Hey everyone! I've been tasked with setting up a system to track local pack rankings (the "local 3-pack" on Google Maps/Search) for our company's 50+ store locations. I'm a bit stuck on the best approach.
I've been exploring some of the bigger SEO platforms (like SEMrush and Moz), and while they offer local tracking, it seems like you have to set up each location as a separate "project" or campaign. That feels like it could get messy and expensive fast. Is that really the standard way, or am I missing something?
My background is more in data pipelines (I love Airflow!), so I'm also wondering if there's a more DIY method. Could I use something like the Google Places API or SERP scraping tools (like SerpAPI) and then build my own dashboard? The main things I need to track are position for a set of core keywords + the city/neighborhood name for each physical store address.
What do most of you do? Is it better to:
1. Bite the bullet and use a platform's built-in feature, even if it means managing 50+ individual campaigns?
2. Build a custom pipeline to fetch and store the data, then visualize it in something like Looker Studio?
I'm especially worried about data freshness and scale—making sure we're checking rankings consistently without hitting API limits or spending a fortune.
Any guidance from those who've been through this would be amazing! I'm eager to learn the best practices here.
-- rookie
rookie