Comparison of Software Tools

[Cindy]

I'll apologize in advance if this posts twice. I tried to Preview my original post before hitting submit and everything froze...

I am new to the forum and finding this to be a fabulous resource! Kudos to Linda for making this happen.

I have been using Bright Local, but after seeing the rave reviews for Places Scout, I'm wondering if I should switch. Can someone comment on the differences between these two software packages - functionality, ease of use? I see that some people are using both, and am wondering what the benefit of having both might be.

Finally, does Places Scout offer White Label reports? I don't think they did originally, but am not sure about the current version.

Thanks!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Cindy,

Great post and great questions. And thanks for compliments on the forum. Glad you are finding it helpful.

Before long I will likely be breaking the forum into more sub categories. Now that we are growing and have so many topics it will help make it easier to find stuff. One of those new sub cats will be tools, so we can group posts like this and post about citation tools and ranking tools all in one place.

So I've probably written the most about both tools and I have compared them a couple places at different times I think. I just need to find time to dig up what I wrote due to carpal problems. Try to avoid writing a book and re-typing if I don't have to.

Am just limited on time right now. Doing some bug fighting for a few folks. So I will get back to this when I can OR hopefully other members jump in with their thoughts too.

 

[Cindy]

Thanks, Linda. I searched through the topics, and tried the advanced search feature but came up empty. I'm poking around Places Scout and it looks pretty powerful. Mark's videos also seem to be very well done. Look forward to your thoughts on how these two products compare.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Cindy most of what I've written is on the blog not here. The forum just launched in July and I've only written a couple things about each program here. Anything comparison-wise is over on the blog and the search feature there works pretty well.

Wish I could Google my brain and just copy and paste stuff from there, or at least index and find half the crap that's in there.

 

[Cindy]

Thanks, Linda. I'll head over to the blog. If I can't find what I'm looking for, I'll let you know. Otherwise, you can assume I'm good to go. Appreciate your help!

 

[Nick.SEOSpark]

Hi Cindy, and welcome to the forum. Also, a good topic to bring up as these tools are both popular.

I am currently using both of them, however I'm very new to Bright Local (currently on the free trial). So far, I've found the health check reports to be great at giving a snapshot of areas for improvement.

I'd say that I don't use all of the features that Places Scout offers, because it certainly has a lot of features! I think it absolutely excels at Rank Tracking and that is the main benefit I'm getting from it, but I know it has so much more. I believe it has citation finding capabilities but I already use Whitesparks Local Citation finder for that.

Anyway, I'd welcome others who have utilised these tools to chime in with their thoughts.