Real SERP data, never estimates
Every number comes from an actual search made at an actual point on the map. If we did not measure it, we do not show it.
Data miningSignalingLocal SEOMarket edge
Local SEO Software Built on Measured Search Results
Measure Google Maps and organic visibility, map competitor coverage across an entire city, uncover market gaps hidden in customer reviews, and transform measured search results into clear, prioritized next steps.
Run a rank checkdecodelocal
Decode the market. Dominate locally.
Measure the Local Search Market as It Actually Appears
Local search is not static. Rankings change by keyword, geography and intent. A single search from one device cannot represent an entire market. DecodeLocal measures real search results so you can understand how visibility changes across a city before deciding what to optimize.
↖ measured, not modeledMeasure, Map, Analyze and Prioritize Local Search
Local search visibility is measured in four moves. RankCheck measures current Google Maps and organic rankings for a business. CitySweep maps competitor visibility across the city. GroundTruth analyzes competitor reviews and customer evidence for market gaps. Engine combines that measured evidence and prioritizes the local SEO actions that matter.
DecodeLocal
DecodeLocal is built on Measured Search Results
Four instruments, one measurement discipline: real searches, run at real points on the map, nothing modeled.
- 1Local rank checking
- 2Citywide competitor grids
- 3Review and market-gap analysis
- 4Prioritized SEO actions
GroundTruth reads what the city says about a business
GroundTruth is the review intelligence and market research instrument. Point it at an industry and a city and it pulls the full review record of the market’s top competitors, reads it line by line, and writes up what the customers of that market actually reward and punish.
- Every review, actually read. The top 25 competitors in the niche, their complete review histories scored into named themes with counts and dates. Not star averages, not sentiment mush.
- Red threads across the market. The complaint every rival keeps earning, the praise that actually wins the work, and how both trend over time.
- Voice of the socials. Reddit threads about the industry get mined alongside the reviews, so the report hears what customers say when nobody is being polite in a review box.
- The hidden edge. Pain maps and open lanes: the complaint clusters nobody in the market answers, which become the differentiation a business runs on.
- A client-ready brief. Findings, dated quotes, and a written verdict an owner can verify against the source reviews themselves.
RankCheck shows where a business really stands
RankCheck is the local rank checker, $4.99 a run. Enter a business, a keyword, and a city and it reads the live Google results, both the map pack and the organic page, and returns a neutral snapshot of who outranks you and which lever moves your rank.
- Live Google, not estimates. Real searches the moment you ask. If we did not measure it, we do not show it.
- A 13-point grid sample. Rank changes block by block, so the check reads fixed points around the business instead of trusting one flattering pin.
- Who outranks you, and why. Every rival above you with their position, review count, share of the radius, and the page they win with.
- Levers, not just numbers. The report says whether relevance, proximity, or prominence is costing you rank, and which gap to close first.
- $4.99 a run — sign in, run it, export it. Priced per search, no subscription, and the same result no matter who searches.
CitySweep grids the whole city and names who owns it
CitySweep is the geo grid rank tracker at full city scale: a local search grid fanned from the city core to its edges, with a real local pack read in every ring. One keyword, every quadrant, and the standings of every brand that shows up anywhere on the map.
- Hundreds of measured quadrants. The Winnipeg run below read 179 of them for one keyword: 179 real searches, 41 brands surfaced, no modeling.
- The citywide standings. Every brand ranked by quadrants held, review velocity, last review, Google Business Profile posting cadence, site rank, and the money page carrying them.
- Branch-by-branch pins. Multi-location brands are unstacked into their actual locations, so nothing hides behind a name.
- An honest local SEO heatmap. Who is top dog block by block, drawn from measured local packs rather than modeled reach.
- Spend-guarded by design. Live sweeps sit behind hard cost ceilings and an arm switch. Nothing fires without a deliberate decision.
The Engine turns readings into production
The Engine is where research becomes an outrank plan. It takes the grid readings and the review intelligence, sweeps the keyword footprint of the businesses above you, and hands back the battle plan: what to build, in what order, and why it wins.
- The steal list. The exact keywords your rivals rank for and you do not, split into quick steals and long plays, with brand noise stripped out.
- Winnability, scored. Every term graded easy win, contested, or locked down, and every score opens to the exact signals behind it. No black box.
- GEO and AEO readiness. A line-by-line audit of whether your pages are ready to be cited by AI answers, not just ranked in classic search.
- Page plans and copy.Outrank briefs with page-level plans, exportable to Markdown and JSON, written to survive Google’s spam rules.
- Allowlisted and logged. The operator console is gated on every route, and every run that spends money is recorded.
Measure the Attributes That Determine Local Visibility
Local search visibility is not one number. It includes Google Maps visibility and organic visibility, the competitor footprint that represents a business’s geographic coverage across a city, and the customer review record that holds the market’s evidence of what actually wins the work. DecodeLocal measures all four.
