Local rank tracking is different from traditional SEO. While traditional SEO targets a wide customer base across various regions and intents, local rank tracking focuses on visibility in specific areas. It helps brands measure their impact on customers who are in close proximity to their locations and who may have commercial or transactional intent.
In simplest terms, think of local rank tracking as a measurement of brand visibility in the face of explicit and implicit "near me" searches.
Why use local rank tracking tools in marketing
Local rank trackers help marketers answer three important questions about their brand visibility. These questions and their answers are key to optimizing search for customers with local intent:
How is my brand performing in local search?
How do we compare to the competition?
What do we need to do to improve our ranking?
Key metrics in local rank tracking
Historically, local rank trackers report on nearly a dozen key metrics:
Local Pack rankings and Maps discoverability
Organic rankings for location-specific keywords
Local search traffic from nearby customers
Broader website traffic and page engagement
Customer reviews that influence visibility for your brand's local listings
Google Business Profile insights
NAP data in local mentions across publishers
Local backlinks from other locally relevant sites
Click-through rate (CTR) measuring relevance with clicks from search results to your content link(s)
Conversion rate based on actions customers take from search results (e.g., book now, contact us)
In most cases, local rank trackers only report Google and traditional digital network data. At present, marketers can monitor both mobile and desktop data. Some tools also allow marketing teams to review how your brand ranks in comparison with competitors.
But, marketers looking to measure and optimize brand visibility have acknowledged that local search ranking has changed. It now extends beyond Google into voice search, Google's knowledge cards, and — most notably — AI-driven search platforms, including AI agents.
AI search changes how rankings work
Most local rank tracking tools cannot perform in the new AI-driven search landscape where discovery is the new search. That's because AI models prioritize structured data, sentiment, and brand reputation over traditional ranking factors to generate answers. (Put more directly: AI models simply don't "rank" websites at all.)
Thus, brands need new optimization strategies and tools to stay competitive and visible in searches with local intent.
New local rank tracker for AI search
Tracking rankings in isolation no longer provides a full picture of your digital presence and local search visibility. AI is changing the way brands can win in local search because rank tracking without full context is meaningless.
Introducing Yext Scout
Scout is a first-of-its-kind tool that gives you a new, competitive edge in both traditional and AI search. Scout shows you exactly:
When and where your brand appear across AI and traditional search
Your share of voice and sentiment
Which competitors are outranking you — and why
What actions you can take today and tomorrow to improve brand visibility and sentiment
Plus, with Scout, there's no longer a need to switch tools. Marketers work in one unified platform, connecting insights to execution, so you can make data-driven updates instantly.
Remember, most local rank tracking tools stop at reporting, and they only report on Google and traditional digital networks. That's not good enough anymore.
Local rank tracking is evolving, and brands need more than old-fashioned, static ranking reports. Brands must track rankings across traditional search and AI search, benchmark against competitors, and take action based on real-time insights. Scout can deliver all of this in one platform.
Scout is the first and only tool to deliver clear visibility into traditional AND AI search performance, recommend actions for optimizing performance, and provide you with a seamless way to implement them.