Which reports power BrightLocal Brain?

BrightLocal Brain doesn’t work in isolation – it’s fueled by the data from several core BrightLocal reporting tools. Specifically, BrightLocal Brain draws its insights and recommendations from four main reports in your BrightLocal account:

• Local Rank Tracker: Your keyword ranking data comes from the Local Rank Tracker. This report shows how your business ranks for selected keywords on search engine result pages in your target locations. BrightLocal Brain uses this data to identify ranking improvements or drops, new keywords entering the top results, or any keywords that need attention.
   
• Local Search Grid: The Local Search Grid provides a map-based view of your local search visibility in Google Maps results. It reveals how you rank across different areas in your city or service area. BrightLocal Brain uses this data to understand your local visibility spread; this helps you pinpoint geographic opportunities or concerns.
   
• Citation Tracker: Citation Tracker monitors your business listings across the web, checking consistency of your NAP (name, address, phone number) and where your business is listed or missing. BrightLocal Brain leverages this to provide insights on your citations. It can tell you if there are important directories where your business isn’t listed or if it found data inconsistencies. 
   
• Reputation Manager: Reputation Manager aggregates your online reviews and ratings from various platforms. This is a key data source for BrightLocal Brain’s insights on customer feedback. Using this data, BrightLocal Brain can summarize your review performance (average rating, new review count) and even the sentiment or common themes in reviews.

It’s important to note that not all plans have all four of these tools. The Manage plan includes Local Rank Tracker, Local Search Grid, and Citation Tracker data, but only the Grow plan includes Reputation Manager. If you are on the Manage plan, BrightLocal Brain will still function, but it won’t have review data available. As a result, Brain’s recommendations on a Manage plan won’t be as rich or comprehensive as on a Grow plan, simply because it has a more limited dataset to work with.

In summary, BrightLocal Brain is powered by your ranking data, local map visibility data, citation listings data, and your online review data (Grow plan only). By combining these sources, BrightLocal Brain can cross-analyze different aspects of your local SEO. This holistic view is what makes the Brain’s insights particularly valuable.