Semrush Map Rank Tracker: A Solid Local Grid Rankings Tool

One of the most fun parts of doing SEO is getting to play with a wide variety of cool tools that go deep on one particular aspect of SEO. Over the past few years, local grid rankings tools have been one of my favorite innovations.

Local grid rank reports can be an effective way to show a client how variable their Local Pack rankings are as one moves about their service area. It’s also a great way to quickly determine both areas of opportunity and problem areas for the business.

So when Semrush approached me to see if I would be up for checking out their new Map Rank Tracker, how could I say no?

Let’s dive in and see what they’ve come up with:

1. 1. 1. Search For Your Business
         To get started with MRT, search for your business. Let’s use the world’s greatest car dealer site in the world, and perhaps the greatest site in the world, LingsCars (note: you don’t need a site to use the tool, you just need a Google Business Profile):
         
         The tool finds the GBP you’re looking for and shows you the address along with the number of reviews and average GBP rating. If the business doesn’t come up for a name search, try adding its city name to the search.
      2. Campaign Setup
         Once you have selected the business to track, you are taken to the Campaign setup screen where you can set the parameters of your campaign. The tool defaults to a keyword it thinks is relevant – “car leasing service” in Ling’s case:
         but you can edit/add as many as you want to track. It even gives you suggested keywords:
         Let’s stick with “car leasing service” for now.
      3. Map Grid Sizing
         Selecting the size of the map grid you want to track is where it gets fun. MRT gives you options for both the # of pins you want in your grid and the dimensions of the grid in either kilometers or miles. The number of pins determines how many credits each rank check will cost you. I’ll get to that a bit later. There’s also a great feature to activate or de-activate pins. For example, if a business is on the coast, you can deactivate all the pins that appear on the water. This will save you credits and make your data cleaner. The design of the grids is quite nice and the UX is simple and intuitive.
         
      4. Grid Rank Track Scheduling
         Finally, you can set a schedule for rank tracking. The current options are daily, weekly, and monthly. You can also select which day of the week you want to run the tracking on. You can also decide to run the scan immediately, or save it for later. Let’s run it.
         In my tests, it has taken between 15-30 seconds to run a track for a single keyword with 49 pins and a 1.5km grid. The more keywords/pins you check in a scan, the longer it takes. The scan for Ling’s was set to 9×9 (81 pins) and a 20 km grid. It took about one minute to run.
         
      5. Let’s Check Out the Results:
         I am not surprised at all that Ling’s is crushing it. As you can see, you get some great data: Ling’s average rank across all the pin locations, the distribution of rankings, and Ling’s share of voice v. the other ranking businesses. I really like the “mini heatmap” at the top left that gives you a quick overview. You can sort the rankings on the left by business name, average rank, average GBP rating, and the number of GBP reviews. This can be helpful, particularly if you think the number of reviews is an issue. In Ling’s case, it appears to have no impact. Ling’s GBP only has 66 reviews (how is that remotely possible?), but it outranks businesses with hundreds. So what’s up with that #4 ranking in the South near Durham? This is where grid ranks can be powerful. When you click on the offending pin, the tool displays the ranked GBPs at that pin location and shows their physical locations:
         Now you can look at the businesses that are outranking Ling’s and try to figure out why that might be happening. I clicked on the #1 result for that pin – Autograph Prestige North East, and the view changes to this:
         It’s a little hard to see, but the pin for this business is south of the pin we were looking at, in Middleborough. The mini heatmap shows all of this business’ rankings are in the south part of the grid. A quick Google search shows their site is targeting Durham:
         Now, I would never presume to be so bold as to tell Ling’s what to do with their website, but if they gave a damn about Durham, perhaps they might add “Durham Car Leasing” page? I bet they would be ranking #1 within an hour.
      6. Nitpicking
         At the moment, I don’t think there’s a way to add multiple locations to a single campaign. This means if you are tracking a lot of locations for separate companies, you’ll have a long list to sort through. I am guessing they’ll solve this shortly.
      7. Semrush Map Rank Tracker Pricing
         Like the other two big gorillas in the grid ranking market: LocalFalcon and BrightLocal, Semrush Map Rank Tracker charges by the number of pins you track. One pin = one credit. Here’s the comparison of the pricing for each tool. Note: Each tool has similar, but different functionality, so it’s not 100% Apples to Apples. Each tool may give discounts as well based on usage:

         Geo Grid Local Ranking Tool	Price Per Credit
         BrightLocal Local Search Grid	$0.008?
         Local Falcon	$0.003
         Local Viking	$0.005
         Places Scout Geo-Matrix Ranking Rpeorts	$0.005
         Semrush Map Rank Tracker	$0.005

         Update:
   All registered Semrush users get one campaign (= one business to set up) and 50 credits for free. Credits are refreshed on the first day of each month.The MRT paid plan goes with 1 campaign and 4000 credits at $30/mo. Extra campaigns and credit packages could be purchased if needed for $10 and $5 respectively.
2. TLDR
   I have used LocalFalcon, which is a very solid tool, but at this point, I find Semrush Map Rank Tracker slightly simpler to use, probably because it’s not as mature as LF and has fewer options – this may be a plus for small businesses who want to minimize complexity – combined with the fact that it is built into an SEO tool I already use for a lot of other work. Your mileage may vary of course. Ultimately it will come down to personal preferences. The more options the better, I say. Let a thousand grid rankers bloom.

If you are in Local SEO, you should definitely give Semrush Map Rank Tracker a spin.

Note: All opinions expressed above are mine. We may earn a wee affiliate commission from links – like enough to buy a round of cocktails this weekend, but I’m not counting on it.