Local business owners
Run the audit on your own profile before spending a dollar on ads. The fix list usually surfaces 4-6 zero-cost wins that move you into the local pack within 30 days.
Free tool · 38 ranking signals · No signup
Free Google Business Profile audit.
Paste any Google Business Profile and get a 60-second score against 38 local SEO ranking signals — NAP, categories, reviews, photos, posts, Q&A and more. A prioritized fix list, free, no signup.
- 60-second audit
- 38 signals scored
- Prioritized fix list
Sample audit
Westside Coffee · Brooklyn
72score
NAP mismatch on Yelp + BBB
2 missing secondary categories
Photo count 38% below median
Review velocity strong
82
Profile
91
Reviews
54
Citations
38 signals scored
scroll →
What we check
The 38 signals behind every local pack ranking.
Grouped into 8 categories. Tap any group to read the signal-by-signal breakdown — what Google looks for, why it matters, and how the audit scores it.
Business name accuracy
Google penalizes keyword-stuffed names and rewards the exact legal name shown on your storefront and citations.
Primary category match
Your primary category is the single biggest ranking lever in the local pack — one wrong pick can drop you out of the top 3.
Secondary categories
Adding every relevant secondary category expands the keyword surface your profile is eligible to rank for.
Business description keywords
The 750-character description is indexed and helps Google understand intent modifiers like 'organic', '24-hour' or 'wheelchair accessible'.
Service area definition
Service-area businesses with sharp polygons rank more consistently across the geo-grid than those with vague city lists.
How the audit works
Sixty seconds from paste to a fix list.
- 01
Paste your profile
Drop in a GBP link or your business name and city. Works on any public Google Business Profile worldwide.
- 02
We crawl the public data
We pull your profile, your homepage, your reviews, and your category benchmarks in under 60 seconds.
- 03
Scored vs. benchmarks
Each of the 38 signals is scored against the median for your category in your metro — not generic best practice.
- 04
Get a prioritized fix list
Issues are ranked by impact and effort so you fix the high-leverage things first. Export as PDF or CSV.
Benchmarks by industry
Know your category median.
We benchmark every audit against the median GBP for the category in your metro. Here's a snapshot of what the 75th-percentile profile looks like across 24 common industries.
| Industry | Avg reviews | Avg photos | Avg rank | Top-3 share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | 412 | 168 | 4.2 | 62% |
| Dentist | 187 | 42 | 5.1 | 48% |
| Law firm | 94 | 18 | 6.8 | 31% |
| Plumber | 142 | 36 | 3.9 | 57% |
| HVAC contractor | 168 | 41 | 4.1 | 53% |
| Hair salon | 221 | 89 | 4.5 | 59% |
| Nail salon | 198 | 124 | 4.6 | 55% |
| Gym & fitness | 256 | 71 | 5 | 47% |
| Real estate agent | 78 | 22 | 7.4 | 26% |
| Auto repair | 174 | 38 | 4.4 | 54% |
| Coffee shop | 489 | 211 | 3.6 | 68% |
| Bakery | 312 | 156 | 4 | 61% |
| Chiropractor | 132 | 28 | 5.4 | 44% |
| Massage therapy | 156 | 47 | 4.7 | 51% |
| Med spa | 198 | 82 | 4.9 | 49% |
| Roofer | 121 | 64 | 4.3 | 56% |
| Electrician | 138 | 31 | 4.2 | 55% |
| Landscaping | 109 | 78 | 4.6 | 52% |
| Veterinarian | 224 | 35 | 4.8 | 50% |
| Pediatrician | 86 | 14 | 6.2 | 35% |
| Accountant / CPA | 64 | 11 | 7.8 | 23% |
| Insurance agent | 92 | 16 | 6.4 | 33% |
| Pet groomer | 167 | 94 | 4.3 | 57% |
| Tattoo studio | 248 | 312 | 4.5 | 60% |
City coverage
Audit a business in any major metro.
The audit works on any Google Business Profile worldwide. These are the metros our benchmark dataset is deepest in — local pack patterns, competitor density, and category medians are tuned per market.
Common issues & fixes
The 20 problems we flag most often.
