Be found where it matters most

Think of these as the two halves of a complete local listings strategy: Building and Maintaining.

Citation Builder (the building phase): This is a pay-as-you-go service (starting at $3.20 per site, or as low as $2 with bulk credits) where our team manually submits your business to key authority sites across the web. It builds trust and mentions that you need to climb the rankings.

Active Sync (the maintain phase): Think of Active Sync as a personal bodyguard for your business information. It keeps your information up to date and protected from unwanted third-party edits across Google, Apple, Facebook, Bing, and Yelp.

Which do I need? Most successful businesses use both. Use Citation Builder to grow your footprint and Active Sync to manage your daily presence on the sites that drive the most traffic.

Think of Active Sync as a direct, high-speed bridge between BrightLocal and the most important sites (like Google, Bing, Apple Maps, and Facebook).

Update once, publish everywhere: When you change your hours or description in BrightLocal, we push that info to all those platforms instantly.

Protection: It also acts as a shield. If someone else tries to suggest an incorrect change to your listing on Google, Active Sync alerts you immediately so you can block it and keep your data accurate.

This Help Center article walks you through how to get started: How can I set up Active Sync?

Active Sync focuses on the sites that over 90% of customers use to find, trust, and contact your business.

We keep your data perfectly synced across:

Google (Search and Maps)
Apple Maps
Facebook
Bing
Yelp (Available for businesses in the USA & Canada)

The biggest difference is ownership. Traditional API tools like Yext often feel like renting your listings — if you stop paying, your data can revert or even disappear. It’s a cycle that gets expensive fast.

BrightLocal uses a hybrid approach. With Active Sync, you get instant updates from APIs for your most important sites: Google Business Profile, Facebook, Bing, Apple Maps, and Yelp.

With Citation Builder, any citations we build for you are yours to keep forever. If you ever decide to leave, we won’t remove your listings, so you can keep the progress you’ve made.

Quite a lot! Because we don’t force you into expensive “all-in-one” bundles for sites you don’t need, the savings add up quickly. Let’s use an example for a 10-location business.

If you went with Yext, Synup, or Moz, you could end up spending anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 per year. With BrightLocal, you’ll likely pay just $1,800 in the first year (which covers a Citation Builder campaign) and as little as $800 each year after that. Over the course of five years, you could save anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 – that’s up to 75% saved!

That’s right. Our manual citation building is a pay-as-you-go service starting at just $3.20 per listing (or as low as $2 with bulk credits). You pay for the work once, and the listings are yours to keep forever. We don’t believe in charging maintenance fees just to keep your business on the map.

There are only a few instances where you might choose an optional add-on or update:

Data Aggregator Renewals ($120/year): This is optional but recommended. It keeps your data locked across thousands of sources, so it doesn’t get overwritten by outdated information from third parties.

Manual Updates: If you move offices or change your number and don’t have an Active Sync or aggregator subscription, we charge a simple, one-off fee of $3.20 per listing (or as low as $2 with bulk credits) to manually update your details.

Active Sync (available on our Manage and Grow plans): If you want the best of both worlds—manual ownership plus the ability to push instant updates to key sites like Google, Facebook, and Apple Maps —you can add Active Sync at any time.

Find out more about how we handle location updates here.

Nope! If you only need our Citation Builder service, you can open a free account to get started. This gives you access to our manual citation team with zero monthly subscription fees. You only pay for the specific citations you want to build.

Not necessarily! We offer two flexible ways to get started, depending on what works best for you:

The full works: Sign up for a 14-day free trial to explore these features in our platform. To keep the momentum going after your trial, you can simply move on to a Manage or Grow plan.

The pay-as-you-go option: You can open a free account and just purchase Active Sync, which includes GBP Post Scheduler as a standalone add-on.

We certainly do! If you’re juggling 50+ locations, we know that manual updates aren’t an option. We’ve built specialized bulk update workflows designed specifically to save agencies and large brands hours of busy work.

Get in touch with our Sales Team to learn more.

Not at all. This is one of the biggest reasons people choose us over our competitors. With many platforms, your listings revert or disappear if you stop paying, but with us, you own your listings. Any citations we build or claim for you are yours to keep forever.