A Google Business Profile audit is a structured review of your listing that shows what is accurate, what is missing and what could be costing you calls, visits and orders. You can run one yourself in about 90 minutes: confirm you own and have verified the profile, check every core field against reality, review photos, reviews and posts, compare yourself with the businesses outranking you, then rank the fixes by urgency. This guide gives you the checklist, the order to work in and the mistakes that most often turn up in local audits.
TL;DR
- Audit in this order: ownership and verification, core information, categories and services, photos, reviews, posts, citations, policy risk, competitors, then performance data.
- Mark every check Pass, Fix, Unknown or N/A, and fix anything involving wrong information, policy risk or blocked customers before cosmetic improvements.
- Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence. You can't pay for a better organic local ranking, so accuracy and reviews do the work.
- Repeat a quick version monthly and a full audit at least twice a year, or after any change of hours, address or services.
- If you manage several locations, or the audit shows more problems than you have time for, hand the fixes to a team that reports in plain language and leaves you in control of the account.
Table of Contents
- What a Google Business Profile audit actually covers
- Before you start: set up the audit properly
- Step 1: Confirm ownership and verification
- Step 2: Check your core information against reality
- Step 3: Review categories, services and products
- Step 4: Audit photos and videos
- Step 5: Audit reviews and how you respond
- Step 6: Check posts, offers and Q&A
- Step 7: Audit citations and name, address, phone consistency
- Step 8: Run a policy-risk check
- Step 9: Benchmark against the businesses outranking you
- Step 10: Read your Performance data and decide what to fix first
- Our perspective: audits should end in decisions, not grades
- Where the profile audit sits in a full local SEO checklist
- How often to audit
- When to bring in help
- FAQ
- Sources
What a Google Business Profile audit actually covers
Most free audit tools score a handful of fields and give you a grade. That is a useful snapshot, but a grade doesn't tell you why a competitor two blocks away shows up above you in the map pack. A real audit answers four questions:
- Do you control the profile, and is it verified?
- Is everything on it true today, and consistent with the rest of the web?
- Does it give Google and customers enough to choose you?
- Is it producing actions (calls, direction requests, website clicks, orders), and if not, where is the leak?
Google itself says that complete and accurate information, including address, hours, category and attributes, makes a profile more likely to appear for relevant local searches. The audit is how you prove that to yourself, field by field.
It also fits inside a wider local SEO check. Your profile is one part of the picture, alongside your website, your citations and your reputation. We cover that bigger frame later in this article.
Before you start: set up the audit properly
A few minutes of preparation saves hours.
Get access. You need to be an owner or manager of the profile. If you don't know who holds ownership (a former employee, an old agency, a web developer), find out now. An audit without account access can only look at the public face of the profile, so anything you can't see (Performance data, verification status, user list) should be marked Unknown, not Pass. Unknown is an evidence gap, not proof of a defect.
Open a scoring sheet. A simple spreadsheet works: one row per check, one column for the status, one for the evidence, one for the fix. Use four statuses:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Pass | Checked and correct |
| Fix | Checked and wrong, incomplete or risky |
| Unknown | Couldn't check (no access, no data yet) |
| N/A | Doesn't apply to your business |
Collect your source of truth. Have your legal business name as you trade, street address or service area, phone number, website URL, current hours (including holidays) and your real service or menu list in front of you. Every field gets compared against this.
Search as a customer would. Open a private browser window and search your main service plus your area, for example "dentist Burnaby" or "plumber North Vancouver", on your phone. Note where you appear, what the listing shows and who sits above you. Save screenshots. They become your baseline.
Step 1: Confirm ownership and verification
Check that the profile is verified, not merely claimed. A claimed profile with an unfinished verification can look fine in your head and still be limited in what it can do. Google also states that verification does not guarantee your business will appear in Search or Maps, so treat it as the entry ticket, not the prize.
While you're in the account:
- List every user and their role. Remove anyone who no longer works with you.
- Make sure at least two trusted people hold owner access, one of them you.
