GBP is the single highest-leverage local search asset, and it’s the one most often half-finished. We’ve walked into accounts with five-figure ad spends running parallel to a profile that hadn’t been updated since 2021.
The 17
- Primary category — does it match the highest-volume customer query, not the most accurate trade description?
- Secondary categories — three to five, all relevant; not stuffed.
- Business name — exact-match to legal entity, no city or keyword stuffing (Google penalizes this now).
- Service area — listed by neighborhood and city, not zip code list.
- Hours — accurate, including special hours; updated for holidays this quarter.
- Phone — local number, ringing the right person; matched on the website.
- Website link — pointing to the page that converts, not the homepage if that’s a different page.
- Booking link — present if applicable; goes to the booking flow, not a contact page.
- Description — uses the customer’s phrasing in the first 250 characters; mentions service area.
- Photos — at least 30, taken in the last 12 months, including team, exterior, interior, and at-work shots.
- Logo — high-res, square, navy background or transparent, not a screenshot of the storefront.
- Cover photo — landscape, taken at the building, recognizable from the street.
- Services — every service listed individually with its own description; pricing where comfortable.
- Products — listed if applicable; doesn’t hurt if not.
- Posts — at least one in the last 30 days; ideally weekly.
- Q&A — owner-answered, with the questions seeded by the team if needed.
- Reviews — 4.6+ average; responded to (yes, the bad ones too); citing specifics in responses.
“Most owners are at four of seventeen. The fix is six weeks of work and 80% of it doesn’t cost anything.”
What you’ll find
Common patterns across the 200+ profiles we’ve audited: wrong primary category, missing service area, stale description, fewer than 10 photos, no posts in 90 days, two-word review responses. None of these are technical problems. They’re attention problems.
How long a real fix takes
Six weeks, calendar time. Categories and description can change today. Photos take a Saturday. Service area is an hour. Posts are a per-week habit. Q&A is a 90-minute exercise. Reviews are an ongoing conversation with the team. The compounding effect on Map Pack rankings starts at week 3 and meaningfully compounds at week 8.