🎯 What This Article Covers
You do not need access to a competitor's or prospect's Google Business Profile (GBP) to run a meaningful local competitive analysis. Search Atlas's Site Explorer lets you research any domain's organic performance, backlink profile, and keyword rankings — all without any GBP permissions. This article walks you through how to do it effectively.
🗺️ Understanding the Location Field Default
When you open Site Explorer and enter a competitor's domain, the location field defaults to USA. This is intentional — the USA database is the largest and most comprehensive starting point. However, if your client or prospect operates in a specific local market, you should update this field to match their target location for the most relevant results.
- Why it matters: Keyword rankings and search volumes vary significantly by location. A competitor may rank #1 in Chicago but not appear in the top 10 nationally.
- What to do: Use the location selector in Site Explorer to choose the correct country, state, or city before pulling data.
🛠️ How to Audit a Competitor or Prospect Without GBP Access
Follow these steps to build a complete local competitive picture using only publicly available data inside Search Atlas.
- Open Site Explorer: Navigate to Site Explorer from your dashboard and enter the competitor's or prospect's root domain (e.g., example.com).
- Set the correct location: Click the location dropdown and select the country or region relevant to the business. For hyper-local analysis, narrow it to a specific state or city where available.
- Review organic keywords: Check which local-intent keywords the site ranks for — terms like "plumber in Austin" or "best pizza near downtown" signal local SEO strength. Note ranking positions, search volumes, and keyword difficulty.
- Analyze top pages: Identify which pages drive the most local traffic. Service area pages, location landing pages, and blog content targeting local queries are strong indicators of SEO strategy.
- Check backlink profile: Navigate to More Features → Backlinks → Backlink Research and enter the competitor's domain. Look for local citations, directory links, and regional news mentions that reinforce their local authority.
- Run a Link Gap Analysis: Go to More Features → Backlinks → Link Gap Analysis to compare the prospect or competitor against your client's domain. This surfaces link-building opportunities your client is missing.
- Document findings: Compile keyword gaps, top-ranking pages, and backlink opportunities into a prospect audit report. This forms the basis of your local SEO pitch or strategy.
📊 What You Can Learn Without GBP Access
Even without GBP credentials, Site Explorer gives you a clear picture of a business's local SEO health. Here is a summary of what each data point tells you:
- Organic traffic estimate: Indicates how much search visibility the site has overall and locally.
- Local keyword rankings: Reveals which geographic and service-based terms the site targets successfully.
- Backlink sources: Shows citation quality, local partnerships, and domain authority signals.
- Top-performing pages: Highlights the content types and page structures driving local conversions.
- Keyword gaps: Uncovers opportunities your client can target that competitors are already winning.
💡 Tips for Accurate Local Analysis
- Always change the location field away from the USA default when analyzing a business in a specific city or region.
- Use exact-match location keywords (city + service) when filtering the keyword table to surface hyper-local ranking data.
- Cross-reference backlink data with the Backlink Gap Analysis tool to prioritize citation and outreach opportunities for your client.
- For ongoing prospect monitoring, save the competitor domains you analyze most frequently so you can revisit them quickly.
🙋 Need More Help?
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.
Additional Notes
Site Explorer → Topical Dominance: Compares any two URLs head-to-head across topic clusters — no GBP, no project, no location restriction required. Step-by-step: enter client URL, open Topical Dominance tab, enter competitor URL, review topic clusters where client leads/ties/trails. Repeat for each competitor.