Local SEO & Search Console

What Local SEO shows you

Local SEO checks the Google Maps local pack — the small map and list of businesses Google shows for a search — for each of your keywords. For every keyword it tells you whether your business appears in the pack and, if it does, at what position.

Alongside your own listing you also see the businesses competing with you for that keyword, so you can judge how crowded each search is and how you stack up against the others in the pack.

Reading the competitor list

For each competing business in the local pack you get the details Google surfaces to searchers, which is exactly what shapes whether someone taps a listing or scrolls past it.

• Star rating — the average score that appears next to each business.
• Review count — how many reviews back up that rating, a strong signal of trust and activity.
• Category — the primary business category Google has assigned, which tells you who you are really competing against.

Who Local SEO is for

Local pack rankings matter most when proximity drives the search. If customers come to you, or you travel out to them within a defined area, this is where a lot of your discovery happens.

• Storefronts — shops, restaurants, clinics, salons and any business with a physical address customers visit.
• Service-area businesses — plumbers, electricians, cleaners and others who serve a region rather than a single storefront.

Connecting Google Search Console

You can link your Google Search Console property with a Google sign-in. Once connected, Lume pulls your own performance data straight from Google for the property you grant access to.

The data is overlaid onto the live SERP view, so next to the ranking you see in the wild you also get the numbers from your own account, averaged over the trailing 28 days.

• Average position — your real ranking from Search Console, not just the public SERP snapshot.
• Impressions — how often your result was shown for the query.
• Clicks — how many of those impressions turned into visits.
• CTR — clicks divided by impressions, showing how compelling your listing is at that position.

About the verification period

Connecting Search Console relies on a sensitive Google scope — one that grants access to your account data — so Google requires the app to pass a verification review before it is open to everyone.

During this verification period, only approved test users can complete the connection. If you would like to use the Search Console overlay before review is finished, get in touch and we can add your Google account to the approved testers.