- Check for duplicate profiles for the same location. Google's guidelines call for one profile per business, so duplicates need to be merged or removed.
- Note whether the profile shows any restriction or suspension notice.
Multi-location owners sometimes ask about bulk verification. Google's guidance says bulk verification generally requires at least 10 eligible profiles from the same business, excludes service-area businesses and requires the account to include all the businesses you manage. If you have fewer locations, you'll verify them individually.
If a profile has been restricted or suspended, Google lists business registration, a business licence, tax certificates and utility bills as examples of evidence for an appeal. Gather those documents before you file, and don't create a new profile to get around the problem.
Step 2: Check your core information against reality
This is where most profiles quietly fail. Check each field:
- Business name. Google's guidelines say to use your real-world name, the one customers see on your signage and invoices. Extra keywords or a neighbourhood stuffed into the name are a classic route to suspension.
- Address or service area. Storefronts show an address. Businesses that travel to customers set a service area instead. Make sure a home address isn't visible if you don't serve customers there.
- Phone number. Is the primary number answered, and does it match your website?
- Website URL. Click it. Google's business-link policy requires links to be crawlable, unrestricted and functional, returning a successful response rather than errors such as 404, 403 or 500. Also check that it lands on the best page: a location page for a multi-location brand, not a generic home page.
- Hours. Regular hours, special hours for statutory holidays (Canada Day, Victoria Day, BC Day, Christmas) and any temporary closures. Wrong hours are the single most common complaint reviewers raise, and one of the easiest to fix.
- Attributes. Wheelchair access, online appointments, outdoor seating, Wi-Fi, languages spoken. Tick only what is true.
Mark any field that is wrong as Fix and any field that is wrong in a way that sends customers to a closed door or a dead number as urgent.
Step 3: Review categories, services and products
Your primary category is among the strongest signals you control. Pick the one that describes your core business, not the broadest one. Google's guidelines say to choose the fewest categories needed to describe what you do, so a long list of loosely related categories counts against you in an audit.
Then check:
- Does the primary category match what customers search for? A restaurant that is mostly a ramen shop should be a ramen restaurant, not just "Restaurant".
- Are the secondary categories genuinely distinct services you offer?
- Is the services list filled in, with plain descriptions and, where it fits, prices?
- For restaurants and retailers, is the menu or product catalog current?
Compare your categories with the top three businesses in your search. If they all use a category you don't, ask whether it really fits you before copying anything. Copying categories you can't back up creates a different problem.
Step 4: Audit photos and videos
Photos are the first thing a customer sees, and they are an easy place to find quick wins.
Look for:
- A logo and cover photo that display properly.
- Recent exterior, interior and team photos, so a customer recognizes the place on arrival.
- Product, dish or work-in-progress shots that match what you sell today.
- Customer-uploaded photos that misrepresent you. You can't delete them, but you can report ones that break Google's rules.
- Anything outdated: old signage, a previous owner's fit-out, a menu you no longer serve.
A good rule is to add a handful of fresh photos each month. It signals that the business is active and gives your Performance data something to reflect. Mark the check Pass if you have current, accurate images in each category, and Fix if the newest photo is more than a year old.
Step 5: Audit reviews and how you respond
Google says that prominence is based partly on information such as how many reviews a business has, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking. Your review audit should look at four things:
- Volume and recency. How many reviews in the last 90 days compared with the competitors above you?
- Rating. Your average, and the share of 1 to 3 star reviews.
- Response rate. Have you replied to recent reviews, positive and negative, in a human voice?
- Themes. Read the last 20 reviews and note repeated praise or complaints. If three people mention slow phone answering, that is an operations fix, not a marketing one.
Don't buy reviews or offer incentives. If your count is low, build a steady, honest request process. Our guide to getting more Google reviews without breaking the rules walks through it.
Step 6: Check posts, offers and Q&A
Posts aren't a magic ranking lever, but an empty posts section tells a customer the profile is unattended. Check whether you have posted in the last 30 days, whether any offer or event listed has already ended and whether the call-to-action buttons (book, order, call) point to working pages.
