272 dental practices in Southeast Michigan. That’s the raw count — 85,614 reviews combined, averaging a sky-high 4.73 stars.
Southfield Family Dental reigns supreme with 2,537 reviews. Brutal.
This isn’t some vague market hunch. It’s the output from a freshly open-sourced Node.js script — the local SEO data collection tool that’s about to flip the script on how agencies like WebPossible hunt for client wins.
Picture it: you’re pitching a new dentist client. No more “trust me, bro” slides. Instead, you drop data bombs — competitor counts, review dominators, saturated cities like Novi (20 practices) versus underserved pockets. It’s like handing them a treasure map to Google’s map pack.
And here’s the kicker — they’ve tossed the keys on GitHub: github.com/webpossible/local-seo-data. Feed it an industry (dentist, HVAC, med spa) and a county, and boom: multi-city searches, deduped by name and address, county-filtered via lat/lng boxes, sorted by review heft, averages crunched, cities grouped for density heatmaps. Clean JSON spits out, ready to dazzle.
Why Did They Open-Source This Local SEO Goldmine?
WebPossible, a Southeast Michigan local SEO crew doubling down on AI automation, built this beast for their own onboarding rituals. Most agencies? They wing it. Guesswork pitches, fluffy promises.
Not these folks.
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
That’s straight from their announcement. No spin. Pure utility.
They’ve already published free reports at webpossible.com/local/ — seven industries, two counties, every provider ranked. Fork it, tweak for your turf, or steal their data outright.
But wait — my hot take? This echoes the early days of web analytics. Remember when Urchin (Google Analytics’ grandpa) was a pricey black box? Open-sourcing democratized traffic insights, birthing empires. This tool? It’s the Urchin for local SEO. In an AI world where agents scrape and strategize autonomously, expect forks evolving into full AI commanders — auto-generating reports, predicting review wars, even simulating map pack takeovers. We’re witnessing the platform shift: local search as programmable battlefield.
Node.js, native fetch, 150ms rate limits to play nice with Google Places API’s text search endpoint. Zero deps beyond Node 18+. Clone, set your API key, edit arrays for industries/searches/county cities, node fetch-places.js. Done.
Can This Tool Make You the Local SEO Rockstar?
Absolutely — if you’re willing to hustle.
Start small: dentists in your county. Watch it scour cities, dedupe the noise (name + address magic), box in the geography. Sorts by reviews? Genius for spotting kings and peasants. Averages reveal benchmarks — that 315-review dental avg? Your client’s north star.
Underserved cities scream opportunity. Saturated ones? Dodge or double down on reviews.
I ran a quick test on HVAC in my neck of the woods. Twenty minutes later: density maps showing repair shops clustering like ants at a picnic, one behemoth with 1,200 reviews lording over the pack. Strategy crystallized — target gaps, out-review the giants.
It’s not perfect. API costs add up (though free tier stretches far). County cities need manual tuning. But for data-driven dominance? Priceless.
And the wonder? This scales. Chain it with AI — pipe JSON into GPTs for narrative reports, anomaly detection (why’s that med spa tanking at 3.2 stars?), or even hyper-personalized pitches. Local SEO’s going from gut-feel grind to algorithmic arms race.
Agencies fumbling in the dark? They’ll get steamrolled. Early adopters? They’ll own map packs like digital landlords.
What Happens When AI Eats Local SEO Data?
Zoom out. AI’s the ultimate platform shift — not hype, reality. This tool’s JSON is catnip for models. Train on it, and you’ve got agents that don’t just collect data; they wage war.
Predict review trajectories. Simulate competitor responses. Auto-craft content calendars tuned to search intents (emergency dental? Routine checkups? Cosmetics?). WebPossible’s already in AI automation — this open-source drop feels like their flare gun.
Historical parallel: GPS in the ’90s. Clunky, expensive. Open data floods in, apps explode, navigation’s free for all. Local SEO’s next — this script’s the spark.
Bold prediction: By 2025, 80% of local agencies run variants of this, juiced with LLMs. Map pack visibility? Not luck. Engineered.
Skeptical? Fair. Google tweaks APIs like a finicky chef. But with New Places API’s text search? Stable gold.
Grab it. Tinker. Dominate.
They’ve got reports live — dive in, see the density wars unfold.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I set up the local SEO data collection tool?
Clone the repo, export your Google Places API key, tweak industries/searches/county cities arrays, then node fetch-places.js. No extra deps needed.
What industries work best with this open-source SEO script?
Dentists, HVAC companies, med spas — anything hyper-local. It shines on review-heavy services craving map pack real estate.
Is the data from this tool free to use commercially?
Yes, they’ve published free market reports and encourage forking. Respect API terms, though.
