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BrightLocal

BrightLocal

Overview

What is BrightLocal?

BrightLocal is a search engine optimization tool that tracks search rankings, builds citations, and monitors online reviews and stresses local search performance.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

BrightLocal has proven to be an invaluable tool for managing local business clients' marketing efforts. Users appreciate the comprehensive …
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Popular Features

View all 14 features
  • Integration with web analytics tools (10)
    9.9
    99%
  • Local SEO (13)
    8.6
    86%
  • SERP ranking tracking (11)
    7.7
    77%
  • Competitive analysis (11)
    7.6
    76%
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Pricing

View all pricing

Track Plan

$39

Cloud
per month

Manage Plan

$49

Cloud
per month

Grow Plan

$59

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.brightlocal.com/pricing

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $39 per month
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Product Demos

BrightLocal Citations - "Citation Builder" Tutorial & Review

YouTube
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Features

SEO

Core features related to search engine optimization

6.7
Avg 7.8

SEO Channels

Features related to optimizing your website for specific channels

8.6
Avg 7.6

SEO Platform & Account Management

Features related to scalability and integration of the SEO platform

9.2
Avg 8.4
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Product Details

What is BrightLocal?

BrightLocal is built to make local marketing simple. With the platform, users can:

- Track local search rankings

- Perform local SEO audits

- Clean up and build local business listings

- Manage their online reputation by generating, monitoring, and responding to online reviews

- Source agency leads

BrightLocal boasts users worldwide, including agencies, SMBs, and multi-location businesses, who use BrightLocal to streamline local marketing efforts and boost visibility in local SERPs.

BrightLocal is available free on a trial basis, for 14 days (no credit card required).

BrightLocal Features

SEO Features

  • Supported: SERP ranking tracking
  • Supported: Competitive analysis
  • Supported: Site audit / diagnostics
  • Supported: Task management

SEO Channels Features

  • Supported: Local SEO

SEO Platform & Account Management Features

  • Supported: Multi-domain support
  • Supported: Integration with web analytics tools

BrightLocal Screenshots

Screenshot of Location SummaryScreenshot of Local Search Rank CheckerScreenshot of Local Search GridScreenshot of Local Search AuditScreenshot of Google My Business AuditScreenshot of Citation TrackerScreenshot of Reputation Manager - Monitor ReviewsScreenshot of Reputation Manager - Reviews OverviewScreenshot of Reputation Manager - Showcase Reviews widgetScreenshot of Agency Lead GeneratorScreenshot of White-label settings

BrightLocal Video

Local marketing software provides location-based digital marketing solutions to help users interact with their local audience and potential online customers. BrightLocal is one of the local marketing tools mentioned in this video which goes over some of the best local marketing tools out there.

BrightLocal Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesUSA, UK, Australia, Canada

Frequently Asked Questions

BrightLocal is a search engine optimization tool that tracks search rankings, builds citations, and monitors online reviews and stresses local search performance.

BrightLocal starts at $39.

Whitespark Local Rank Tracker, Moz Pro, and Yext are common alternatives for BrightLocal.

Reviewers rate Mobile SEO highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of BrightLocal are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(38)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

BrightLocal has proven to be an invaluable tool for managing local business clients' marketing efforts. Users appreciate the comprehensive range of features, including tracking Google My Business, web analytics, citations, online reviews, and keyword rankings. With the citation tracking feature, users can easily identify where they have citations and where they need to create or correct them. The reputation manager feature allows for efficient monitoring of online reviews across multiple platforms. Additionally, BrightLocal's storage of 18 months of historical data for Google My Business is a significant advantage compared to Google's limited three-month data retention.

The ability to generate customizable reports is highly valued by users. Whether it's creating printable PDF reports or web-based reports via custom links, BrightLocal streamlines the reporting process. This is particularly beneficial when using BrightLocal on a client-by-client basis, allowing account management teams to provide detailed insights and analysis for each client's local SEO performance. Moreover, BrightLocal's citation building service is highly regarded for providing quality citations at a reasonable price.

