Paying $2,000 a month for local SEO?
Run the free scan and check their work against it. It takes 30 seconds, costs nothing, and it is worth doing whether or not you ever hear from us again.
- The same recurring work
- $79, not a retainer
- No contract, no notice
- Visible on your own profile
What you pay now, and what the work costs
Most local retainers buy a monthly report, and a report is not work. The question is not whether your agency is lazy — it is whether you could name one thing they changed on your profile last month.
A local SEO retainer
$1,500–5,000 a month, 6–12 month contract
- A monthly report of impressions and reach that rise on their own.
- Work happening somewhere you cannot see, between invoices.
- An account manager, an onboarding call, and a minimum term.
Rank Pilot
First 7 days free$79 a month, cancel any time
- Your actual position, measured from 49 points around you.
- Every action visible on your own profile before it goes public.
- Nothing to sign, and nothing to un-sign later.
$2,000 is the middle of what local retainers ask. Put your own number against it — the arithmetic holds at $800 and it holds at $5,000.
Why the retainer keeps renewing anyway
None of this is because owners are careless. It is because the thing being bought is genuinely hard to see from where the buyer is standing.
You cannot see what you are buying
Local ranking is invisible from your own phone. You are signed in, standing at your own address, and Google puts you at the top — so the only view you get is the one that arrives by email.
The report measures the wrong thing
Impressions, reach and profile views drift upward with the seasons on their own. None of them is a call, and none is where you sit when somebody three suburbs away searches.
Cancelling feels like losing ground
It usually is not. All of this happens on the Google profile you own, and corrected categories and answered reviews do not un-fix themselves the month you stop paying.
- Impressions in the reportNow 172
- Calls from your profileNow 100
Four questions. One email. See what comes back.
Send these to whoever you pay, word for word, and judge the reply rather than the invoice. Every one of them has a right answer that takes a competent agency two minutes to give.
Ask them this
- 1“Where do I rank right now, measured from more than one point?”A single rank number means nothing — position changes street by street. Anyone doing this properly has grid data and can send it.
- 2“What did you change on my profile last month?”Not monitored, not reported on. Changed. There should be a list of edits, and you should be able to see each one yourself.
- 3“How many reviews arrived, and how many did you answer?”Review recency moves local ranking more than almost anything else. A flat count with unanswered replies means it is not being worked.
- 4“What happens to all this if I cancel today?”Work done on your own profile stays yours. If the results leave with them, you were renting a dashboard rather than buying work.
An agency that answers all four in one reply is doing the job and you should keep paying them. A dashboard screenshot instead is also an answer.
Review collection is coming soon. Rank Pilot does not ask your customers for reviews yet — this page describes what it will do. Answering the reviews you already have works today.
The recurring work, itemised
Strip a local retainer back and the same short list is underneath it: keep the profile complete, get reviews arriving, answer them, post, watch the competition, report. Real work — and almost all of it recurring, which is the kind an agent does better than a person carrying forty other accounts.
- Done on a daily cycle rather than in the week before a report is due.
- Each action shown to you before it reaches your public profile.
- No kickoff call, no discovery phase, nothing to bill for setting up.
- It happens on your own profile, so you never take anyone’s word for it.
- Categories, services and hours corrected12 edits
- Every review answered in your voice31 replies
- A request after every finished job88 asked
- A post a week, with your own photos4 posted
- Rank tracked from 49 points, rivals watched1 alert
Ask it what your money actually bought
Rank Pilot is a chat, not an account manager. Ask what was done, in the words you would use on the phone, and it answers with the list — each line something you can go and check.
- “What did you do this month?” — every edit, named.
- “Where do I rank?” — your position from 49 points, not impressions.
- “Cancel” — from your account, without a call.
Here is the month, line by line. Every one of these is on your profile now — go and look at any of them.
- Categories, services and hours corrected12 edits
- Every review answered in your voice31 replies
- A request after every finished job88 asked
- A post a week, with your own photos4 posted
- Rank tracked from 49 points, rivals watched1 alert
- What did you do this month?
- Where do I rank?
- Audit my profile
- Reply to my reviews
- Write a post
And none of the things you were paying around
A retainer carries the cost of the people between you and the work. This does not have any of them, which is most of the difference in the two numbers above.
No account manager
Nobody to chase for an update, and nobody translating your question into a ticket for somebody else.
No onboarding phase
Connect the profile in about two minutes. There is no discovery period, and nothing to invoice for having one.
No notice period
Cancel from your own account in the month you would rather not spend it, without a retention call.
What it costs
One plan. Everything included.
No setup fee, no add-ons, no contract. Cancel from your account, without a phone call.
$79per location, per month
First 7 days free
No card needed for the scan. Cancel from your account, any time, without a phone call.
Everything, from day one
- Rank tracked from 49 points around you
- Profile rebuilt, then kept current
- Review requests after every visit (coming soon)
- Replies drafted for every review
- Weekly posts and fresh photos
- Nearby competitors tracked
- Same-day alert when your rank drops
- One report a month, one page
What the same work costs elsewhere
- $1,500–5,000
- Local SEO agencyper month · 6–12 month contract
- $299–449
- Podium / Birdeyeper location · plus add-ons
- $79
- Rank On Maps AIper location · no contract
Public list prices, verified July 2026.
A good agency is worth keeping
If yours answers those four questions properly, stay with them — a person who knows your market and picks up the phone is worth more than $79 a month. This page is about the many retainers that are a report and a renewal, and about the fact that you can now check which one you have.
First 7 days free
- Cancel any timeFrom your account, no call
- 30-day money backEmail us, no questions
- Your data is yoursExports on request
Audit them. It costs you nothing.
Scan your own business, forward the result to whoever you pay, and ask them about the gaps. Either they fix them, or you have learned something worth a retainer.
- Where you actually rank
- What is still unfixed
- Who is above you, and why
Straight answers
The questions you were going to ask anyway.
How long until I rank higher?
Rank Pilot starts on the profile fixes and the reviews in week one, and you can see both. Rankings usually move in 30 to 90 days. Nobody can make it faster, and anyone who promises to is lying to you.
Will you get me to the top?
We won’t promise that. Nobody controls Google, and everyone who says otherwise is selling something. We show you what changed and what it got you, every month.
Do you need my Google login?
Not for the scan. If you subscribe, you connect your profile once so Rank Pilot can make the fixes. It shows you everything before it goes live, and you can disconnect any time.
Are these fake reviews?
No. Rank Pilot asks your real customers after real visits. Fake reviews get businesses suspended from Google, so we will never touch them. Review collection is coming soon.
Is there a contract?
No. Month to month, cancel from your account.
Can I see what it finds before I pay?
That is what the free scan is. It shows your map, your gaps and the businesses ahead of you, with nothing held back and no card asked for.