Compare your profile with your top three local competitors and plan what to improve.
Once your business profile is complete, it is hard to tell whether it is good enough or what to work on next. The profiles of the businesses ranking above you in Google Maps are public, so anyone can open them and compare them with yours. The exercise has two parts and takes about thirty-five minutes: a comparison of your profile against your top three competitors, then a check that your details match everywhere they appear on the web.
Open a new tab in your spreadsheet and make four columns: one for your business and one for each of your top three competitors. Use the three you recorded in Lesson 7.1, How local results are chosen. If you didn't record them, search your main service plus your area in Google Maps on your phone, from where your customers are, and take the top three.
Down the side, list these rows:
primary category secondary categories whether the description is filled in products or services listed number of photos and how recent the newest is number of reviews average rating date of the most recent review whether the owner replies to reviews, and how hours, including special hours posts or updates in the last month
Open each profile in Google Maps and fill in the rows factually. Count photos and reviews as they appear and note dates where they're visible. For owner replies, read the last five reviews on each profile and note whether the owner replied, how quickly if dates are shown, and whether the replies are specific or copy-pasted.
For each row, ask whether a competitor clearly does better and whether you can close the gap honestly. If a competitor has more recent photos, you can close that gap this week. If a competitor has far more reviews, you can close it over months by asking every customer, as described in Lesson 7.3, Reviews: ask, respond and stay within the rules. If a competitor is closer to where people search, its advantage is distance, which you cannot change, so note it and move on.
Wei Ming (an invented example) runs a food stall with his family. His nephew had already fixed the profile category, added a menu and uploaded new photos, and the family wanted to know what else to do and how to tell if it was enough. Three stalls appeared above his in Google Maps, and his table showed four clear gaps. All three had at least three times his number of reviews, with owner replies on most. Two had photos from the past month, while his newest was from the week before. Two listed the full menu with prices, an option Google offers only to food and drink businesses. His one advantage was special hours for public holidays, which none of the three had.
Consistency in this audit means your name, address and phone number are identical across your profile, your website and every other listing. Lesson 7.2, Set up and complete your business profile, explains why this matters.
Write down your exact name, address and phone number from your profile. Check your own website, including the footer and contact page. Then search your business name in Google and open the directory and listing sites that appear: food guides, business directories, review sites, booking platforms and social media pages. Compare the three details on each against what you wrote down, and note any difference, even a slight one, such as an old phone number, a missing unit number or a former business name.
Fix the listings you control yourself, such as your website and social media pages. For directories, look for a way to claim or edit the listing, or contact the site. Wei Ming's check found his old stall number on a food guide site and a different phone number on a social media page his nephew had set up years earlier.
Turn the gaps you can close into a short list of improvements. Wei Ming's family wrote five: put a review QR code card on the counter and ask every regular for a few weeks; reply to every review within a few days, mentioning specifics; add the full menu with prices; update the food guide listing and the old social media page with the correct stall number and phone; and add new photos each month. They accepted that matching their competitors' review counts would take months.
Local profiles drift if nobody maintains them. Hours change, photos get old and reviews go unanswered, and edits suggested by Google or the public can change your details if nobody reviews them. A monthly routine takes less than an hour a month. Each month, add a few new photos and, if you use them, one post or update. Check your hours and add special hours for public holidays in the next two months. Reply to every new review, and check for edits suggested by Google or the public. Once a quarter, rerun the consistency check on your main listings. Put the routine in your calendar on a fixed day. Lesson 9.4, Build your monthly SEO review routine, folds this local routine into the wider monthly review.
Now open Google Maps and your spreadsheet. Fill in the table for your profile and three competitors, mark the gaps you can honestly close, run the consistency check and fix what you find. Then write your improvements and your routine, and put the routine in your calendar.
Fill in the local audit table for your profile and three competitors. Then write down five improvements and a monthly upkeep routine.
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