I Open-Sourced Our Local SEO Data Collection Tool

We just open-sourced the Node.js script we use to pull competitive market data from the Google Places API for local SEO analysis.

Repo: github.com/webpossible/local-seo-data

What It Does

Give it an industry ("dentist", "HVAC company", "med spa") and a county, and it:

1. Searches multiple cities for comprehensive coverage


2. Deduplicates by name + address


3. Filters to the target county (city name matching + lat/lng bounding box)


4. Sorts by review count


5. Calculates market averages


6. Groups by city for density analysis


7. Outputs clean JSON

Why We Built It

We run a local SEO agency in Southeast Michigan. When we onboard a new client, we want to show them:

• How many competitors they actually have


• Who dominates reviews (and by how much)


• Which cities are saturated vs underserved


• What a realistic path to map pack visibility looks like

Most agencies pitch SEO services without knowing any of this. We wanted data-driven strategies instead of guesswork.

Example: Dental in Oakland County, MI

Total: 272 dental practices

Reviews: 85,614 combined

Avg rating: 4.73

Top provider: Southfield Family Dental (2,537 reviews)

Top cities: Novi (20), Southfield (19), Royal Oak (19), Troy (19)

That data immediately tells us:

• Competition is extreme and evenly distributed (no geographic shortcut)


• Average practice has 315 reviews — that's the benchmark


• Emergency, routine, and cosmetic dental searches each need different strategies

Tech Stack

• Google Places API (New) — text search endpoint


• Node.js with native fetch
  


• Rate limiting (150ms between requests)


• No dependencies beyond Node 18+

How to Use It

git clone https://github.com/webpossible/local-seo-data

cd local-seo-data

export GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY="your-key"

node fetch-places.js

Edit the INDUSTRIES, SEARCHES, and COUNTY_CITIES arrays for your target market.

Published Data

We publish the results as free market reports at webpossible.com/local/ — 7 industries across 2 Michigan counties. Every provider ranked by reviews with competitive analysis.

Feel free to fork, adapt for your market, or just use the data we've already published.

WebPossible — local SEO and AI automation for small businesses.