How to Audit a Google Business Profile: A 45-Minute Process (With Free Tools)

You have a Google Business Profile that is verified, has photos and reviews, and still does not bring in the calls it should. Or you have been handed a client’s profile and need to know, in under an hour, what is wrong and what to fix first. This is the audit we run in both situations: about 45 minutes per location, only free tools, and at the end a scored sheet and a prioritized action plan you can hand to an owner or client.

Why audit a profile that looks fine

Most profiles fail quietly. Nothing on the dashboard says “your primary category is costing you the local pack” or “a second listing under your old trading name is splitting your reviews”. The problems we find most often in a first audit are ones nobody had noticed:

• A primary category chosen years ago for a minor service, or a generic one (“Contractor”) where ranking competitors use the specific one.
• A duplicate listing: an old address, a previous owner’s profile, or one an agency created without searching first.
• Hours Google changed: user-suggested edits and “temporarily closed” flags can go live without anyone approving them.
• Features restricted without a clear notice: posts rejected, photos removed, a description edit that never went live, messaging switched off.
• A website field pointing at a dead page or a domain the business stopped using.

Each caps what every other optimization can achieve, which is why the audit comes before a month of writing posts. Google’s guidelines for representing your business are the rulebook for the first block.

Preparation: ten minutes before the clock starts

Open four tabs: the profile dashboard (search the business name in Google while signed in to the owning account, or open business.google.com), Google Maps in an incognito window, the business website, and a blank spreadsheet for the scoring sheet.

Collect the reference NAP from the website first: the exact business name, address and phone as they appear in the footer or contact page. Everything else is compared against this; if the website contradicts itself, record that as a finding instead of picking a version.

Then check for duplicates. In the incognito Maps tab, search the phone number, the street address, then the business name and any previous names; every result that is this business, at any address, goes on the sheet. Scroll past the first result; duplicates often sit at position five with two reviews. If the business serves customers at their location, note whether an address is displayed at all; under Google’s service-area business rules it usually should not be.

First pass: the free Optimizer score

Before the manual blocks, run the Google Business Profile Optimizer on the listing. Pick the business from the suggestions to get a score out of 100 and a grade, built from six weighted checks on the public profile:

Check	Passes when	Weight
Website	a website link is present	15
Opening hours	regular hours are set	15
Phone number	a phone number is shown	10
Photos	at least 5 photos	20
Reviews	at least 10 reviews	25
Category	a primary category is set	15

Grades run A from 90, B+ from 80, B from 70, C from 60 and “Needs work” below that.

The tool sees only what Google exposes publicly through the Places API: no Performance data, Q&A, services list, pending edits or suspension state, and photo and review counts can lag your dashboard. A profile can score an A and still lose on category and reviews. The score’s job is to catch embarrassing gaps in two minutes and give you a number to repeat after the fixes. Write it and the failed checks at the top of your sheet; the AI output (description, post ideas, review reply templates) belongs to the fix stage, not the audit.

The audit, block by block

Score each block from 0 to 5 as you go: 5 means nothing to fix, 0 means broken or missing. The scale is deliberately coarse; its job is to rank the blocks against each other for the action plan, not to produce a precise number.

Block	Focus	Score (0–5)	Findings
1. Accuracy and compliance	NAP, pin, hours, status, duplicates
2. Categories and services	Primary, secondaries, services, attributes
3. Content and assets	Description, photos, posts, Q&A
4. Reviews and engagement	Count and rating against competitors, replies, messaging
5. Rankings and visibility	Rank grid, Performance trend, search terms
6. Website alignment	NAP match, landing page, schema

Block 1: Accuracy and compliance (about 8 minutes)

Compare name, address and phone with the website reference. The name must be the real-world name with no keywords, cities or slogans; a stuffed name is the likeliest route to a suspension. Check that the pin sits on the entrance customers use, confirm regular hours line by line, check special hours for the coming holidays, look for “temporarily closed” flags, and record any duplicate found during preparation.

