Google Search Console vs. Whitespark Local Citation Finder

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.

Incentivized

We have a client base within our organization of about ~5,000, so it can be difficult to keep track of all of their marketing status/standings. The Whitespark Local Citation Finder removes the aspect of human error and ensures that we are providing fast, reliable results for thousands of our clients. Being able to see our competitor's citation summary is a large advantage, not other products such as this provides.

Incentivized

• You can also submit your sitemap directly to Google and get it crawled.
• You can also index and crawl you updated and new webpages.
• It also displays errors that are preventing your site pages to get indexed in Google.
• You get a list of all the keywords for which your site is ranking.
• You can track its position, CTR and impressions.

Incentivized

• The information within the finder is very accurate, which eliminates us having to dig through the internet for citations.
• The reports are automated for you, so there's no extra work on the user's end.

Incentivized

• It can be a little difficult to navigate
• 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).

Incentivized

• One small improvement I'd recommend is creating the ability to connect to 3rd party platforms, such as Google Data Studio

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

We have used BrightLocal in the past, which was a great platform. The biggest difference between Whitespark and BrightLocal is its usability. BrightLocal can be difficult to navigate, while Whitespark is much more straightforward and easily navigatable. Within our large organization, we also use the Whitespark Rank Tracker, so being able to utilize multiple Whitespark products streamlines a lot of our processes.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• The positive ROI has been seen through our client's renewal %. Since we are able to provide accurate reporting, they trust the work that is presented to them more than not.

Incentivized