What Is a Local SEO API?
A local SEO API measures how a business ranks in local search, with geo-grid rank tracking, profile analytics and AI visibility, not just backlinks.
At a glance
- What this guide accomplishes
- Explain what a local SEO API covers, why local ranking is measured on a grid, and which pieces make it up.
- APIs used
- post
/api/v1/seo/keywordsAdd tracked keywords to a location - get
/api/v1/seo/keywordsGet a location's ranking overview - get
/api/v1/analytics/summaryGet a profile analytics summary - get
/api/v1/aeo/rollupGet the all-locations AEO roll-up
- post
- Reference
- SEOProfile AnalyticsAEO
- Prerequisites
- None. This is a concept page; the guides linked from it have the code.
- Typical use cases
- Understanding what local SEO tooling an API can automate
- Deciding what to build into a local marketing product
- Explaining local ranking to a non-specialist
Stand outside a dentist's office and search "dentist near me". Now run the same search from across town. You will often get two different top results. That gap is the whole problem local SEO solves, and a local SEO API is how you measure and close it in code. Classic SEO does not behave this way. A blog post ranks about the same for everyone. A local result is personalised by how close the searcher is standing and how strong the business's profile is.
Rank is a map, not a number
Because the result moves with the searcher, there is no single rank for a local keyword. So a local SEO API samples. It checks the ranking at many points on a grid laid over the business's area and reports the spread. POST /api/v1/seo/keywords sets that up: how many grid points, and how far apart they sit. GET /api/v1/seo/keywords returns the results once the background scans run. A location can rank first at its own address and drop off the map a few blocks away. You would never catch that from one number.
Three signals, not one
In practice a local SEO API tracks three separate things.
- Rank tracking: the geo-grid position, over time, for the keywords a business cares about. That is the rankings recipe.
- Profile performance: what people do once they find the business, like views, calls, direction requests, and website clicks. It comes from analytics, not the rank tracker (
GET /api/v1/analytics/summary). - AI visibility: how answer engines describe and recommend the business, increasingly a discipline of its own. It has its own page, what is an AEO API.
None of it moves on a broken profile
Rankings, analytics, and AI answers all read from the same source: an accurate name, address, categories, and hours across publishers. Get those wrong and every number downstream is noise. So a local SEO API sits on the listings layer. Fix the profile first. Then measure and lift the rest. The local marketing guide assembles rank tracking, analytics, and AI visibility as features you can ship one at a time.