Legal
Privacy
What we collect, why, and what we do with it. Written to be read, not to be survived.
Last updated 24 October 2026
Nearly Local is pre-launch. The product described on this site is in development and not yet generally available. This policy describes how we handle information today — which is limited to the website you are reading and any early access signup or enquiry you choose to send us. We will publish an updated policy before the product launches, and the sections below marked “when the product launches” describe our intended practice rather than something already happening.
Who we are
Nearly Local builds software that helps small businesses manage how they appear in local search. If you have a question about this policy, email privacy@nearlylocal.com.
What we collect today
On this website, we collect:
- Early access signups. We store your email address and signup date to let you know when Nearly Local is ready to try. This does not create a product account. To leave the list or ask us to delete your signup, email privacy@nearlylocal.com.
- Anything you send us. If you contact us, we keep your message and contact details so we can reply and follow up.
- Basic technical information that any web server receives when you load a page — such as your IP address and browser type — used to serve the site and keep it secure.
- Website analytics, but only if you agree. If you allow it, we use Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages people find useful. We ask first, and nothing is loaded until you say yes — see Cookies below.
We do not run advertising trackers on this site, we do not use Google Ads or ad personalisation, and we do not sell information about you to anyone.
When the product launches
Nearly Local works by connecting to your Google Business Profile with your permission. When that becomes available, here is how it will work.
Google account data
You will connect your Google account through Google's own consent screen. We will ask for permission to manage your Business Profile, and Google will tell you exactly what that covers before you agree.
With that permission, we expect to read and store:
- your business information — name, address, phone, hours, categories, services;
- your reviews and any replies;
- your posts and media;
- performance information Google provides about your profile, such as how often you appeared in search and what people searched for;
- the current state of your profile, including whether it is verified.
What we do with it
We use it to operate your profile on your behalf: to spot problems, explain them, prepare changes, make the changes you approve, and check that they worked. That is the entire purpose.
We will not:
- sell your data or share it with advertisers;
- use one customer's data to benefit another customer;
- use your data to train general-purpose AI models.
Where we use AI to draft a reply or interpret what we observe, your information is used to produce your result. We will publish which providers we use, and the terms that apply, before launch.
How it is kept
Each customer's data is kept separate from every other customer's. Access credentials are encrypted. We keep only what we need, for as long as we need it, and different kinds of information have different retention periods.
Withdrawing access
You can disconnect Nearly Local at any time. When you do, we revoke our access at Google rather than simply forgetting it on our side. You can also remove our access directly from your Google account settings.
On request we will delete your information, except where we are legally required to keep certain records — for example billing records, or a record of an action taken on your profile and who approved it.
Cookies
We ask before we set any analytics cookie. When you first visit, we show a short banner with two equal choices. Until you choose Allow, Google Analytics is not loaded at all — no script, no cookies, nothing sent to Google.
If you choose Allow, Google Analytics sets two cookies in your browser:
_ga— distinguishes one browser from another so repeat visits are not counted as new people. Expires after two years._ga_D0ZRLWN6FZ— keeps track of a single visit. Expires after two years.
We use this to understand which pages are useful and where people arrive from. We have turned off Google's advertising and ad-personalisation signals, so this data is not used to build advertising profiles, and we run no advertising cookies of any kind.
If you choose No thanks, we remember only that answer — stored in your browser, not in a cookie — and we do not ask again on that device.
Changing your mind. Select Cookie settings at the bottom of any page to be asked again. You can also clear these cookies at any time in your browser settings, and you can opt out of Google Analytics across all sites with Google's browser add-on.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or delete your personal information, and to object to certain uses. Email privacy@nearlylocal.com and we will help.
Changes
We will update this page when our practices change, and we will change the date at the top when we do. A substantial change before launch is likely, precisely because the product is still being built.