Block 2: Categories and services (about 7 minutes)

Is the primary category the most specific true description of the core business, and does each secondary describe something the business actually sells? Then open the services list: empty or default-only services are a finding, as is a service no longer offered. Attributes belong here too; false ones are a compliance problem, missing ones cost filter visibility. Our categories guide covers choosing between close options; the Category Optimizer step below shows what ranking competitors chose.

Block 3: Content and assets (about 6 minutes)

Read the description as a customer: does it say what, where, for whom and what is different, or is it a paragraph of keywords? Count photos by type, confirm the cover photo and logo belong to the business, and check the photo guidelines if anything looks filtered or stock. Note the date of the latest post and whether any were rejected, then open Q&A: unanswered questions and wrong answers from strangers are findings.

Block 4: Reviews and engagement (about 6 minutes)

Write down review count and rating for the business and for the three competitors above it for the main keyword; the gap matters more than the absolute number. Note the newest review’s date, the share with an owner reply, and how negative reviews were handled. Check whether messaging is on and answered. Our reviews guide covers the fix side.

Block 5: Rankings and visibility (about 8 minutes)

This block decides whether the rest matters. Run the rank grid for two or three keywords (next section), then open Performance for the six-month trend in views, calls and direction requests and the search terms that trigger the profile. A falling trend on a complete profile points at competitors or category; no service terms in the list points at relevance. Our Performance guide explains the report.

Block 6: Website alignment (about 5 minutes)

Open the page the website field points to. It should load quickly on a phone, show the same NAP as the profile, be about this location, and carry LocalBusiness schema and a click-to-call number. Multi-location businesses should link each profile to its own location page. Our guide to NAP consistency covers the mismatches.

Running the Local Rank Checker and reading the grid

Rankings on Google Maps change from street to street, so one search from the office tells you almost nothing. The free Local Rank Checker runs your keyword from every point of a 3×3 or 5×5 grid around the business, with points 0.5, 1 or 2 km apart, and draws a heat map: green cells are top-3 positions, amber 4–10, orange 11–20, grey means not found in the top 20.

Run it for the primary service plus city, the generic head term (“plumber”), and one service the business wants to grow, on a 5×5 grid with 1 km spacing for a city business or 2 km for one covering suburbs. Read three things: how far from the pin the green extends, whether the drop-off is even or lopsided toward a competitor’s location, and which names fill the grey cells. Save a screenshot of each grid as the baseline for every later re-check. For a deeper read, see how to check your Google Maps ranking.

Running the Category Optimizer

Run the GBP Category Optimizer with the same keywords. Enter the business, the city and two to ten keywords; it collects the categories of the businesses Google ranks for each, compares them with the profile’s, and scores every missing category as add, consider or avoid from competitor frequency, keyword match, and whether the services list and reviews suggest the business offers it.

Two cautions. Google exposes place “types” through its API, which map closely but not perfectly to dashboard categories, so confirm the exact name in the category picker. And a category competitors use is only an opportunity if the business genuinely sells that service. Record the recommended changes under block 2.

Duplicate and spam listings: yours and your competitors’

A duplicate of your own business is handled from the inside. If you can claim it, request its removal as a duplicate from the dashboard; a genuinely old location is more honestly marked permanently closed. Without access, use “Suggest an edit” on the Maps listing, flag it as a duplicate of the correct one, and wait. Reviews on a duplicate are usually lost when it goes, so warn the client before you file.

Competitor spam is a different problem: keyword-stuffed names, listings at virtual offices or residential addresses, several profiles for one business. “Suggest an edit” works for a single wrong name or a closed business. For a pattern of violations, Google provides the Business Redressal Complaint Form in its Business Profile Help Center: you describe the violation, give the listing’s Maps URL and attach evidence, such as a photo of the real signage beside the listing name. Be factual, cite the guideline, and expect weeks rather than days. A competitor that simply outranks you is not spam, and false reports waste the credibility you need for real ones.

