall, the support staff is there but they cannot always do much and need to wait for their development team to get back to them which often takes a long time.
As with all Google software, your primary source of help is their forums, their knowledge base articles, or whatever tutorials you can find on the web. Often answers on their forums are not straightforward and may not address the actual issue you're experiencing. The KB articles are typically written like instruction manuals - for better or for worse. Tutorials on the web may vary, but the odds are good someone out there had the same questions as you and was kind enough to document their experience.
Thryv reached out to me about 3 weeks before signing up with BrightLocal. While all of their features were impressive, there were only about 3 features that I would have used. Thryv wanted $200 per month for their service, which I found to be way overpriced for what I was wanting to use it for. I selected BrightLocal because it had the features I wanted at a lower price and then add ons. After using BrightLocal for a week and speaking with Becki, a customer service executive, I have discovered more features that I would use on BrightLocal than on Thryv.
SEMRush is a supplementary tool we use to provide competitive analysis. While it does, or should, provide the same data that Search Console does, but I only fully trust Search Console when it comes to basic performance in Google for the sites we develop and own. SEMRush, and other products like it, does provide much more in-depth insights that can help drive business decisions, including site performance on other search engines, along putting organic and paid search performance in one spot. However, SEMRush costs money while Search Console is free.
BrightLocal's ranking reports have helped us better serve our clients' SEO needs, especially local SEO.
Reporting is nicely accomplished with their online client report dashboards.
Negative: some of their software defects are glaringly obvious take forever to fix, creating a number of awkward moments when we talk our clients through their reports.
Given that this is a free tool, the return on investment has been particularly high - we've identified and addressed a few site issues that could have meant a reduction in search traffic.
Our organic search traffic has been on the rise in part due to the insights gained from the search traffic analytics provided within the console.
