Bright Local VS Whitespark

[Mike Pedersen]

Would love some honest feedback on these two.

I've been using Bright Local, but not altogether happy with it. Their citation finder/tracker does not seem to be very accurate.

I would like "ease-of-use'', as well as high level of accuracy.

 

[Dustybones]

My personal opinion is to use Whitespark. I'm in the process of cancelling Brightlocal as I continue to see issues with how they display data, both on the citation reports and in ranking audits. I find errors in the reports daily. Also, You will find better support from Whitespark, especially in here as Darren and his trusted sidekicks are active in this forum. Go with your gut instinct on this. Maybe others can pipe in as well.

 

[Laustin1878]

Thank you for starting this thread and sharing some feedback. I am also in the research phase of a few tools analyzing one vs the other. Good to see some thoughts about both.

 

[whitespark]

Thanks for the kind words DustyBones.

Mike, I wouldn't be able to offer an unbiased recommendation of course, but I'll monitor this thread closely and would love to hear any thoughts anyone has about how we can improve any of our products and services.

Feel free to reach out to me directly at darren@whitespark.ca if you have any questions.


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[Blake Denman]

I have an account with Whitespark and am happy with it. Though I was going to jump over to BrightLocal and test it out (sorry Darren, UX is better at BL, just my opinion).

I don't think I'm going to be making that change now. I've never had a complaint with WS's tools.

Darren, have you guys thought about creating a "comprehensive" citation audit tool? It would work just like the local CF, but would allow the user to input different phone numbers, addresses, biz names, etc. Instead of creating one report for each, this would just make doing audits a little more quickly. **wishlist!**

 

[whitespark]

Hey Blake,

Yeah, we need to do some work on our UI. A new integrated UI is in the works.

And yeah, we've been working on an audit tool. Coming soon!

 

[21Development]

I have used them both. Currently I'm with BL, but contemplating switching back. I actually prefer the UX on Whitespark over BL. Call me crazy.

As for support, Darren would reply to me personally when I had questions which was nice. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever used BL's support - so I can't comment.

From a reporting standpoint, BL has been accurate on my end. I also like the 3rd party site mentions tracker on BL. Has Whitespark added something similar?

 

[whitespark]

By mentions tracker do you mean their ReviewFlow product?


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[21Development]

No, although I do like that service as well. What I'm referring to is under their "Rank Checker" product, you have the option (edit report > advanced settings) to track mentions of your business name in search results where you URL doesn't show. Sort of a barnacle SEO tracker.

By mentions tracker do you mean their ReviewFlow product?


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[whitespark]

Ah, in our rank tracker you can track multiple URLs. Your yelp page, Facebook page, YouTube URLs, avvo page, etc. we'll tell you where any of those rank for the keywords you're tracking.


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[21Development]

Awesome! Great to know.

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[whitespark]

I've never found the BL rankings to be very accurate. We geolocate to the city to make sure we're returning the same results as you'd get if you were sitting in that city.


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[21Development]

I've never found the BL rankings to be very accurate. We geolocate to the city to make sure we're returning the same results as you'd get if you were sitting in that city.


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I am under the impression that BL does the same - meaning they let you set the search location in Google and Bing (but no yahoo). Maybe I'm interpreting wrong. See screenshot below. Either way, I'm re-registering for Whitespark now. Looks like you've made some solid improvements to an already great service.

 

[JordanJCaron]

I really like Bright Local and haven't had any issues with their citation tracker or ranking reports.

 

[Dustybones]

I like the other suggestions for WS and wanted to add a few.

1. It would be great to be able to add notes to each citation listed. It makes it easier when working with other people in the dashboard. In general, it would be nice to offer users a better way to communicate within the dashboard.

2. It would also be nice to have a feature that would allow you to mark a citation Green, Yellow or red for Good, In Process, and Needs Work etc... Or offer something similar to BL with the TABS.

3. Searching for older Business names and NAP within the same report would be great. I focus on Orthodontists and they love changing there business names. Its common to have 7 old names associated with that practice. BL offers 2 additional names with a zip. It helps, but I need one louder ( Yes, that's a Spinal Tap reference)

 

[Jim Froling]

I have found that BL's rankings are very accurate. We tracked their results against our own manual tracking process. At first we found some minor inconsistencies. The last few months, not so much. Fairly spot on. Now we rarely run our manual process as the results we have found are scary accurate. When we see significant changes month over month, we run our manual processes. Again, sometimes an inconsistency but generally very accurate. At the very least, when "red flags" appear it prompts us to check whether it is an anomaly, an error, or indeed.."Houston, we have a problem".

 

[Lloyd Silver]

Hopefully it's okay to bump this thread as I'm looking for more information on this comparison specifically.

I use BrightLocal for its reporting tools and also citation building. I've been generally happy with the work they do. I do like their interface and the ability to search for citations and easily choose which ones to submit too. And it looks like their pricing is $1-$2 less than Whitespark. I've had months where I've had a lot of citations built so that adds up quickly.

I found the comparison that Bright Local did of the major citation players (http://localsearchforum.catalystema...tions/18436-citation-services-comparison.html) to be quite interesting. In particular their comment that they thought they were more of a professional tool (meaning used by industry pros) whereas Whitespark was more for businesses directly. I'm sure Whitespark wouldn't agree, but it was still an interesting comment.

Clearly the niche specific and local specific citations of Whitespark seems to be an advantage. But one could build the base citations on Bright Local and then come over to Whitespark for the niche/local citations. And Whitespark's citation clean up service is certainly unique as well.

Frankly my only reason for considering moving is that Darren is an active contributor here, and he responded personally to a couple of my emails. And that says a LOT about Whitespark. So while I say it's my "only" reason, it's a pretty substantial one. But I do need to justify the increased prices and get over my interface preference.

So any further comments would be appreciated.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for your feedback Lloyd.

Just realized this was in Local SEO Ranking. Moved to tools.

 

[Jim Froling]

We have used both services and found each to be excellent tools. Your idea about using each in specific instances is sound. I also like the principals at each. Both Myles Anderson and Darren Shaw have been active in this and other forums and have helped us personally from time to time. Love these guys!

But then Darren sent me an email about a month ago announcing that Whitespark (with Nyag & Phil Rozek) was now in competition with many (most?) of us.

Again, I like each of these guys a ton and I wish them success. However, I personally have a fundamental problem with paying (trusting?) a competitor.

 

[Lloyd Silver]

Jim could you please elaborate on your comment about Whitespark potentially competing with us. That would be very important to me as I feel the same way. I know that Nyag was brought on at least in part to handle citation audit and cleanups. Is that what you are referring to? To me, that's not necessarily competing but of course for others it could be.