See what's changing around your business — before it affects you.

Four public sources: Google Maps listings and their reviews, Google Maps search results for the keywords you choose, public Instagram and TikTok profiles, and the ad transparency libraries Meta and Google are required to publish. It's the same information anyone can look up — we collect it through licensed data providers, organise it, keep a history, and refresh it on a schedule that depends on your plan. We don't collect Yelp or TripAdvisor.

No — data is refreshed on a schedule set by your plan: every 24 hours on Free, every 6 hours on Starter, every 3 hours on Growth, and hourly on Pro. Your alert rules are checked shortly after each refresh, and the what-changed feed and your three tasks are rebuilt from it. Competitor ads are the exception: you pull those when you want to look, rather than on the refresh clock.

Yes, on paid plans. You give us the searches your customers actually type — “barber near me”, “thai food southbank” — and we record your position in the Google Maps results for each one over time, along with the businesses sitting above you. Free doesn't include rank tracking; Starter covers 20 keywords, Growth 50, and Pro has no keyword limit.

Instagram and TikTok, for your business and for the competitors you've confirmed, on paid plans. We record followers, engagement rate and how often each account posts, plus the likes and comments on individual posts. Captions, hashtags and cover images are stored with the post so it stays readable even after the original disappears. We don't track Facebook, X or LinkedIn.

No, and be sceptical of anyone who says they can. Ad spend, click-through rates and the keywords a business bids on are private to that advertiser. What is public is the ad itself: Meta and Google both publish libraries of the ads currently running. Ghostlytic shows you those — the creative, the copy, the call to action, and how long the ad has been running — and nothing beyond them.

It reads your reviews and your competitors' and reports the themes that come up repeatedly — each one with a real quote lifted from a review, a count of how many reviews mention it, and whether it reads positive or negative. On top of that it shows where you're winning, where a competitor is winning, and a short ranked list of things to try, each with the evidence attached. Quotes are checked word for word against the reviews we collected; anything the model can't back up is thrown away rather than shown to you. It needs a few reviews to work with — with fewer than three it tells you so instead of guessing. On paid plans the insights are refreshed every Monday morning, before the digest goes out.

Three ranked tasks worked out from your data, not by an AI: reply to the reviews waiting on you, ask for reviews when a rival is pulling away (say, by 7 a month), add photos when they show 84 and you show 11, or look at a rank drop. Each one carries the number behind it. Mark it Done or Skip; the list is rebuilt after every data check and again on Monday morning, and the Monday email carries it. Every plan.

Your rank among the rivals you track on rating and on reviews gained over the period, the leader on each, and the gap in plain terms — “75 five-star reviews lift you to 4.6”, or “at your pace you pass them in 6 weeks” when the trend supports it. Alongside it: the profile gaps against the best rival (photos, hours, website, phone, price level, category) and your unanswered-review backlog. Every plan, from data already collected.

It gives you your Google review link, a printable QR card for the counter, and short scripts to paste on receipts, in text messages and in emails. Sending is up to you — we don't send SMS or email to your customers on your behalf. Included on the Free plan.

No. Ghostlytic reads your listing; it doesn't write to it, and it never connects to your Google account. The reply inbox lists every review still without an owner reply; on paid plans one click drafts an answer in your business's voice. You copy it and post it in your own Google Business Profile — the link to the right place sits next to the draft.

On every plan, Ghostlytic reads public data and hands you the work. It doesn't post or reply on Google for you and never connects to your Google account; it doesn't send SMS review requests; it doesn't sync citations or directory listings; and it doesn't cover Yelp or TripAdvisor.

You choose from ten alert rules and set the thresholds yourself: a burst of low-star reviews, reviews you haven't answered, a competitor's review count surging, a rating dropping or climbing, your keyword rank moving, a competitor overtaking you in the local pack, a rival's follower or engagement swing, a jump in how often they post, and a new business appearing in your radius. Free includes one rule by email; paid plans add push and more rules. Critical alerts are sent the moment they fire; everything else is bundled into one summary email at 08:00, so you don't get one email per trigger. Review alerts carry the review text and, on paid plans, a draft reply. Every plan also gets an email each Monday with the week's numbers and your three things to do.

Yes. The PDF covers your rating and review count against the previous period, a competitor comparison, your keyword ranks, a star-by-star review breakdown with your owner response rate, and your social numbers. Free includes 2 PDF exports a month; paid plans add CSV and a larger allowance (10 on Starter, 30 on Growth, 100 on Pro).

We show what was publicly listed at the time we collected it. Listings can change between refreshes and providers occasionally miss or delay data, so treat Ghostlytic as a monitoring layer rather than a system of record. If something looks wrong, tell us from inside the app and we'll investigate.

We only collect information that businesses have chosen to publish — listings, reviews, public social profiles and ads they are running in public libraries. Reviewer names are hashed rather than stored. Think of it as an organised version of manually checking competitor profiles: the same public data, kept tidy and tracked over time.

Yes. Starter includes 5 locations, Growth 20, and Pro up to 50. Each location has its own competitor list and its own keywords. On Starter and up, “all locations at a glance” puts every site in one table, weakest first, with its rank among rivals, reply backlog and open tasks.

Yes. While we suggest competitors in your category, you can add any business you want to track — adjacent industries, aspirational brands, or local influencers.

No. You find your business in a search box, the way you would on Google, and pick it — no address typing, nothing to install, and no permission to grant on your Google or social accounts. We find the businesses nearby and start tracking the busiest ones on our own; you can change the list any time.

There's no separate trial — the Free plan is how you try Ghostlytic. It costs $0, needs no credit card, and lets you monitor one location with up to three competitors. Paid plans are billed per month (or per year at a discount) and you can cancel any time.

You can move between plans at any time from your billing settings. Your new limits — locations, competitors, radius, refresh frequency — apply once the change takes effect, and billing is adjusted by Stripe.

Cancel any time from your billing settings — no phone calls or emails required. You keep access until the end of the period you've paid for, and you won't be charged again.

Plans are billed per month (or per year) and can be cancelled at any time, which stops future charges. We don't run a money-back window; the Free plan exists so you can evaluate Ghostlytic before paying. If something goes wrong on our side, contact us and we'll make it right.