Q&A has changed over the past couple of years, and many owners don't realize it. If your audit template still has a Q&A line, read what happened with it in our explainer on Google Business Profile Q&A and update the check.
Step 7: Audit citations and name, address, phone consistency
Citations are mentions of your business name, address and phone number on other sites: directories, chambers of commerce, industry listings and social profiles. Inconsistencies confuse both customers and search engines.
A manual check:
- Search your phone number in quotes, then your address in quotes.
- List the first 15 to 20 results that mention you.
- Flag each with an old address, old number, a former business name or a duplicate listing.
- Fix the highest-traffic ones first, and claim anything unclaimed.
Google says prominence also depends on how many websites link to a business, so this is also the moment to note whether local sites, suppliers and community organizations link to you.
Step 8: Run a policy-risk check
This is the step that generic checklists often skip, and it protects everything else. Scan your profile against Google's guidelines for anything that could trigger a suspension or edit:
- A name with added keywords or a tagline
- A virtual office or mailbox listed as a storefront
- A service-area business showing an address it doesn't serve from
- Multiple profiles for one location
- Categories that don't match the business
- Links to pages that error out or aren't reachable
Treat policy risk as urgent. A profile that gets suspended stops generating customers overnight, and recovering it takes paperwork and time.
If you work with an outside agency or freelancer, Google's guidance for businesses using third parties is worth knowing: keep transparency over your profile, review performance monthly and reject any guarantee of placement or any claim that the provider works for Google. Any good provider will be comfortable with those terms.
Step 9: Benchmark against the businesses outranking you
Your listing doesn't compete in a vacuum. It competes with the three to five profiles that show up when a customer searches near you. Compare:
- Review count, rating and recency
- Primary and secondary categories
- Photo volume and freshness
- Website quality and whether the listing points to a relevant page
- Distance to the searcher
One useful method is geo-grid scanning. It checks your ranking from many points around your location and shows where competitors outrank you. Search Engine Land recommends geo-grid scans for this, alongside comparing recent review activity. It matters because local results change with the searcher's position. A restaurant in Burnaby may lead at its front door and vanish three kilometres away.
Keep expectations realistic. Google says local ranking comes down to relevance, distance and prominence, and that businesses cannot request or pay for a better organic local ranking. You can't change distance, so the audit focuses on the two things you can: relevance (categories, services, content) and prominence (reviews, links, mentions). For restaurants specifically, our guide on ranking higher on Google Maps goes deeper.
Step 10: Read your Performance data and decide what to fix first
Performance data in the profile shows how customers found you and what they did next: calls, direction requests, website clicks, bookings and the search terms that surfaced you. Compare the last three months with the same period a year earlier if you can.
Then look for leaks:
- Plenty of views but few actions usually means weak photos, poor reviews or a confusing listing.
- Many website clicks but no enquiries usually means the landing page is the problem.
- Calls at times you're closed point to wrong hours or a missing after-hours option.
- Few views at all suggests a category or relevance problem, or a visibility issue. If your listing isn't appearing, these nine reasons and fixes are the place to begin.
How to prioritize the fixes
Sort your Fix rows into three bands:
- Urgent: wrong phone, address or hours; policy risks; broken website links; anything that blocks a customer from reaching you.
- Important: categories, services, review response, missing photos, inconsistent citations.
- Improvement: posts, extra attributes, deeper competitor work.
Work through band one this week, band two within the month and band three as an ongoing routine.
Our perspective: audits should end in decisions, not grades
We see the same pattern again and again with local businesses in Metro Vancouver. The profile was set up years ago, nobody owns it internally, and a few small errors compound: a category that doesn't match the main service, hours that were never updated, reviews that sit unanswered. None of it is complicated. It just never gets anyone's attention.
That is why we don't think a score is the point of an audit. A score of 72 doesn't tell an owner what to do on Monday. A short, ranked list does, which is why we use the Pass, Fix, Unknown and N/A approach above and keep Unknown honest. If we can't see something, we say so.
