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BrightLocal Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services Reviews & Insights

Score10 out of 10

39 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for BrightLocal are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

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.

BrightLocal Reviews

9 Reviews
Professional, Scientific, and Technical ServicesMarketing & Advertising9

BrightLocal Feedback

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Citation building
  • Local search tracking
  • Competitor tracking compared to our clients
  • Review reports

Cons

  • More suggestions on options to improve client situations
  • Ability to print reports

Likelihood to Recommend

They are terrific for helping improve clients who depend on local search with tools and guidance.

Great product for small agencies

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • reporting
  • review generation
  • directory submission

Cons

  • 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

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Great for updating local citations with a one-time fee instead of monthly

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Gather all online listings/citations that your client is in.
  • Provide a comprehensive list of online citations.

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.
Vetted Review
BrightLocal
3 years of experience

Good SEO Product for Small Business

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Beautiful reputation reporting
  • Easy to navigate

Cons

  • Cannot have multiple geo-locations in one rankings report.
  • System is sometimes slow and buggy.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.
Vetted Review
BrightLocal
2 years of experience

The Perfect All In One Platform For Local Marketing

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • 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

Cons

  • 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

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Good choice for local SEO agencies

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • A suite of local SEO tools, all in one place.
  • Simplified local SEO reporting for clients.
  • Tools for building local and niche citations.

Cons

  • BrightLocal is focused on local SEO, which is a strength, but I needed to invest in other SEO tools to supplement.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.
Vetted Review
BrightLocal
6 years of experience

BrightLocal is great for local SEO

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Track and monitor local SEO rankings
  • Build citations
  • Easy to navigate

Cons

  • 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

Likelihood to Recommend

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

BrightLocal Helping us and clients

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • Automated Reports
  • Rank Tracker
  • GMB Auditor

Cons

  • Review Tracking could use an uplift
  • Lead Generation is okay but could use better funcationality in making the form look more like our site.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.
Vetted Review
BrightLocal
3 years of experience

Quality Citations for a Quality Online Presence

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros

  • 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.

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.