Use case · Web design & SEO agencies

Find local businesses that need a better website — with the tech stack already checked

Web design, SEO and local marketing agencies that sell to small local businesses.

How it is usually done today

• Opening every website by hand to check the CMS, mobile layout and tracking.
• Running a separate tech-lookup tool on each domain.
• Sending generic "I can improve your website" emails.

Why that hurts

• Manual audits take minutes per lead.
• Without a specific observation, outreach reads like spam.
• Finding who actually owns the business is another research step.

How LeadMerlin does it

1. 1

   Search the niche

   Run a search for the trade and city you serve.

2. 2

   Read the tech column

   web.tech lists CMS, CDN, server, chat widget, analytics, frameworks and ad pixels detected on the site.

3. 3

   Spot the gaps

   Filter for no analytics, no ad pixels, unclaimed profiles (is_claimed = false), low ratings or few reviews.

4. 4

   Write a specific pitch

   Reference what you saw — "no analytics installed", "profile not claimed" — and address the owner by name when available.

Example: search, then inspect web.tech and reputation

curl -X POST "https://api.leadmerlin.com/api/v2/searches" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADMERLIN_API_KEY" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keyword":"roofing contractor","location_codes":[1026201],"strictness":"moderate"}'

curl "https://api.leadmerlin.com/api/v2/jobs/$JOB_ID/results?limit=200" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADMERLIN_API_KEY"

# each business includes, for example:
# "reputation": { "rating": 4.1, "reviews": 37, "is_claimed": true, ... }
# "web": { "tech": { "cms": "...", "analytics": [...], "advertising": [...] }, ... }

Location codes in these examples are placeholders — always look yours up with GET /v2/locations first.

What comes back

Most useful for this job:

• Tech stack: CMS, CDN, server, chat, analytics, frameworks, advertising pixels.
• Reputation: rating, review count, review snippet, claimed status.
• has_blog, meta description and crawled page text for quick content audits.

Limits and honest caveats

• Tech detection is based on fingerprints in the crawled pages; some tools load in ways that cannot be detected.
• We crawl up to 5 pages per site, not a full SEO audit.
• Businesses without a website cost nothing and are counted in the job’s skipped_count, but the API only returns enriched businesses — so this is not a tool for finding businesses with no website.

Pricing

• 1 lead credit per business that has a website to enrich.
• Listings without a website are never charged (counted as skipped, not returned in results).
• Off-niche listings removed by the niche filter are never charged.
• Failed enrichments are refunded automatically.
• A search charges only what your balance covers: with 40 credits left, it enriches the 40 top-ranked matches. Set max_leads to cap any search.
• Locations, niche suggestions, polling and demo endpoints are free.
• Phone line-type lookups have a monthly allowance: 100 on the free start, 1,000 Starter, 2,000 Pro, 4,000 Agency. Numbers looked up before are free. Past the allowance, phones still come back without a line type.

FAQ

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