Is Local Falcon Accurate?

That question comes up often. When you are the first product on the market to do something new, it's normal to want to make sure it's legit.  Quick answer is: yes, Local Falcon provides accurate Google Maps results for local businesses . We wouldn't have released the tool if it wasn't accurate.

But you're not here to take our word for it, take a look at how our scan results compares to other rank trackers in the industry.

There is no one 'right' SERP result

Can we all agree on this?

Google serves different results to people depending on the following: whether a user is logged in or not, previous searches done on the same IP address, physical location, type of device used, previous clicked links or visited websites, what kind of socks you are wearing… (just seeing it you were paying attention).

So what we are looking for in a rank tracker is one that provides a result that simulates what someone might see on the ground. Different trackers might have small variations from each other, but will all have very similar results.

Which rank trackers should we compare?

Most likely you have access to some kind of tool that is checking the local rankings for you already, but since there are so many, I'll pick a couple of free ones so that everyone can be on the same page.

First off is the BrightLocal spot checker: https://www.brightlocal.com/local-search-results-checker/

Another accurate one, although maybe less known is: https://valentin.app/

[I also picked these tools because they were discussed in this thread on the Local Search Forum.]

Comparing Local Rank Tracking Results

Let's pick a few keywords shall we?

Lawyers are always a popular choice so we'll start with a couple of targets and some keywords.

Business Name: Roy Petty & Associates

Keyword: immigration lawyer

Local GMB Map comparison

LF-Comparison-Local-Falcon-min.png

LF-Comparison-Bright-Local-Roy-Petty-min.png

LF-Comparison-Valentin-App-min.png

As you can see, Local Falcon and Valentin are very close except for a switch between the 3rd and 4th position. Bright Local's zip code centers the search about one mile away and brings up similar, yet different, results.

In this case, the zip code center makes less of a difference because the ranking of the business is relatively strong. (Ranking Pins set at 500 meters apart.)

Business Name: Pandullo Law

Keyword: Criminal Attorney

Local Google Map compairson lawyer

LF-Comparison-Local-Falcon-Pandullo-min.png

LF-Comparison-Bright-Local-Pandullo-min.png

LF-Comparison-Valentin-Pandullo-min.png

In this case, the initial Local Falcon map scan shows us that the drop-off for Pandullo's rankings is pretty steep. (The Ranking Pins are set to 100 meter increments.)

Again, Local Falcon and Valentin are similar because they are using geo-coordinates to situate the tracker at the location of the business. Bright Local's zip code center is about 200 meters away, but that makes a big difference with this result.

 


 

With these few rank tracking comparisons, you can see that in general the results are similar across all three. None of the results were the same, however.

Bright Local loses a bit of accuracy if the business is situated further away from the zip code center point, and if the drop-off of the ranking is steep.

Valentin App returns similar results to Local Falcon, which was the point of this article. However, if you have tried Valentin App, you may find that the ease of use and extra features of Local Falcon make it a much more actionable tool.

We have picked a couple of examples that we first randomly came across, but we invite you to sign up for free and perform your own comparisons lest you believe we cherry picked them.

[Note: These rankings are likely to change over time, so depending when you see this article the results may be different for you.]

You will never quite know exactly what someone might see when performing their search, but the part we want to stress is the importance of scan reliability.

As we perform optimization tasks, we want to track any changes that might occur over a period of time. As long as you are checking from the same spot every time, you have the ability to compare ranking changes properly.

Hopefully we have accomplished our mission with this article and shown you that indeed Local Falcon does return accurate results: results that can help you make better optimizations decisions.

Lastly, maybe you didn't realize, but the gifs we choose are multi-purpose. Now get up off of your chair and do a few jumps for exercise. No one will think it's strange. Really.