Getting Started with Mapheron

A step-by-step guide for a brand-new user, written to be filmed. Each numbered section is a self-contained episode: a goal, the clicks, and what you should see if it worked.

docs/USER_MANUAL.md is the reference manual — every screen, every field. This is the path through it. Start here; go there when you want detail.

Read this first if you are a tester. Jump to Part 5 — For testers. It lists what is real, what is simulated, and what is deliberately switched off, so you do not report a limitation as a bug.

What Mapheron is

Most local-SEO tools hand you a list of recommendations and leave the work to you. Mapheron is built the other way round: you connect your business once, and the agent does the work. It watches your local search presence, decides what is worth fixing, checks the change is safe, makes it, then measures whether it helped.

Everything else in the product — Google Business Profile posting, review replies, rank tracking, citations, photo SEO — exists as something the agent can use. You can still drive any of it by hand, and the agent never hides what it did.

Part 1 — The five-minute setup (everyone does this)

Same for every customer, whether you own one café or run an agency with forty clients. Video: one take, about four minutes.

1. Create your account

1. Go to https://app.mapheron.com.
2. Click Sign up.
3. Enter your email. Mapheron emails you a six-digit code — there is no password to invent or forget.
4. Enter the code.

You should see: the Dashboard, with a sidebar on the left. A workspace is created for you automatically — there is no "create an organization" step.

2. Open Setup

In the sidebar, click Setup.

You will see five steps. They are in order for a reason: each one feeds the next.

3. Step 1 — Your business

Fill in the business name (required), what kind of business it is (e.g. Dentist), the street address, and your website.

Why it matters: this becomes the agent's Digital Twin — the canonical facts about your business. The agent is not permitted to state anything about you that is not in here, which is what stops it inventing details.

4. Step 2 — What do you offer?

List your services — one per line. Emergency dentist, teeth whitening, Invisalign.

Why it matters: these become the search terms it tracks and writes for. Be specific, and use the words customers use rather than internal names.

You should see: a confirmation of the keywords created from your services.

5. Step 3 — Connect Google

Connect your Google account so Mapheron can read Search Console and Analytics, and manage your Business Profile.

This step is optional. Skip it and everything else still works — Mapheron simply has fewer signals to work from and will not touch your Google listing. You can come back to it any time.

6. Step 4 — How much should Mapheron do on its own?

Three choices, in the words used on screen:

Start on Guarded if you are nervous. You can move up once you have watched it work for a week. High-risk actions — editing Google profile fields, correcting citations, creating a page on your website — always ask first, at every level.

7. Step 5 — Switch it on

Click to activate.

Why this step is not optional: activation is what creates the recurring schedules. Until you press it, nothing runs on its own — the agent never wakes up. If you set everything up and nothing ever happens, this is the step you missed.

You should see: a confirmation listing the schedules created.

Part 2 — Three journeys

Setup is identical for everyone. What you do next depends on who you are.

Journey A — One business, one location

The café owner, the dentist, the plumber.

1. Finish Part 1.
2. Open SEO Agent in the sidebar. This is your home screen from now on.
3. Read the findings. Each says what is wrong, the evidence behind it, and what the agent proposes to do.
4. Approve anything waiting on you.
5. Come back in a week and look at the outcome of each action — not whether it ran, but whether it helped.

You rarely need the rest of the product. Locations, Projects, Media Library and the other screens are there when you want them, not chores you must complete.

Video: "Your first week" — set up, approve one action, return and read the result.

Journey B — One business, several locations

Three branches, or a franchise.

1. Finish Part 1 for your first location.
2. Go to Locations and add the others. Each location has its own profile, services and rankings — a suburb branch competes in a different local market to the city-centre one, and Mapheron treats them separately.
3. For many locations at once, use Bulk Import (CSV) rather than typing.
4. Check Location Profiles so each has its own hours, phone and description. This is where NAP consistency is won or lost.
5. Open SEO Agent and filter by location.

The trap to avoid: copying identical descriptions across branches. Google reads that as duplicate content, and it suppresses the weaker locations.

Video: "Adding your second and third location", ending on the bulk import.

Journey C — An agency managing clients

You do this for other people.

1. Finish Part 1 using your agency as the business.
2. Go to Clients and add your first client.
3. Add that client's Locations.
4. Set the automation level per client, not globally — a trusting client can run on Autopilot while a cautious one stays on Advisor.
5. Use Approvals as your queue: everything awaiting a decision, across every client, in one list.
6. Give the client Client Portal access so they can watch progress without taking a seat in your workspace.
7. Use Reports for the monthly story, and the white-label settings to put your own brand on it.

The screen you will live in: Approvals. Most of the rest is setup you do once.

Video: "Onboarding a client in ten minutes", then a separate one on Approvals.

Part 3 — Common tasks

Short recipes. Each is a two-to-three minute video.

Undoing something

Every action the agent can take is paired with a way to undo it, and it stores the "before" state when it acts. If it edits a Google profile field, it kept the old value. If it creates a page on your website, undoing it returns the page to a draft rather than deleting your work.

Part 4 — What happens once you walk away

This is the part worth filming carefully, because it is the product's actual promise.

On a schedule, with nobody logged in, Mapheron:

1. Observes — refreshes rankings, reviews, citations and, if connected, Search Console and Analytics.
2. Diagnoses — turns those signals into findings, each tied to evidence.
3. Plans — scores the findings and drafts specific actions.
4. Safety-gates — runs every draft through eight checks. A check that errors blocks the action rather than letting it through.
5. Executes — does the work, within your automation level and a daily cap on how many changes it may make.
6. Measures — waits, then checks whether the change actually helped.
7. Learns — feeds the result back into how it scores similar work next time.

If Google Analytics is connected, step 6 judges success on calls, bookings and form fills rather than rankings. An action that lifted a ranking but produced no extra customers is reported honestly as inconclusive, rather than dressed up as a win.

Part 5 — For testers

Please try to break it. Before filing anything, check this list — these are known and deliberate, not bugs.

Currently simulated

Rank positions, geogrid, citations, competitor data, multi-platform reviews and AI-assistant mentions come from a built-in simulation, not from the live web. Screens showing that data carry an amber "Sample data" notice.

If you find such a screen without the notice, that is a real bug — please report it. The numbers are realistic on purpose; the label is what keeps them honest.

Deliberately switched off right now

Worth attacking

• Sign up and confirm you land in a working workspace with no dead ends.
• Feed the setup form nonsense: empty fields, 500-character names, emoji, HTML, SQL, a website URL pointing at localhost or 127.0.0.1.
• Complete setup but never press Switch it on — confirm nothing runs; then press it and confirm things start.
• Approve and reject actions. Try approving the same one twice, in two tabs.
• Add two locations with identical details.
• Upload a huge image, a corrupt one, and a file that claims to be a JPEG and is not.
• Get invited into someone else's workspace and try to reach data you should not see.
• Use the browser Back button in the middle of every flow.
• Leave a tab open overnight, then click something.

Reporting

Say what you did, what you expected, what happened, and roughly when — the timestamp lets us find your request in the logs. A screenshot of the whole window, including the address bar, saves a lot of guesswork.

When something looks wrong