- 1
Duplicate Google Business Profile listings
Claim every duplicate, mark the strongest as primary, and request removal of the rest from Google Business support. Duplicates split your reviews and rank authority across two entities and almost always cap your visibility in the local pack.
- 2
Suspended or pending GBP
Don't keep editing. Fix the underlying trust signal (real address, matching website, matching phone) first, then file a single, well-documented reinstatement request with photos of signage and a utility bill.
- 3
NAP mismatch across citations
Export your top 50 citations, diff them against your GBP's exact name/address/phone, and submit corrections through Yelp, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, BBB and Data Axle. Consistency outranks volume every time.
- 4
Wrong primary category
Your primary category determines which queries you're even eligible to rank for. Run competitor primary-category audits in your top 3 keywords and align — secondary categories cover the rest.
- 5
Missing service area definition
Service-area businesses should draw tight ZIP-level polygons covering their actual coverage. Listing 20 cities you'll 'sometimes drive to' triggers spam filters and dilutes proximity ranking.
- 6
Low photo count for category
Hit the category median fast: restaurants need 100+, salons 80+, contractors 30+. Upload in batches over 4 weeks rather than dumping everything at once — Google rewards steady activity.
- 7
No Google Posts in the last 30 days
Schedule one Update post weekly plus one Offer post monthly. Posting frequency is a direct freshness signal and your panel collapses without it.
- 8
Unanswered owner Q&A
Seed 8-12 owner questions yourself with keyword-rich, helpful answers. Then set up email alerts so new questions get answered within 24 hours.
- 9
Low review velocity
Implement a post-service text and email request with a 1-tap review link. Aim for at least one new review per week — bursts followed by silence look spammy.
- 10
Low star rating (under 4.0)
Stop chasing new reviews until you address the operational issue causing the lows. Then run a reactivation campaign to your happiest past customers with a direct review link.
- 11
Zero owner responses
Respond to every review — public, positive, negative — within 72 hours. Use the customer's first name, reference a specific detail, and thank them. This is the single highest-conversion habit in local SEO.
- 12
Generic business description
Rewrite the first 250 characters of your description with your top 3 service keywords, your neighborhood, and one unique differentiator. Those characters render in the knowledge panel and drive click-through.
- 13
Missing services list
Add every service you offer as a structured Services entry with a short description. Each one is an indexed surface that can trigger green justification snippets in the local pack.
- 14
No products in catalog
Even service businesses can add packages as products. The 'From the business' carousel takes premium real estate in the panel and almost nobody fills it out.
- 15
Stale cover photo
Refresh your cover photo seasonally with high-resolution, on-brand imagery. The cover photo is the first thing users see and a tired one bleeds click-through.
- 16
No video on the profile
Upload a 30-second walkthrough video showing your space, staff or product. Video uploads are heavily underused and can earn placement in Google's 'Videos' tab.
- 17
Messaging disabled
Enable messaging and commit to a response time under an hour during business hours. Mobile-first local results increasingly favor messaging-active profiles.
- 18
No booking link
Wire up a Reserve-with-Google partner (Booksy, Vagaro, Square Appointments, etc.) so users can book directly from the panel. Booking links outrank competitor profiles for transactional 'book' queries.
- 19
Missing attributes
Audit your attribute list quarterly. Identity attributes (women-led, veteran-led, LGBTQ+ friendly), accessibility attributes and amenity attributes all drive filtered local-pack inclusion.
- 20
No LocalBusiness schema on website
Add LocalBusiness JSON-LD to your homepage with name, address, phone, hours, geo coordinates and sameAs links pointing to your GBP. This reinforces the entity match and is a free 2-hour win.
Compared
Versus other free GBP audit tools.
| Tool | Signals checked | Free | No signup | Multi-location | Fix list | Re-audit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GBPilot Free Audit | 38 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Free, unlimited |
| GMB Everywhere | ~20 | Yes | No | No | No | Manual |
| PlePer Local SEO Tools | ~25 | Yes | Yes | No | No | Manual |
| BrightLocal Listing Health | 30+ | No | No | Yes | Yes | Scheduled, paid |
| Whitespark Local Citation Finder | Citations only | No | No | Yes | No | Scheduled, paid |
Who uses it
Built for everyone working on local search.
