AWR and Search Influence - Case Study on Local Rank Tracking

Search Influence is one of the largest digital marketing companies on the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Production Manager Michelle Neuhoff Boyd and her team help thousands of customers grow their online visibility in various industries, including automotive, law, surgery and more.

We were originally introduced to AWR in 2010 by another expert in the industry. At the time, it was one of the few services that provided Google Maps rankings, and that was a key metric we needed to track success for our clients. - Michelle Neuhoff Boyd, Production Manager Search Influence  

Soon after the release of our web based platform, Search Influence decided to switch versions and moved customer profiles from AWR Desktop to the cloud.  

The Challenge

The team at Search Influence had already built a proprietary client  SEO reporting dashboard. This meant the keyword rank tracker they would work with needed to provide solutions for three main requirements:

1. In-depth local rank tracking

2. API access

3. Multiple seats

The Solution

In-depth local rank tracking

AWR provides us with multiple search engine & international location options that allow us to cater our results to some of our more niche clients no matter their location or their customer's location.

Most of the customers that the team manages with AWR target Google US with custom locations, for both desktop and mobile searches. The focus is on growing the visibility in organic and local results from the web search.

However, Michelle’s team also manages customers with special local tracking requirements, like universal and maps results for Google My Business profiles.

Here’s a quick overview of all search preferences that can be used for customizing a Google engine in AWR:

API access

We're really lucky that we've had some clients who have been with us since 2010. The API access to rank data allows us to continue to use our proprietary client reporting dashboard.

AWR and Search Influence teamed up in an effort to make Google search definitions available via the API. The implementation process started with the static search engines, where items are added to AWR projects based on the awr_id of each targeted engine.

Next, we focused on dynamic search engines offering the possibility to create custom locations and choose a specific type of results for the search engine being added via the API.

Multiple seats

We had some concerns about finding a cost effective solution that would offer multiple seats. But we ultimately decided that the cloud version of AWR was worth it due to the additional tools and visibility that a cloud-based system offers - specifically, each member of the team easily being able to login and access the data in any way they needed.

In addition to automatically pulling data via API, the team at Search influence also works directly with the AWR user interface. Currently, there are just over 20 user profiles defined, with different levels of permissions.

The user management system is optimized for dynamic SEO teams, allowing unlimited profiles being created under one subscription, at no additional cost.

Some final thoughts

Currently, Search Influence is smoothly running local SEO ranking reports for 3,000+ customer projects with AWR. The team is able to streamline the overall data retrieval process with the help of the API integration, while also performing individual data checks on-demand directly in on the platform.

Working with Michelle’s team was a great experience for us since we got to meet people from different departments, with different support requirements.

This experience taught us a valuable lesson: throughout the entire process there was one contact person from AWR’s side, in charge of communication with all team members. This was key to quickly gaining a good understanding of the overall business needs at Search Influence.