Your Google Business Profile is the first thing most local customers see. It is what shows up in Google Maps, in the map pack, and in every “near me” search. A lot of people call straight from it and never visit your website.
That means a profile that is wrong, thin, or out of date sends calls to the competitor listed under you. A local SEO audit of your profile finds those problems before they cost you.
This is the checklist we work through when we audit a Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). You can run it yourself in about an hour. We updated it in September 2026, and the biggest change is that Google retired the Q&A section. That step has been replaced with one that matters more.
| What to audit | You pass if |
|---|---|
| 1. Ownership and verification | You are the primary owner, the profile is verified, and nobody who left still has access |
| 2. Business name | It matches your real world name with no added keywords or cities |
| 3. Address and service area | The right address type is set and your service areas are accurate |
| 4. Name, address, and phone everywhere | Your website and the major directories match the profile exactly |
| 5. Categories | Your primary category is your main money service |
| 6. Hours | Regular and holiday hours are correct |
| 7. Services, products, and attributes | Every real service is listed and described |
| 8. Description | It tells a customer why to call you, in plain language |
| 9. Photos and video | Recent, real photos of your team and your work |
| 10. Reviews | Steady new reviews and a response on every one |
| 11. Posts | Something new in the last 30 days |
| 12. Website link and tracking | The link goes to the right page and is tagged so you can measure it |
| 13. What Google’s AI says about you | Ask Maps answers common customer questions correctly |
| 14. Performance | You check calls, direction requests, and clicks every month |
Start here, because nothing else matters if you do not control the profile. Open your profile settings and look at People and access. You should be listed as the primary owner. Remove former employees and past agencies. If a marketing company set up your profile under their own account, get ownership transferred now, while the relationship is good.
Also search Google Maps for your business name and your phone number. If a second listing shows up, you have a duplicate splitting your reviews and confusing Google. Request its removal through Google Business Profile support.
Your name on Google should match your sign, your website, and your paperwork. Adding keywords or cities, like turning “Smith Plumbing” into “Smith Plumbing Fort Worth Water Heater Repair,” does help rankings for a while. It is also against Google’s rules and one of the most common reasons profiles get suspended. If a competitor is doing it to outrank you, here is how to report a keyword stuffed profile.
If customers come to you, show your address. If you go to them, hide it and set service areas. Getting this wrong is another common suspension trigger, and we cover the details in service area vs physical address.
One thing owners get wrong: adding a city to your service area does not make you rank there. Google still ranks a service area business around its verified address, even when that address is hidden. Reaching farther takes reviews, content, and links tied to those cities.
Your name, address, and phone number should match exactly on your website, your profile, and the major directories. Old phone numbers and old addresses are the usual culprits, especially after a move.
Citations carry less weight in map rankings than they did a few years ago. But AI search tools also read those listings when they decide which businesses to recommend, so accuracy matters more now, not less. Use our NAP consistency checklist and read how citations affect your rankings.
Your primary category is the most influential field on your profile. It should be the service that makes you the most money, not the broadest label. A company that mostly does AC repair should not lead with “Contractor.”
Then add secondary categories for the other services you really offer. To check yourself, look at the top three competitors in the map results for your main search and see which categories they use.
Google has confirmed that whether you are open at the time of the search affects local rankings. So wrong hours cost you twice. You rank lower while you are marked closed, and you annoy the customers who show up to a locked door.
Check your regular hours, then set special hours for every holiday. Do not list 24 hours unless someone really answers the phone at 3 a.m.
List every service you really offer. Use Google’s suggested services where they fit, then add your own with a short description of what is included. This is one of the main places Google and its AI features learn what you do.
Then go through the attributes. Online estimates, onsite services, payment types, veteran owned, women owned. They take two minutes, and they show up as filters and highlights in search.
You get 750 characters, and the first couple of sentences do most of the work. Stuffing keywords in here does not move rankings, so write it for the person deciding whether to call. Say what you do, where you do it, and why someone should pick you. No fluff and no links.
Customers want to see who is coming to their house or who they will meet at the office. Upload real photos of your team, your trucks, your location, and your finished work. Skip the stock photos. Add new ones every month so the profile never looks abandoned, and add a short video if you have one.
Reviews help you rank and help you get chosen. Look at four numbers: your total count, your average rating, how many reviews you got in the last 90 days, and how many you have responded to. Compare the first three against the top competitors in your map results.
Ask every customer, every time, and respond to every review, good or bad. Do not pay for reviews, and do not ask only the customers you know are happy. Google prohibits both, and the FTC now fines businesses for fake reviews. If you need help, that is what reputation management is for.
Posts show customers that someone is home. Check the date of your last one. If it is more than a month old, start again with offers, recent jobs, and seasonal reminders. Here is what to publish and how often.
Click the website button on your profile. It should go to the most relevant page. For a business with more than one location, that means the page for that location and not the homepage. Add your appointment or booking link and your social profiles while you are there.
Then tag the link so you can see profile traffic in Analytics. Add this to the end of the URL: ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp
This step replaces the old Q&A audit. Google retired the Q&A section at the end of 2025 and replaced it with Ask Maps, an AI feature that answers customer questions about your business for you. It builds those answers from your profile, your reviews, your photos, and your website.
You can no longer write the answers yourself, so audit the output. Open your profile in Google Maps and ask the five questions your customers ask most. Do you offer emergency service? Do you serve my city? Are you open Saturdays? If an answer is wrong or vague, fix the source: your services list, your hours, your attributes, and an FAQ on your website written in plain language. This is a big part of what AI optimization means for a local business.
Google renamed Insights to Performance. Open it and look at searches, profile views, calls, direction requests, and website clicks. Compare the last three months to the same three months a year ago so seasonality does not fool you. Write the numbers down. They are your baseline for the next audit.
Your profile is only part of local SEO. Google ranks local results on relevance, distance, and prominence, and prominence comes from your website, your links, and your reputation across the web. A full local SEO audit also looks at your service and location pages, your technical health, your backlinks, and what your competitors are doing better. That is what our SEO audit covers.
Twice a year for most small businesses. Quarterly if you are in a competitive field like dental, legal, or home services. And right away any time you move, rebrand, change your phone number, or change your hours.
Google also changes the product without much warning, as the Q&A removal showed. A checklist from two years ago will miss things.
Google retired it. The Q&A section was phased out starting in late 2025 and replaced by Ask Maps, which uses AI to answer customer questions from your profile, reviews, photos, and website. You cannot write those answers directly anymore, so the accuracy of your profile and your website matters more.
Yes. Everything on this checklist can be checked by an owner in about an hour. The harder part is fixing what you find, especially duplicates, suspensions, and citation cleanup.
For rankings, your primary category and your reviews. For getting the call, your photos, your reviews, and correct hours. Reviews are on both lists for a reason.
An audit without action is just a list. If you would rather have someone find the problems and fix them, that is what we do for service businesses across DFW. Nickel SEO will audit your profile, show you where you are losing calls, and give you a clear plan to fix it.
Start with a local SEO audit or contact us and talk to a real person.
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