Your first scan

This walkthrough gets you from a fresh install to a readable heatmap. Start with a small grid; you can widen coverage once you know the workflow.

On a fresh install, the Projects page shows a Getting started checklist with the same three steps: create a project, run a scan, and open the heatmap. Each step ticks itself off as you go, and the card also has a button that copies an agent setup prompt if you plan to work through an AI agent. You can dismiss it anytime.

1. Create a project

Open Projects in the sidebar and click New Project (or press Ctrl+N).

The quickest way to fill the form is Import from Google Maps at the top:

1. In Google Maps, open the business, choose Share, then Copy link.
2. Paste the link into the import field. GeckoGrid fills in the business name, the map pin’s coordinates, and the nearest street address, and uses the business name as the project name if you have not typed one.
3. Check the address. It is looked up from the pin, so it can be a door or two off. The coordinates are the pin itself, which is what the scan uses.

To enter the details by hand instead:

1. Give the project a name. A convention like “ClientName, City” keeps a roster scannable.
2. Enter the Business Name exactly as it appears on Google. The name match is what the scan looks for in the results.
3. Type the address and press Enter, or click Geocode, to resolve it to coordinates.

A project needs a location before it can be saved, so the form will ask for one if the coordinates are still empty.

Tip: keep a typed address to the street address itself. Suite and unit numbers like Ste 3 or #4, PO boxes, and anything else tacked onto the address often trip up the latitude and longitude lookup. If Geocode pins the wrong spot or comes back empty, strip the address down to the street portion and geocode again, or use the Maps import.

2. Add keywords

Type a keyword and press Enter, or type a comma, to add it. Each keyword becomes a chip you can remove with its x. To add several at once, paste a list with one keyword per line or separated by commas. A keyword you already added is skipped.

Specific terms give clearer signal than broad ones: “emergency plumber austin” beats “plumber”. Two or three keywords is plenty for a first run.

3. Pick the grid

Choose the grid shape and size in the same form.

• Shape: square, hexagon, or circle. Square is the familiar choice; hexagon and circle cover the same area with fewer points at the same size.
• Size: 3, 5, 7, or 9. A square grid of size 7 is 7x7, or 49 points. Hexagon and circle grids are listed by shape and point count instead, for example “Hexagon 7 (37 points)” or “Circle 7 (39 points)”, because they do not have size-squared points. A larger grid covers more ground with more points to scan.
• Spacing: the distance between points. Tight spacing suits a single neighborhood, wider spacing covers a city. Spacing is shown in meters, or in miles if you chose miles in Settings.

Once the location is set, a Grid Preview map at the bottom of the form shows the exact points the scan will visit, with the business location ringed, and a line such as “49 points covering about 6.0 km × 6.0 km”. It updates as you change the shape, size, or spacing, so you can see whether the grid reaches the neighborhoods you care about before you scan.

Scan time depends on the engine more than the grid: local scans take a few minutes, API scans take a few seconds. For a first scan, 3x3 or 5x5 with a few hundred meters of spacing is plenty. The Standard preset (7x7 at 1000m) is the usual choice for ongoing client work.

Click Create Project.

4. Run the scan

Open the project. The action bar at the top of the project page has the scan buttons:

• Scan all keywords scans every keyword on the project, one after another.
• Scan one keyword opens a list of the project’s keywords; pick one to scan just that keyword. A project with a single keyword shows one button with that keyword’s name instead.

GeckoGrid opens Chrome in the background, searches from each grid point, and checks whether your business appears in the top 20 results at that point. The live scan view opens and the map fills in as points complete. A card beside the map shows the points done, a rough time left, and a Cancel button. Scans run one at a time, so additional scans queue up, and the project page’s action bar shows the same progress.

You do not have to watch. If GeckoGrid is minimized to the tray or behind other windows when the queue finishes, a desktop notification tells you.

5. Read the heatmap

Each circle on the map is one grid point, and the number inside is your rank there.

• Green (1 to 3): you rank in the top three map results.
• Yellow (4 to 10): visible but below the top three.
• Orange (11 to 15): page two territory.
• Red (16+ or not found): you are not ranking at that point.

Click any circle to see the full top 20 results at that point, including competitors. A listed business can have View grid, which redraws the map with that business’s rank at every point, and Open in Maps. The average rank across the grid is your headline number for tracking over time.

Above the map, the arrows step to the older or newer scan of the same keyword (the Left and Right arrow keys do the same), and the keyword dropdown jumps to another keyword’s latest scan. The scan’s date and time appear under the business name and in the map’s info panel.

6. Track it over time

Back on the project page, Scan History keeps every scan. The Keywords view lists each keyword with its latest map rank, the change since the previous comparable scan, how many points found you, a trend line, and when it was last scanned; click a keyword to see its individual scans. Timeline lays keywords against scan dates, colored by rank, and Runs groups scans by day. Map rank there counts points where you were not found as 20, the same as the map. See reading scan history for the details.

That is the whole loop: create, scan, read. Next, decide between local and API scanning or put the scan on a schedule.