Turning findings into a prioritized action plan

Sort every finding by impact on rankings or conversions against effort to fix. In our experience the order is stable enough to template:

Finding	Impact	Effort
Duplicate listing, stuffed name, suspension risk	High	Low to medium
Primary category wrong or generic	High	Low
Hours wrong, holidays unconfirmed	High for conversions	Low
Review gap against competitors, no reply routine	High	Ongoing
Services empty, secondaries missing	Medium	Low
Description, photos, posts	Medium	Medium
Landing page, schema, site speed	Medium	Medium to high

Pick the top five for the first month. Changing everything at once feels productive, but it makes the grid re-check impossible to interpret. Google’s explanation of relevance, distance and prominence is a sanity check on the order: relevance fixes (category, services) and prominence fixes (reviews, website) belong above cosmetic ones; our ranking factors guide covers the evidence behind each.

Reporting the audit to a client

An owner does not want forty checkboxes; they want one page. Ours contains the Optimizer score and grade with the failed checks; the three biggest problems in plain language, each with its evidence (a grid, the duplicate, a category comparison); the top five actions with who does them and by when; what we expect to change within about three months, stated as observations (“green cells extend past the city center”, “service terms appear in the Searches list”) rather than promised numbers; and what we need from the client, usually owner access, photos and a decision on categories. Attach the sheet and grids as an appendix, and date everything so the follow-up has a baseline.

Worked example: a Glasgow plumber who ranks “fine”

A two-van plumbing and heating company in Partick, Glasgow, call it Kelvin Flow Plumbing, was convinced its profile was fine: search “plumber” from the office and it came first. Calls were flat and came from a few streets.

Preparation found the first problem: a phone-number search on Maps returned a second listing under the founder’s old trading name at his home address, with a handful of reviews. The Optimizer scored the main profile a B, failing only photos.

Blocks 1 to 4 scored 3, 2, 2 and 3. The primary category “Plumber” was correct, but there were no secondaries although half the invoices were boiler work, the services list was empty, and reviews trailed all three competitors that dominated the Southside.

Block 5 explained the “fine”. A 5×5 grid at 1 km spacing for “plumber glasgow” showed one green cell at the office, amber immediately around it, and grey everywhere south of the river. The competitors filling the grey cells all carried heating categories and far more reviews. The Category Optimizer flagged “Heating contractor” as add and “Boiler supplier” as consider.

The plan: remove the duplicate (access recovered through the founder’s old account), add “Heating contractor” as a secondary and fill twelve services, start a review routine with a QR card on every invoice, add fifteen photos of real jobs, and re-check the grid at six and twelve weeks. Forty-five minutes, and a plan whose first two items cost nothing.

Common mistakes

• Auditing from your own phone, signed in, at the office. Use an incognito window and a grid.
• Treating the Optimizer score as a ranking prediction. It measures six public fields, nothing more.
• Adding every category competitors have. Categories for services you do not sell dilute relevance and attract the wrong calls.
• Fixing everything at once. Nothing can be attributed, so nothing is learned.
• Skipping the duplicate search because “we only ever had one listing”. Previous owners and agencies had others.
• Checking only the branded keyword. Everyone ranks for their own name.
• No baseline screenshot before changes. The follow-up audit becomes an argument about memory.

Do this now: the 45-minute audit

Before the clock: collect the NAP from the website, then search the phone, address and old names on Maps in an incognito window.

1. Run the Google Business Profile Optimizer and record the score and failed checks (3 minutes).
2. Score blocks 1 to 4 on the sheet, findings written as sentences (27 minutes).
3. Run the Local Rank Checker for two or three keywords and save every grid (8 minutes).
4. Run the Category Optimizer with the same keywords; add its recommendations to block 2 (2 minutes).
5. Check the landing page, NAP match and schema for block 6 (5 minutes).
6. Build the impact-versus-effort table, pick five actions, date the sheet.
7. Put the six-week grid re-check in the calendar.

What to do next

Work the fixes with our pillar guide on how to optimize a Google Business Profile, then move the recurring items into the Google Business Profile checklist so the next audit finds less.