Local business owners
Run the audit on your own profile before spending a dollar on ads. The fix list points to the free changes worth making first.
Audit my profileFree tool · Live audit · No signup
Free Google Business Profile audit.
Enter a business name and city to scan its public Google Business Profile and website. Get a 0-100 optimization score, an AI-readiness sub-score, a prioritized fix list, and a side-by-side competitor comparison — free, no signup.
Enter a business name and city, then run the audit to see its score, fixes, and competitors.
What Google weighs
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What Google weighs
The signals behind every local pack ranking.
Grouped into 7 categories. The audit scores 14 of these from public data: profile basics, categories, hours, reviews, photos and your website. The rest are here so you know what else Google looks at.
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 decides which searches you can appear for. Practitioners rank it the top Maps factor in Whitespark's survey.
Secondary categories
Adding every relevant secondary category expands the keyword surface your profile is eligible to rank for.
Business description keywords
A clear description helps customers understand what you offer, 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
About a minute from search 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 read the public profile, its reviews and photos, and the business homepage.
- 03
Scored against clear rules
Each of the 14 checks gets a pass, a warning or a fail, and the results roll up into a 0-100 score with four sub-scores.
- 04
Get a prioritized fix list
Issues are ranked so you fix the high-impact things first.
City coverage
Audit a business in any city.
The audit works on any public Google Business Profile, anywhere in the world. Pick a city and run it on a business there.
- Audit a New York business
- Audit a Brooklyn business
- Audit a Los Angeles business
- Audit a San Francisco business
- Audit a San Diego business
- Audit a Chicago business
- Audit a Austin business
- Audit a Houston business
- Audit a Dallas business
- Audit a Phoenix business
- Audit a Seattle business
- Audit a Portland business
- Audit a Denver business
- Audit a Boston business
- Audit a Philadelphia business
- Audit a Atlanta business
- Audit a Miami business
- Audit a Orlando business
- Audit a Tampa business
- Audit a Nashville business
- Audit a Charlotte business
- Audit a Raleigh business
- Audit a Minneapolis business
- Audit a Detroit business
- Audit a Las Vegas business
- Audit a Toronto business
- Audit a Vancouver business
- Audit a London business
- Audit a Manchester business
- Audit a Dublin business
Common issues & fixes
Common problems that hold profiles back.
- 1
Duplicate Google Business Profile listings
Google's guidelines allow one profile per business location. Claim the duplicates, keep the strongest one, and ask Google support to remove the rest. Duplicates split your reviews across two listings.
- 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
List your main directory citations, compare them with the exact name, address and phone on your profile, and correct the ones that differ on Yelp, Apple Business Connect, Bing Places and the others.
- 4
Wrong primary category
Your primary category decides which searches you can show up for, and local SEO practitioners rank it the top Maps factor in Whitespark's survey. Pick the one that best describes your core business, then add only the extra categories you need.
- 5
Missing service area definition
List the areas you really serve. Google's guidelines say a service area shouldn't extend farther than about 2 hours of driving time from where you're based.
- 6
Low photo count for category
Add real photos of your storefront, interior, team and work, and keep adding new ones. Google says an exterior photo helps customers recognize you when they visit.
- 7
No recent Google Posts
Post updates, offers and events regularly. Google archives update posts after 6 months unless you set a date range, so an old post isn't doing much.
- 8
Low review velocity
Ask every customer for a review after each visit, with a direct review link by text or email. A steady pace looks more natural than a burst followed by silence.
- 9
Low star rating (under 4.0)
Fix the problem behind the low ratings first. Then keep asking every customer for a review, not only the happy ones: Google prohibits selectively asking for positive reviews.
- 10
Zero owner responses
Reply to reviews, positive and negative, soon after they arrive. Use the customer's name and mention something specific. Google says replies show you value feedback and help you stand out.
- 11
Generic business description
Rewrite the description to say what you do, where you do it and what makes you different, in plain words customers would use.
- 12
Missing services list
Add every service you offer as a Services entry with a short description, so customers can see exactly what you do.
- 13
No products in catalog
Even service businesses can list packages as products. They show on your profile and few competitors bother.
- 14
Stale cover photo
Refresh your cover photo with a sharp, current image. It's one of the first things people see on your profile.
- 15
No video on the profile
Upload a short walkthrough of your space, team or product. Google accepts videos up to 30 seconds and 75 MB.
- 16
No booking link
If you take appointments, add a booking link or connect a supported booking partner so people can book straight from your profile.
- 17
Missing attributes
Review your attributes now and then. Accessibility, amenity and identity attributes help customers who filter or scan for them.
- 18
No LocalBusiness schema on website
Add LocalBusiness JSON-LD to your homepage with name, address, phone, hours, coordinates and sameAs links to your profile, so search engines read the same details everywhere.
Who uses it
Built for everyone working on local search.
Marketing agencies
Run it on a prospect's profile before the discovery call. A scored fix list with their business name on it makes the case for you.
Audit a prospectMulti-location brands
Audit each location, compare the scores, and start with the weakest. One run per location, free.
Audit a locationFreelance consultants
Run it live on a call with a prospect and walk through the fixes together. There's no signup, so nothing to set up first.
Audit a prospect live
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 group of map results that appears near the top of many local searches, usually three businesses with a map.
- 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 snippets under a local result, like 'Their website mentions wedding photography', that show why Google matched the business to the search.
- 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 main category on your profile. It decides which searches you're eligible for, and practitioners rank it the top Maps factor in Whitespark's survey.
- Secondary categories
- Extra categories that cover other parts of your business. Google advises using as few categories as it takes to describe your core business.
- 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
- How closely your name, address and phone match across directories. Mismatches make it harder for search engines to trust which details are right.
- Review velocity
- The pace at which a business gets new reviews. A steady flow looks more natural than occasional 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 questions-and-answers section Google used to show on profiles. It was retired in November 2025 and replaced by an AI 'Ask' button on Maps.
- 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
- GPS coordinates saved in a photo's EXIF data. Local SEO tests found geotagging doesn't help rankings, and Google strips this data from uploaded photos.
- 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 business categories, numbering in the thousands. You can only choose from this list.
- 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.
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