Automating location-based SERP checks with Python

Sebastian Cole — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:13:59 +0000

I’ve been working on local SEO reporting for a client with multiple service areas, and manually checking rankings city by city was becoming painfully time-consuming.

To speed things up, I started automating location-based SERP checks with Python so I could compare rankings across multiple cities in one run.

Simplified example:

import requests

cities = ['London', 'Manchester', 'Birmingham']

for city in cities:
params = {
'keyword': 'plumber',
'country': 'GB',
'city': city,
'language': 'en'
}

response = requests.get(
    'https://example-api.com/search',
    params=params
)

print(f'{city}: {response.json()}')

This made it much easier to:

compare visibility between locations
spot weak local markets
monitor ranking inconsistencies
prioritize local SEO improvements

One interesting thing I found was that rankings varied much more between cities than expected. A site performing well in one area could be nearly invisible in another, even with similar competition levels.

I’m curious how other developers or SEO folks are handling:

geo-specific rank tracking
local SERP simulation
location-based reporting
large-scale local SEO monitoring

Are you building custom scripts for this, using APIs, or relying on traditional rank trackers?

Working on a small Node

Sebastian Cole — Tue, 26 May 2026 11:30:24 +0000

I've been working on a small Node.js script to automate checking if my API endpoints are returning correct status codes. It's helped me catch issues before they affect users. Sharing the core logic:

javascript
const axios = require('axios');

async function checkEndpoints(endpoints) {
const results = [];
for (const endpoint of endpoints) {
try {
const response = await axios.get(endpoint.url);
results.push({
url: endpoint.url,
status: response.status,
expected: endpoint.expected,
pass: response.status === endpoint.expected
});
} catch (error) {
results.push({
url: endpoint.url,
status: error.response?.status || 0,
expected: endpoint.expected,
pass: false
});
}
}
return results;
}

// Example usage
const endpoints = [
{ url: 'https://api.example.com/users', expected: 200 },
{ url: 'https://api.example.com/admin', expected: 403 }
];

checkEndpoints(endpoints).then(console.log);

For larger projects, I've used SERPSpur's monitoring API which does this automatically with alerts. But this script works for quick checks. How do you validate your endpoints?

DEV Community: Sebastian Cole

Automating location-based SERP checks with Python

Working on a small Node