Users also appreciate the educational materials offered by BrightLocal that aid in explaining concepts to clients. It consolidates data from various sources, allowing users to monitor reviews, website ranking, and information accuracy on third-party sites all in one place. Furthermore, BrightLocal's user-friendly online client dashboards receive positive feedback from clients who find them easy to navigate and understand.

Overall, BrightLocal is widely used for managing local SEO for digital marketing clients and offers a valuable toolset that saves time and consolidates valuable resources. With its ability to analyze search engine rankings and existing citations, it helps users improve their local SEO performance while also saving time and money. The insights provided by BrightLocal on local competitors and opportunities for improvement are highly appreciated by users. Whether it's updating online directories or showcasing expertise through automated reports and site audits, BrightLocal offers a variety of features that fulfill the needs of its users.

Users of Bright Local have made several recommendations based on their experiences with the product. The three most common recommendations are:

  1. Take the time to review competitors and understand the features of Bright Local. This allows users to better appreciate the affordability of Bright Local compared to similar services.

  2. Implement citation campaigns oneself rather than relying on phone support from the Bright Local team. This approach allows for greater control and efficiency in managing local SEO efforts.

  3. Attend webinars and take advantage of the 14-day trial to fully understand and utilize all features of Bright Local. Users highly recommend utilizing these resources as a way to gain in-depth knowledge about how to get the most out of the platform.

Overall, users find Bright Local to be a valuable tool for managing and reporting on local SEO efforts, particularly for micro and small businesses. They appreciate its comprehensive features, ability to consolidate reporting, and track progress effectively. While some users note a recent price increase, they still view Bright Local as providing good value for its services.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-14 of 14)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use BrightLocal to monitor everything from our reviews to website ranking and how accurate our information is on third-party sites. It has been incredibly useful in consolidating our data into one place where we can easily monitor and make updates as needed. We use it to manage all of our business locations.
  • Customer support is excellent
  • Really intuitive user interface
  • Makes listing management easy
  • Running reports is very slow
BrightLocal is really useful for broadening the reach of your business. You can have them manually add your listing to other websites or update existing listings, manage reviews, see how well you rank in search and so much more. It's pretty awesome.
Danielle Hamlin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • BrightLocal has a user friendly platform.
  • BrightLocal has extensive resources to help your business.
  • BrightLocal has amazing customer service.
  • Currently unsure.
I recently broke away from corporation gyms and decided to start my own personal training business in Plano, TX. Looking to expand my visibility in order to bring in new clients, I signed up for BrightLocal after taking a Udemy class on optimizing my Google Business Page. I have not even had BrightLocal for a week and I have already seen a tripling increase in views on my Google Business Page and an increase in the number of people who have reached out to me. I signed up for the citation builder campaign and the campaign isn't even finished. BrightLocal also set me up with a customer service executive named Becki who was absolutely lovely! She gave me lots of things to think about and action steps to take to further expand the reach of my business. I haven't even been with BrightLocal for a month and I'm already so grateful for them! I highly recommend them and their services to help you grow your business!
Ashok Bharucha | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
I run a small, solo private psychiatric practice. BrightLocal has helped me monitor my online reputation and has insights into how my business marketing compares with my local competitors. With this information, I can take proactive steps to address deficiencies.
  • Citation builder has helped immensely in distributing my practice information to major platforms
  • Monitoring online reputation
  • The program does require some understanding of SEO optimization. BrightLocal Academy courses help with this, but it does require some education.
BrightLocal is well-suited for consistent broad marketing on several platforms. The online reputation management tools are also very helpful.
September 28, 2021

