In our guide to where customers search we walked through the places a local business can be found. This is the other half: the twelve things on your own side that decide whether you show up in any of them.
All twelve are checkable by you, without tools, without an agency, in about an hour. Nothing here requires a subscription or a login you do not already have. Work down the list and write down what is wrong. The written list is the point — most owners discover two or three genuine problems they did not know about, and finding them is most of the value.
Start With the Profile, Because Almost Everything Reads It
1. Is your primary category the right one? Not close enough. Right. Google’s categories are a fixed list and the primary one does more than any other field to decide which searches you are eligible for. If it was picked hurriedly at setup and never revisited, this is the highest-value thing on the page.
2. Are your hours accurate, including holidays? Wrong hours are worse than no hours, because someone drives over and finds you closed. Special hours matter more than owners expect.
3. Is the services list filled out? Not the description — the structured services field. It is one of the clearest statements you can make about what you actually do, and it is frequently left empty.
4. When was your last photo? Check the date, not the count. A profile whose newest photo is two years old reads as a business that may not be operating.
Then Your Reviews, Read as a Stranger Would
5. How recent is the most recent one? Recency does more work than total volume. A steady trickle beats a large pile that stopped.
6. Are you replying to them? All of them, not just the bad ones. Replies are public, they get read, and they are one of the few signals entirely within your control.
7. Do the reviews mention what you actually want to be hired for? Reviews that name the specific service are doing work that a wordless five-star cannot. If none of yours name your highest-margin service, that is a gap you can influence by what you ask.
Then the Details That Contradict Each Other
8. Search your business name and read everything on the first two pages. Not to admire it. You are looking for the old address, the disconnected number, the directory listing from a previous owner, the profile you forgot you made.
Every conflicting record gives the ranking systems a reason to be unsure which one is really you, and uncertainty costs you placement. This is the problem we covered in NAP Consistency.
9. Does your website say the same thing your profile says? Same name, same address formatting, same phone. Owners often have a tracking number in one place and the real number in another, which is exactly the kind of contradiction that causes trouble.
Then the Site Itself
10. Open your website on your phone, on cellular, not on your office wifi. Time it. If it takes more than a few seconds to become useful, that is costing you customers before anybody reads a word. Wifi at the shop hides this completely.
11. Do you have a real page for each thing you sell? A single services page listing eight offerings competes for none of them properly. This is the most common structural problem we see, in every industry.
12. Can someone find your answer to the boring questions? What it costs, how long it takes, whether you come to them, what happens on the first visit. These are the questions people search before calling, and the plain answers are what the AI systems quote back.
What to Do With the List
You will end up with a handful of items. Do them in this order, which is roughly cheapest-and-highest-impact first.
Fix the profile fields today, because they are free, they take minutes, and they feed more surfaces than anything else you own. Then clean up the contradictions you found in item eight, since those are subtraction rather than addition and often unlock placement you had already earned. Then the site work, which is slower and costs money, and should be sequenced rather than attempted all at once.
What you should not do is start with the site redesign. It is the most visible and most expensive item, it feels like progress, and it is almost never the binding constraint. Redesigning a site whose profile category is wrong just gives you a prettier version of the same invisibility.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should I run through this?
Twice a year is plenty for most businesses, plus any time something changes — a move, a new phone number, a new service, a staff change. Things drift quietly, and the drift is what causes the contradictions in item eight.
I found problems. How urgent are they really?
Profile and consistency problems are urgent in the sense that they are cheap to fix and actively costing you now. Site problems are real but slower-moving. The mistake is treating everything as equally urgent and then doing none of it.
Do I need software or a subscription to check any of this?
No. Every item is checkable with a browser and your phone. Tools help with scale and with tracking change over time, but nothing on this list requires one, and you should be suspicious of anyone who says the basics are unknowable without their dashboard.
My site is old but it works. Does that count as a problem?
Only if it is slow, hard to use on a phone, or missing real pages for what you sell. Age itself is not the issue. Plenty of older sites outperform newer ones because the structure and the content are right.
What if I do all twelve and still do not show up?
Then the constraint is competitive rather than technical, which is genuinely different and needs different work — understanding who is outranking you and why. That is the point at which an outside look earns its keep, because you have already eliminated the easy explanations.
Or Have It Checked for You
Working the list yourself is worth doing, and it will not tell you everything. It cannot show you how you place across your whole service area, which competitors hold the positions you are missing, or what the AI assistants say when somebody asks who to call.
Our free competitive analysis covers those. Pick your industry and it comes back in about fifteen minutes. No cost, no contract, and nobody calls you unless you ask.