BrightLocal Ranking stopped working as of Sept 9 and they've gone silent about it

[Tim Colling]

Hi -

I've used BrightLocal ranking reports for a long time ago but they haven't updated any of my (many) ranking reports since September 9th and they are not answering my support tickets asking about this.

Does anyone know what is going on with them? I wouldn't normally rant about it here but since they have been totally not answering my support inquiries, I have no choice but to ask here.

Thanks!

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Tim,

Whenever I login there is usually a popup box that shows up on the right with updates. Currently it says:

Hi Joy,
I want to update you on the latest developments post-Google issues.
We are making good progress on our updated data gathering solution. We have successfully run the majority of reports due on 20th September. The remaining are being processed and will start to complete shortly.
We will be working through the backlog of reports over coming days.
Changes to rank matching & search locations
To enable the new data-gathering process to work we have had to make some changes to how we match local rankings and how we set search location on some reports.
We are putting together some clear instructions on these changes and will be communicating them to all users tomorrow (Friday, 21st Sept)
Thanks again for your patience and support.
If you have any questions, please just reply to this message.
Thanks
Myles

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Thank you for pointing this out! Our reports are set to run on the 5th of the month, so it hasn't affected us yet as far as I can see. I didn't realize this was an issue. Will be looking for that update today!

 

[Tim Colling]

Sadly, that message was later superseded by this one from Matthew Coughlin (sp?) fro their support team;

Late last night after we sent the latest update on the rank checker we experienced a new issue with how the ranking requests were being pushed through.

Our developers are currently working around the clock to get back up to speed.

Again I'm incredibly sorry for the inconvience and bad communication from my team.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.​

They just can't get it right. It's like they've lost their problem-solving ability, which makes it worse that they didn't communicate with their customers about this problem in the first place. They should have notified their customers with an email when this first happened, or at least after they were flaunching and flailing about for the first day or so with no ability to solve the problem.

I do my best to provide first class service and results to my own customers. I have never had a catastrophic failure like this one but even when there's a small or temporary problem, I have found that early notification and frequent status updates and transparency foster a trusting relationship with them.

I wish that BrightLocal had done that instead of going radio silent for such a long time.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I don't know the exact situation, but in defense of BL and other software solutions...

I most often see this problem when Google changes things, so it's not usually the software company's fault. And why does G change things so often? To make it hard for not only spammers, but rank tracking companies to keep up.

So just like SEO changes they keep us all in the dark. G isn't going to say - head's up tracking software companies, we made a change and here's what you need to do to get your software working again. (They don't even want tracking companies auto checking their rankings all the time anyway.)

Not saying that's the case this time. But I know of several other times G changed things up and BL had to scramble to find some way to make the software work, in spite of the change. Sometimes it takes some time to figure it out.

 

[Tim Colling]

Hi Linda -

I understand that. But they did a very bad job of communicating this to their customers, and then (at least in my case) they ignored two direct requests from me for help and information.

As a customer, I can live with a very-hard-to-fix situation, but I need to be (1) told and (2) kep informed. Neither happened here. "Radio silent" is a very poor policy, at least with me.

 

[Myles Anderson]

Hi everyone. I saw Tim's comments and thought i should reply.

Firstly, as Tim says we have been having a hard time adapting our system after a major update from Google. We have had to put in place a whole new system for getting data from Google; we didn't plan to do this and have been working all hours to get the new process in place. It's working but not at full speed yet and yes lots of customers have missed report runs.

We will be re-running any/all monthly reports that weren't run. And all weekly reports will run on their next scheduled date but will have missed a week or 2 of data.

Secondly, we have been communicating regularly with customers through our in-app messages. We have posted 5 messages keeping users informed and up to date on developments as we have something new for them. Our support team have also been working hard to respond to chats and emails and ensuring customers know what is going on.

We didn't email all customers because we know that users will see the in-app messages at the time they log in to use our system.

I know that Mathew Coghlan (from our support team) has replied to your message this morning. You should have got that in email & in the tool. Apologies if you didn't see it.

Obviously it's not been an easy time for us and I can assure you that we are 100% focused on solving this issue ASAP and returning to our normal delivery schedule. I'm sorry if you feel we went 'dark' on you but we have tried to give regular and transparent updates on the progress we're making.

I would be more than happy to jump on a call with you Tim and discuss your concerns. You can reach me at myles@brightlocal.com and let me know when's a good time.

Thank you Tim. And thanks also to Linda & Joy.

Myles

 

[Tim Colling]

Thank you Myles. I will send you an email about this.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I agree with you, Tim. An email would have been best. I had no idea myself this was going on and explains the irregularities in my dashboard. I personally don't look at the in app messages as there seem to be a lot of them when I log in and my first few experiences were that they don't really matter or apply to me, but I may be in the minority (wouldn't surprise me).

Myles is pretty great about responding on the forum though. And I can't imagine it's too much fun over there fixing Google issues. Good luck fellas. I know you'll have it back up and running in no time!

 

[Tim Colling]

Myles has replied to me privately and I am satisfied with what is going on now.

 

[diptimayee]

Hi everyone. I saw Tim's comments and thought i should reply.

Firstly, as Tim says we have been having a hard time adapting our system after a major update from Google. We have had to put in place a whole new system for getting data from Google; we didn't plan to do this and have been working all hours to get the new process in place. It's working but not at full speed yet and yes lots of customers have missed report runs.

We will be re-running any/all monthly reports that weren't run. And all weekly reports will run on their next scheduled date but will have missed a week or 2 of data.

Secondly, we have been communicating regularly with customers through our in-app messages. We have posted 5 messages keeping users informed and up to date on developments as we have something new for them. Our support team have also been working hard to respond to chats and emails and ensuring customers know what is going on.

We didn't email all customers because we know that users will see the in-app messages at the time they log in to use our system.

I know that Mathew Coghlan (from our support team) has replied to your message this morning. You should have got that in email & in the tool. Apologies if you didn't see it.

Obviously it's not been an easy time for us and I can assure you that we are 100% focused on solving this issue ASAP and returning to our normal delivery schedule. I'm sorry if you feel we went 'dark' on you but we have tried to give regular and transparent updates on the progress we're making.

I would be more than happy to jump on a call with you Tim and discuss your concerns. You can reach me at myles@brightlocal.com and let me know when's a good time.

Thank you Tim. And thanks also to Linda & Joy.

Myles

Hello Myles,
Am a great fan of BL & using it from last 3 years. It's hard time for your team members now, hope it would be fixed very soon. Thank you.

 

[JoyHawkins]

In case anyone missed it, BrightLocal added a blog post that explains the changes they made and how you need to update your ranking reports to keep them accurate: https://www.brightlocal.com/2018/09...gle-local-rank-tracking-and-search-locations/

 

[adammaxum]

@Myles Anderson you guys did a fine job handling the keyword report issues...no complaints here from long time user..

 

[JoyHawkins]

Update on this - I spoke to Myles this morning and all the issues are resolved and our ranking reports are going to be scanning correctly (from zip codes) tomorrow.