How Digital Growth Services' Geo-Grid Scanning Works

A transparent, technical look at what happens when you press "Scan".

Digital Growth Services measures your Google Maps position from many geographic coordinates at once — using a browser engine running entirely on your computer. There's no cloud service in the middle and no external ranking API.

In short: the app starts a headless Chrome instance on your machine, overrides its geolocation to each grid coordinate in turn, runs your keyword against Google Maps directly, scrolls through the results feed, and pulls out the ranked list it finds there.

What is a geo-grid scan?

Google Maps rankings depend on where the searcher stands, so a single measurement can't describe your visibility. A geo-grid scan lays a lattice of latitude/longitude points over your service area, centered on your business address, and measures your rank at every one of them. The results render as a color-coded heatmap so you can read your entire market at a glance.

The three grid presets

Preset	Points	Spacing	Approx. coverage
Local (5×5)	25	500 m	~2.5 km across
Standard (7×7)	49	1,000 m	~6 km across
Wide (9×9)	81	1,600 m	~12.8 km across

Use Local for a dense neighborhood business, Standard for a typical city footprint, and Wide when your service area spans an entire metro.

What happens at each grid point

Geolocation override. Chrome's DevTools protocol sets the browser's reported location to the grid coordinate.
Direct Maps query. The keyword is searched on Google Maps using ordinary URLs — no API key involved.
Feed extraction. The results panel is scrolled four times and up to 20 listings are read.
Name matching. Your business is located in the list using normalized substring comparison, so small formatting differences don't cause misses.
Pacing. Random 3–7 second waits between points, with a fresh session every 25 points, keep scans polite and stable.
Local storage. Each result is written to JSON files on your own disk.

How long a scan takes

5×5 — about 3 minutes
7×7 — about 5 minutes
9×9 — about 10 minutes

What "20+" means

A cell marked 20+ means your business either ranked below position 20 at that point or didn't appear in the local results at all. Either way, proximity signals there are too weak for customers at that spot to find you.

Reading the heatmap colors

Green (1–3) — strong visibility; you're in the Local Pack.
Gold (4–10) — decent visibility, first page of local results.
Orange (11–20) — weak; most searchers never scroll this far.
Red (20+) — effectively invisible at that location.

AI action briefs

With a Claude API key configured, Digital Growth Services can hand your scan data to Claude and return a prioritized, plain-English action plan — which zones to attack first, what the pattern suggests is broken, and which fixes are likely to move which parts of the map.

Data privacy and local storage

Everything lives on your machine. On macOS, data sits in ~/Library/Application Support/digital-growth-services/ranktracker/; on Windows, in %APPDATA%\digital-growth-services\ranktracker\. There is no cloud backend and no telemetry.

Digital Growth Services vs cloud-based trackers

Cloud tools like Local Falcon and BrightLocal run their scans on their servers and keep your clients' data there. Digital Growth Services runs the scan from your computer and stores the results with you — no account, no credits, and full ownership of the data. See the full comparisons: Digital Growth Services vs Local Falcon and Digital Growth Services vs BrightLocal.

FAQ

Does Digital Growth Services use the Google Places API?

No. It queries Google Maps the way a real user's browser does, so no API key or per-request billing applies.

Can I scan more than 81 points?

The 9×9 Wide preset (81 points) is the largest grid. For very large territories, run multiple projects centered on different parts of the market.

Do I need Chrome installed?

Yes — scanning uses a headless Chrome instance on your machine. It runs silently in the background.

Where is my data stored?

In local JSON files under your user application-support directory. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.

How often should I scan?

Weekly while actively working on local SEO; monthly for maintenance monitoring.

Will scans slow down my computer?

Not noticeably. A scan is one headless browser tab with deliberate pauses between checks.

See your whole market in one scan

From $29/month · Unlimited scans, clients, and keywords · Data stays on your machine.

See pricing