BrightLocal Feedback

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Research and improve Local SEO ranking for clients. Report on client's situation from reviews, local search results and their competitors and the competitors status. They provide a citation building service which is very good and has helped several of my clients. They also provide a lot of smart education materials which have helped me explain to clients.
  • Citation building
  • Local search tracking
  • Competitor tracking compared to our clients
  • Review reports
  • More suggestions on options to improve client situations
  • Ability to print reports
They are terrific for helping improve clients who depend on local search with tools and guidance.
Tina Hettich Sorensen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am currently the only one using BrightLocal in my organization. I have 2 employees that I have not yet trained and I am not sure if they will be using it anytime soon. The program helps push info out to directories, provides valuable reports and helps with reviews.
  • reporting
  • review generation
  • directory submission
  • the program is large and can be hard to figure out
  • needing extra credits or to pay extra is common
  • the reviews might be hard to generate to GMB
If an agency has a team and is posting to more than 20 platforms it will work well, anything less I would recommend looking at something else. The price is really good for larger agencies. I would not recommend for a single business with less than 2 locations that is wanting a scheduler for their own platforms, it is too cumbersome for that.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Great tool for updating local online directories and adding to new ones. Good for seeing the current scene of their listings. I feel I can trust them because they also allow you to communicate a specific message regarding each campaign.
  • Gather all online listings/citations that your client is in.
  • Provide a comprehensive list of online citations.
  • Less follow up needed - I know BrightLocal is at the mercy of the citations themselves, but it would be great if you didn't have to do follow up verifications.
  • Having to do phone verifications is frustrating.
The biggest selling point IMO is that it's as one-time payment to update listings. This is the opposite of Yext where you're almost "renting" the info being correct on your listings. This is a HUGE selling point. BrightLocal "bursts" the data out to listings and Aggregators alike, which is fantastic, with a one-time fee instead of monthly. It also allows for discounts with bulk amounts of listings. Lastly, the downside is that it is not set and forget - there are some listings you have to manually do things with, though they do provide logins and anything you might need.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use all of BrightLocal's features from the rankings down to social media. We use it as a tool to track the search engine optimization progress to see what improvements we can make and improve their digital marketing. It's also a tool that allows us to keep multiple facets of their marketing in one CRM.
  • Beautiful reputation reporting
  • Easy to navigate
  • Cannot have multiple geo-locations in one rankings report.
  • System is sometimes slow and buggy.
This would be well suited for small businesses looking to track single local locations. The reporting system for reviews is one of their best features and is great at showing a trend over time. It is also good to put potential customers in there and run a local audit in order to show companies how you can help them grow and what their business is missing.
Gary Shouldis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
BrightLocal is a must have for Local SEO and marketing. We have been using it for years to help manage local business clients. BrightLocal allows us to create a single platform for all of our local marketing efforts, we can track Google My Business, web analytics, citations, online reviews and even keyword rankings all in a single dashboard.

The citation tracking feature is very useful to see where you have citations and where you need to create or correct citations and the reputation manager feature is a great way to monitor your online reviews across multiple review platforms.

