Free tool
Would the work pay for itself?
Put in your own numbers and the price of a plan, and see month by month when fixing what your scan found would cover its cost. Every input the arithmetic uses is in the form, and you can change each one.
Your numbers
See every price Run the free scan
Your business case
No share at risk yet. Run the free scan in this tab and it fills in from the findings, or type your own.
| Business type | Any local business |
|---|---|
| Monthly visitors | 1,000 |
| Share of visitors from search | 50% |
| Visitors who become customers | 3% |
| Value of a customer | $1,000 |
| Share of search visits at risk | Not given yet |
| Plan | Local |
| Monthly fee | $1,250 |
| One-time fee | $0 |
| Credit in month 1 | $0 |
| Recovery ramp | 10% a month in months 1 to 3, 40% a month in months 4 to 6, 80% a month in months 7 to 12 |
Enter the share of your search visits at risk to see the month by month.
To pay for itself within 12 months at these numbers, at least 15.9% of your search visits would need to be at stake.
How this is worked out
value at stake a month = visitors x search share x share at risk x close rate x value of a customer
recovered in a month = value at stake x that month's share of the ramp
The ramp: Our illustrative assumption for how fast fixed findings stop costing you, not a measurement and not a forecast. Change any step in the form.
The model credits every plan here except the Roadmap Audit with recovering the whole share at risk, on the same ramp. That is a simplification of ours, not a promise. Local's published scope lists no technical fixes, and a Fix Sprint covers up to 12 hours of fixes. A plan whose scope does not cover a finding will not recover that finding's share.
What this is not
It is arithmetic on the numbers above, not a forecast. A number you did not change is our starting assumption or our published price, not a benchmark. No one can guarantee rankings, visits or revenue, and neither do we.
Our delivery guarantee, as our terms word it: If a monthly deliverable in your plan is not delivered by the date we give you, that month's fee is refunded in full. It does not apply while we are waiting on access, content or an approval from you. Prices and terms.
How the calculator works
What is at stake each month is worked out the same way as the dollar estimate in a scan report, from the same inputs: your visitors a month, how many of them arrive from search, how many visitors become customers and what one customer is worth. Anything you typed into a report does not carry over, so put your own numbers in again here.
The share of your search visits at risk has no starting number. Until a scan fills it in or you type one, the business case shows the break-even share instead: the smallest share at risk that would pay the fees back within twelve months.
Picking a plan fills in its fee from our pricing. A monthly fee is counted in every month, and a one-time fee once, in the first. A credit, if there is one, comes off the first month's fees.
The recovery ramp spreads what the fixes recover over twelve months. It starts low, because a fixed page takes time to show in search. It is our own assumption, set out on the method page, and you can change every step.
What it can and cannot tell you
It shows what would have to be true for the work to pay for itself, and roughly in which month. It cannot tell you what will happen. Where you show up in search moves for reasons neither you nor we control, and some fixes make no difference you can see.
Until you replace them, the starting numbers are our guesses. If your site has analytics, it shows your visitors a month and how many come from search. For the value of a customer, use what you keep after the cost of the job rather than the invoice total, since the fees come out of what you keep.
If the break-even share stays well above what your scan found once your real numbers are in, a smaller plan, or one-time work such as a Fix Sprint on the scan's findings, may be the better first step. Every plan and price is on the pricing page. None of this is financial advice.
Printing your business case
The Print button prints the business case alone: the numbers it used, the month by month, how it is worked out and what it is not. Your browser draws it from the form and sends none of it to us, so you can hand it to a business partner or your accountant.
Most browsers can also save the printout as a PDF.
Questions
Where does the share of search visits at risk come from?
From the findings in your scan. Each finding carries a published weight, and the weights are combined rather than added, as the method page shows. That gives the same share behind the headline estimate in your report. Run the free scan first, then open this page in the same tab. The calculator reads that result and fills in the share. It also fills in the plan the scan recommended, if that plan is in its list. When the scan recommends a Roadmap Audit and then a monthly plan, it fills in both, with the credit our pricing gives the audit if a plan starts within 30 days. If you type over the share, the case marks it as your own number.
Why does the recovery ramp start so low?
A fix goes live on your site before it shows in search. Search engines have to read the fixed page again before results can change, which takes hours for some changes and months for others, and then people searching still have to find you and get in touch. If you expect your fixes to show sooner or later than that, change the ramp's steps and watch the payback month move.
More free tools
- Free website scan: Reads your homepage and the pages it links to, then lists each problem it finds with the evidence and an estimate of what it may cost you each month, plus one example fix.
- Where to start: a three-question quiz: Your type of business, what worries you most and your address. It starts the cost estimate from your industry and opens the findings on your worry first. It changes no check the scan runs.
- Audit checklist: What a local search audit covers, for your site, your Business Profile and your reviews. Your ticks stay in your browser, and some tick themselves from what your last scan found no problem with.
- Orphan page finder: Part of the scan: for sitemap pages none of the pages it read link to, a page to link each one from and the words to use.