Review evidence, scored
Geo-grid map sweeps
Neutral rank snapshots
Competitor pins, branch by branch
Shareable client reports
Directory presence counts
Review-gap analysis
One database behind everything
Local Search Intelligence for Businesses and Agencies
DecodeLocal serves local businesses that want to see their market the way Google actually shows it, and it serves local SEO agencies that need the same measurement repeated across dozens of clients. A single business owner runs RankCheck to see where they stand today. An agency runs CitySweepacross a full roster of client cities and hands GroundTruth’s review findings and Engine’s prioritized actions to its team.
Both start from the same measured evidence. Only the scale changes. See pricing for both a single business and a full client roster.
Measure Local Search Markets Across the United States and Canada
DecodeLocal operates in the United States and Canada, measuring local search markets in cities across both countries. The grid, the review record, and the rank check work the same way wherever the business sits, because the underlying measurement, real searches run from real points on the map, does not change at the border.
Original Measurements of Local Search Markets
Most of what gets published about local SEO is modeled or estimated. DecodeLocal instead publishes original measurements: full city sweeps, real rank checks, and review records read line by line. See it applied at full scale in our Edmonton dentists local search visibility case study, a 483-query, 90-point geo-grid measurement of who owns Edmonton dentistry, and where. Read the write-ups in Insights, where every measurement behind a claim is shown, not just the conclusion.
What Is Local SEO Software?
Local SEO software is software that measures and analyzes local search visibility: Google Maps rankings, organic rankings, and the other localized search results a business shows up in for a given city or neighborhood. General SEO software tracks a single set of national rankings. Local SEO software has to account for the fact that the same keyword can return a different result depending on exactly where the search happens. DecodeLocal is built on that distinction: every tool measures a real point on the map rather than a single average.
Questions About Local Search Measurement
What is local SEO software?
Local SEO software is software that measures and analyzes local search visibility: Google Maps rankings, organic rankings, and the other localized search results a business shows up in for a given city or neighborhood. DecodeLocal is built on that measurement rather than an estimate of it.
How is local search visibility measured?
It is measured by running real searches from real points on the map and reading the actual results, not by estimating from a single logged-in search. DecodeLocal measures Google Maps rankings and organic rankings at scale, across many points in a city.
What is the difference between Google Maps rankings and organic rankings?
Google Maps rankings are the local pack: the map and the business listings shown for a location-based search. Organic rankings are the standard web results beneath it. A business can rank well in one and poorly in the other, so both need to be measured separately.
Why does local search visibility vary across the same city?
Rankings change by keyword, by geography, and by search intent. A search from downtown can return a different set of businesses than the same search from the suburbs, because proximity is one of the factors Google uses to rank local results.
What is a market gap in local search?
A market gap is a complaint or an unmet expectation that shows up repeatedly across a market's reviews but that no competitor has addressed. GroundTruth analyzes competitor reviews to identify these gaps.
Does DecodeLocal work for agencies managing multiple clients?
Yes. RankCheck, CitySweep, GroundTruth, and Engine are used both by individual local businesses measuring their own market and by local SEO agencies repeating that measurement across a roster of clients.
Measurement has rules here. Four of them, and they are not negotiable.
Same result for every searcher
Logged-in Google shows every owner a different map. Reports here lead with numbers that do not move: directory counts, review gaps, neutral snapshots.
Spend guards on everything
Billable sweeps sit behind hard ceilings and arm switches. Nothing fires a paid call without a deliberate decision.
Reports that survive scrutiny
Every claim in a client report is written so the owner can verify it themselves and reach the same conclusion.
From a keyword to a client-ready report. Here’s how.
The whole pipeline runs on one database, so nothing gets copied around and nothing falls out of date.
1
Pick the business, the keyword, and the city
One form. The tools work out the grid, the radius, and the competitor set from there.
2
The sweep fires
Real searches run across the map grid, quadrant by quadrant, and land in the database as evidence.
3
The evidence gets read
Rankings, reviews, directories, and competitor positions are scored into findings, not raw dumps.
4
The report writes itself up
A clean, client-ready page: what was measured, what it means, and what to do about it.
5
You share one link
The client opens a live page, not a PDF. When the data updates, the page does too.
Rank trackers watch one pin and call it a city. A city is a grid, and the grid has an owner in every square. We find out who.
Operator memo
These tools got built because the reports we wanted to hand clients did not exist. Rank trackers averaged the city into a single number. Review tools counted stars without reading a word. Nothing measured the map the way an owner actually experiences it: standing at one corner, searching, and seeing who shows up.
So everything here starts from a point on the map and works up. Every claim in a report is one the owner can verify from their own phone.
Measured, not guessed.The DecodeLocal deskLocal SEO operations
Take the first measurement.
Run a rank check today.
One business, one keyword, one city. You get the neutral snapshot and the report page. The city has been talking this whole time.
Run a rank check