One of my favorite features is being able to access historical data for Google My Business. Google only allows 3 months of data, but BrightLocal stores 18 months of data for you to analyze and compare. Report creation is also simple, allowing us to create printable PDF reports or web-based reports via custom links.
  • All in one local marketing dashboard and reporting makes analyzing data and creating reports a breeze.
  • Being able to monitor online reviews across dozens of review websites
  • Local marketing audit tool to analyze areas of opportunity
  • Being able to track keyword rankings on a city specific level, a must have for rank tracking at a local level
  • The citation tracking tool often misses live citations for your business so you always need to verify the results before taking action
  • The Local Pack rankings in the Google My Business section are usually off since it is very specific to the location of the searcher
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.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used BrightLocal to manage local SEO for our digital marketing clients. It was one of the key platforms we used to perform research, reporting, and optimization to improve local search rankings. It saved our team a significant amount of time by consolidating a number of valuable tools in one place.
  • A suite of local SEO tools, all in one place.
  • Simplified local SEO reporting for clients.
  • Tools for building local and niche citations.
  • BrightLocal is focused on local SEO, which is a strength, but I needed to invest in other SEO tools to supplement.
BrightLocal is a good choice for an agency that is providing local SEO services for multiple clients. BrightLocal automates research and reporting work that would take hours for someone to complete manually, and the local and niche citation building services provide a framework for building and maintaining citations for clients at scale.
Jordan Comstock | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
BrightLocal was used on a client by client basis. If it was a client that we wanted to focus on local SEO with, we would use BrightLocal. Many clients didn't have that need and we would use other SEO software for their needs, although BrightLocal does have many useful capabilities beyond local. That was its primary use case for me.
  • Track and monitor local SEO rankings
  • Build citations
  • Easy to navigate
  • Up and down rankings were not always right on with the local search, but only off by one or two spots
  • It felt like it was only used for local SEO, and I know there are more features, just never got to them.
  • Didn't seem useful for every single client in the way Ahrefs or SpyFu did
The best scenario I can think of is local small business clients. They needed to be as high up in the local box as possible, and BrightLocal provided us easy ways to monitor that and track it. It was also a positive experience building citations through their builder. Citations went up, as well as rankings
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BrightLocal to manage all of our clients' reporting. From ranking reports to Google Analytics breakdowns, BrightLocal has it all. We are able to automate the sending of these reports. The site auditor is a great way for us to show prospective clients that we're on top of it. There are a ton of bells and whistles that we find very helpful.
  • Automated Reports
  • Rank Tracker
  • GMB Auditor
  • Review Tracking could use an uplift
  • Lead Generation is okay but could use better funcationality in making the form look more like our site.
BrightLocal is a great for marketing agencies that work directly with their client. Their reports give you the ability to look polished in the eyes of those receiving the reports. They are easy to read and provide a great deal of information.
Sarah Nelson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My account management team uses BrightLocal for reporting and citation building purposes for our clients. BrightLocal's citation building service makes it easy for us to order citations for clients and know that we're getting quality citations for the price. BrightLocal also allows us to report to our clients on the status of their campaign and ranking of their GMB listing.
  • 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.
  • Sometimes citation creation can take too long. Normally it takes 3 weeks, but there have been times when it has taken over a month.
  • I would like if the GMB reporting tool kept track of the previous ranking that way we can show clients progression over time with their GMB listing.
  • It can be costly when ordering citations for thousands of clients. I wish that we could purchase a "pool" of tokens and use them accordingly. That way we're not losing an investment when a client cancels.
BrightLocal is extremely beneficial for B2B companies or small business owners who are looking to build their online presence. If you would like more control over your online presence, and the ability to log back into citations to make edits after the fact, then BrightLocal is a great service to use.
Tim Colling | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use BrightLocal for client reporting with respect to our SEO work for them. We specialize in working with organizations that serve the elderly and their families, and many of our clients are essentially locally-focused in their marketing. BrightLocal's local ranking reports are excellent and they are BrightLocal's best feature. BrightLocal also offers online client "dashboards" which our clients like very much.
  • Ranking reports are excellent.
  • Online client report dashboards are excellent.
  • Ability to create multiple local ranking reports from different searcher locations are very helpful and useful.
  • BrightLocal can very difficult to communicate with, especially when it comes to reporting bugs / defects, and also when it comes to finding out whether they are working on those bugs.
  • BrightLocal's reports, other then the ranking reports, have far too many bugs and they seem to either have little QA or poor QA practices, considering how many defects there are.
Best for SEO agencies with clients to report to, especially for clients with hyper-local SEO needs. You can produce ranking reports for searchers in multiple locations, to understand how potential customers in nearby towns may or may not find the client company.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Brightlocal as a tool to analyze our current positions within search engine local rankings as well as to check existing citations. The fact that Brightlocal can do all this under one solution really saves your organization time and money. Being shown how you rank against local competitors is invaluable and gives you LOTS of room for improving your rankings.
  • Local Citation Submission
  • Local SEO Competitor Reporting
  • Tracking Ranking Changes
  • Low cost submissions to all the Tier 1 and Tier 2 directories/sites
  • Their team is overseas so there may be a lag time in replies
  • If your location can not verify with a phone because of phone prompt menus, your options WILL be limited
  • Turn around time can often be 2-3 weeks
If your business isn't SEO optimized at the local level for search engines then this is a wonderful tool to start to use. It is quick and you will often see results within 2-3 months tops. If your business is already listed consistently among all the tier 1 directories and websites then this can still be a great tool to monitor the competition and view areas where your business is NOT listed under. As always you can always improve against the local competition.
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