Marketing agencies
White-label the audit into your sales process. Run it on every prospect's GBP before the discovery call — nothing closes a local SEO retainer faster than a scored fix list with their name on it.
Multi-location brands
Bulk-audit every store, sort by score, and route the lowest performers to your regional marketing leads. Trends across locations expose process gaps faster than any spreadsheet review.
Freelance consultants
Use the audit as your packaged $0 lead magnet. Embed it in your site, capture the lead, and convert with a customized 90-day local SEO plan based on the score breakdown.
Glossary
Every local SEO term in plain English.
- NAP
- Name, Address, Phone — the three pieces of business data that must match exactly across your website, GBP, and every citation source for local ranking trust.
- GBP
- Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) — the free Google product that controls how your business appears on Maps, the local pack, and the knowledge panel.
- Local pack
- The boxed group of 3 map results that appears near the top of most local search queries. Roughly 44% of clicks on a local SERP land here.
- Knowledge panel
- The right-rail (desktop) or top-card (mobile) panel summarizing your business when someone searches your name directly.
- Geo-grid
- A grid-based view of your local pack ranking across a geographic area, used to spot proximity weaknesses competitors are exploiting.
- Local citation
- Any online mention of your business name, address and phone — structured (Yelp, BBB) or unstructured (news article, blog post).
- Justification
- Short green snippets in the local pack ('Provides organic coffee', 'Their website mentions wedding photography') that lift click-through by 20-40%.
- Service Area Business (SAB)
- A business that visits customers instead of operating from a storefront. SABs hide their address and define a service area in GBP.
- Primary category
- The single most important field in your GBP — it determines which queries your profile is eligible to rank for at all.
- Secondary categories
- Up to 9 additional category tags that expand the keyword surface your profile can rank for without affecting your primary positioning.
- Google Posts
- Short publisher-style updates (offers, events, news) that appear in your knowledge panel and act as a freshness signal.
- Attributes
- Structured tags ('Women-owned', 'Wheelchair accessible', 'Free Wi-Fi') that drive inclusion in filtered local-pack results.
- EEAT
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — Google's quality framework, increasingly applied to local results via owner verification and review patterns.
- Local SEO
- The practice of optimizing a business's web presence to rank for geographically modified queries on Google Search and Maps.
- Citation consistency
- The degree to which your NAP appears identically across every structured directory. A top-5 local ranking factor.
- Review velocity
- The rate at which a business accumulates new reviews over time. Steady weekly flow beats infrequent bursts.
- Review schema
- Structured data (AggregateRating, Review) on your website that surfaces star ratings in organic Google results.
- Reserve with Google
- An integration that lets users book your services directly from the knowledge panel via partners like Booksy, Square or Vagaro.
- Q&A
- The public questions-and-answers section of your GBP. Owner-seeded Q&A is one of the most underused ranking surfaces in local SEO.
- Insights
- GBP's native analytics — search queries, profile views, calls, direction requests. A starting point, not a complete SEO data set.
- Spam fighter
- An informal name for community members who report fake or keyword-stuffed GBPs to Google. Their reports can suspend competitor listings.
- Service radius
- An older GBP setting now replaced by polygon-based service areas for SAB businesses.
- Hours of operation
- Your standard, special and holiday hours. Incorrect hours are a top customer complaint driver and a soft ranking penalty.
- Photo geotag
- EXIF GPS coordinates embedded in a photo's metadata. Reinforces your location signal to Google when you upload to GBP.
- Branded search
- Searches that include your business name. Rising branded search volume is a powerful direct ranking multiplier.
- Suspension
- Google's enforcement action that hides your GBP from search. Caused by name keyword-stuffing, address misuse, or guideline violations.
- Reinstatement
- The formal process for restoring a suspended GBP, requiring proof of business legitimacy and address.
- Categories taxonomy
- Google's fixed list of ~4,000 business categories. You can only pick from this list — pick wisely.
- Local landing page
- A per-location page on your website with unique copy, NAP, embedded map and reviews. Required for multi-location SEO.
- Map pack CTR
- Click-through rate from the local pack to your profile. Driven by rank, photos, reviews, and justifications.
FAQ
Questions, answered.
Score your profile in sixty seconds.
No signup, no credit card. Run it on your business, your client's, or your competitor's — as often as you'd like.