We also believe the owner should always keep control of the profile. You should hold ownership, see the reporting and understand it without a glossary. Anyone who promises a guaranteed ranking, or says they work for Google, is a red flag, and Google's own guidance says the same.
Finally, the profile doesn't work alone. A strong listing sending people to a slow website or an ordering page that doesn't work wastes the effort. That's why we like one accountable team across the profile, the website and the ads, rather than three vendors each looking at their own piece.
— Pooja
Where the profile audit sits in a full local SEO checklist
People searching for a local SEO audit checklist or a small business digital marketing audit usually want the profile plus everything around it. Once your profile passes, extend the review in this order:
| Area | What to check |
|---|---|
| Website | Loads fast on mobile, clear service pages per location, phone and address in text, working contact forms |
| On-page local signals | Page titles and headings with service and city, locally relevant content, schema markup where appropriate |
| Citations and links | Consistent listings, quality local links |
| Reputation | Review volume, rating, response habits across Google and other platforms |
| Paid and social | Ad tracking, landing pages, social profiles current and consistent |
| Ordering and booking | For restaurants and service businesses, online ordering or booking that works end to end |
| Compliance | Email and text marketing practices, honest advertising claims |
That last row gets overlooked in Canada. Under the Canadian anti-spam legislation, commercial electronic messages generally need consent, and false or misleading online representations and address harvesting are prohibited. The same guidance names the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as the agencies responsible for different provisions. If your review requests, promotions or newsletters go out by email or text, confirm you have consent records. Ask a lawyer about anything specific to your situation.
How often to audit
Audits are not a one-off exercise. A rhythm that works for most small businesses:
- Monthly (15 minutes): check hours, new reviews and replies, fresh photos, Performance trends and any suggested edits. Google advises businesses working with a third party to review performance monthly, and the same habit suits owners who manage their own profile.
- Twice a year (90 minutes): run the full ten steps.
- After any change: new location, move, rebrand, new service line, new phone system or website relaunch.
When to bring in help
The checklist above is genuinely doable in-house. It gets harder when you manage several locations, when a profile has been suspended, when the audit shows problems across the website and ordering as well, or when you simply don't have the hours to keep up.
Our Google Business Profile management covers the audit, the fixes, ongoing updates and plain-language reporting, with you keeping ownership of the account. If the audit points to wider visibility issues, our local SEO services extend the same approach to your website and citations, and you can see how we work on our process page. We serve businesses across Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, the North Shore and the rest of Metro Vancouver. Prices depend on scope, so get in touch through our site and we'll scope it with you.
For more practical local marketing reading, browse the Digital Growth Labs blog.
FAQ
How do I audit my Google Business Profile?
Confirm you hold ownership and that the profile is verified. Then check each field against reality, review categories, photos, reviews, posts and citations, compare yourself with the businesses outranking you and read your Performance data. Record every check as Pass, Fix, Unknown or N/A, and fix urgent items first.
Does Google audit Google Business Profiles?
Google doesn't run an audit for you, but it does enforce its guidelines, and profiles that break them can be edited, restricted or suspended. Verification is also not a guarantee of appearing in Search or Maps. Auditing your own profile regularly is how you catch problems before Google does.
How do I check if my Google Business Profile is verified?
Sign in with the account that manages the profile and open it in Google Search or Maps. If it's verified, you can edit it and see its Performance data. If it still prompts you to verify, the process isn't finished. Google shows the verification options available for your business.
Can people see my Google Business Profile?
Yes, once it's published, anyone searching for your business or service can see it in Search and Maps. Customers see what you've entered, plus reviews and photos from other users. Unverified or restricted profiles may be limited in what they can show, so check how it looks in a private browser window.
Sources
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google
- Tips to improve your local ranking on Google
- Business links policies and guidelines
- Your business information in your Business Profile
- Appeal Business Profile content and profile restrictions
- Tips for working with third parties to manage your Business Profile
- Verify Business Profiles in bulk
- 5-step Google Business Profile audit to improve local rankings
- Understanding Canada's anti-spam legislation