Free tool
Is your Google Business Profile complete?
Sixteen points, ticked in two minutes. We tell you what state your listing is in and, above all, where to start: the list comes out ordered by what actually moves position on the map, not alphabetically. No sign-up and no email.
Why reviews weigh more than everything else
It is the finding that surprised us most measuring real listings, and it runs against what almost everyone believes. On one commercial strip we compared a five-star listing with a hundred-odd reviews against the business ranking first on that avenue, with more than six hundred and a worse score. Six hundred wins. Same category, similar distance, and the one with the better rating sat below.
That is why review volume and the system for asking add up to twenty-three points here between them, more than any other block. And it is why the first thing we look at on a diagnosis call is not your website: it is how many reviews you have compared to whoever ranks first.
What Google reads, and in what order
| What | Weight here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | 12 | It is the first thing read to decide which searches you can appear in. Wrong here and the rest does not matter. |
| Review volume | 10 | Between two listings in the same category, quantity decides before the score does. |
| Hours and services | 8 + 8 | One wrong holiday is a lost call. Every service loaded is another search. |
| Answering reviews | 7 | Whoever reads them is judging how you react when something goes wrong. |
| Recent photos | 7 | A listing with movement gets shown more, and the storefront is how people recognise you on arrival. |
| Posts | 3 | Little weight on its own. A signal of a living listing. |
The three failures we see most
An empty services list. It is free to fill, every line is another search you can appear in, and in most listings we audit there is not a single one.
Services the business does not provide. We found a clinic advertising surgery without an operating room, inherited from a previous agency that filled the field without asking. It brings the wrong call and the bad review.
Holiday hours left blank. Someone searches on a public holiday, sees closed, and calls elsewhere. It is the cheapest failure of all to fix and the one fewest people check.
What this list does not do
It does not look at your listing for you: you tick the boxes, so the result is worth exactly what your honesty ticking them is worth. And it does not replace opening the dashboard: some things are only visible in there, like which secondary categories you actually have or which searches find you.
It also does not fix what the listing does not control. If your problem is that nobody answers the phone, a perfect listing only loses more calls.
What to do with the result
If you ended up with three or four pending, start with the first on the list and do it this week: they are ordered by impact. If the pending one is reviews, that is a system rather than an afternoon. And if you want us to look at it with you, with your listing open, that is part of profile management.