Free checklist
The 15-point Google checklist for local businesses
Fifteen things to check on your Google Business Profile, your website and your Google Ads. Most take a few minutes. Each one comes from Google's own help pages (one from OpenAI's), linked so you can read it yourself.
No email needed. Tick them off as you go.
Your Google Business Profile
The listing people see on Google Maps
Check 1
Open your Business Profile and check your category, services, hours, phone number and website. Fix anything that is out of date.
Google says “Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results.”
Source: Google Business Profile Help: Tips to improve your local ranking on Google
Check 2
In your profile, go to Edit profile, then Hours, then Special hours. Add each holiday, including the ones where you are open as usual.
Google says “It's a good idea to confirm your hours for official holidays, even if they're the same as your regular hours.”
Source: Google Business Profile Help: How to set Special hours
Check 3
Read your newest reviews and answer them, the good ones and the bad ones. "Respond to reviews" is one of Google's own tips for showing up in local results.
Google says prominence, one of the three main things behind local results, is “based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.”
Source: Google Business Profile Help: Tips to improve your local ranking on Google
Your website
What Google, and ChatGPT, can read
Check 4
Search Google for site: followed by your web address, like site:yourbusiness.com. If your pages show up, you're in Google's index. If nothing shows, something is keeping your site out, and it's worth finding out what.
Google's SEO Starter Guide says “If you see results pointing to your site, you're in the index.”
Check 5
Open yourbusiness.com/robots.txt in your browser. If you see User-agent: OAI-SearchBot with Disallow: / under it, ask whoever runs your site to remove those lines.
OpenAI says “Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”. After the fix, it says it “can take ~24 hours” to update.
Check 6
Look at the name in your browser tab on your home page and each service page. Our tip: say what you do and where, like "Roof Repair in San Diego | Your Business".
Google says to “Avoid vague descriptors like ‘Home’ for your home page”.
Source: Google Search Central: Influencing your title links in search results
Check 7
Open your website on your phone. Check that your services, prices and reviews are there, not only on the computer version.
Google says “Google uses the mobile version of a site's content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking.”
Source: Google Search Central: Mobile site and mobile-first indexing best practices
Check 8
If your menu or price list is only a photo, type the items and prices onto the page as well. Keep the photo too.
Google's list of SEO basics for its AI answers includes “Making sure that important content is available in textual form”.
Check 9
If someone offers a special file or code to get you into Google's AI answers, skip it. Make sure your pages show up on Google (check 4) and your Business Profile is current (check 1).
Google says “You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features.”
Your Google Ads
Where the ad money goes
Check 10
Ads are set to show all day by default. Set your call asset to show only during the hours someone can pick up the phone.
Google says a tap on your number costs “the same as headline clicks”, and “You can set numbers to appear only when your business can accept calls.”
Sources: Google Ads Help: About call assets; Google Ads Help: About ad scheduling
Check 11
Turn on call reporting and set a minimum call length, so quick hang-ups don't count as leads.
When Google Ads counts taps on a number on your website, Google says “we can only track these clicks, not the phone calls themselves.”
Source: Google Ads Help: About phone call conversion tracking
Check 12
Send each ad to the page for that service, not your homepage, with your phone number near the top.
Google says “Choose a landing page that closely matches your ad and keywords.” And “Higher quality ads typically cost less per click than lower quality ads.”
Sources: Google Ads Help: Optimize your ads and landing pages; Google Ads Help: About ad quality
Check 13
If your Google Ads lead form brings in junk, switch it from More volume (the default) to More qualified. Watch your cost per lead after you switch.
Google says More qualified “may result in fewer leads, but those leads generally have a greater interest in your business, product or service.”
Check 14
Open your search terms report. Add searches for things you don't offer, like job searches, as negative keywords.
Google says that by adding those searches as negative keywords, “you can prevent your ad from showing to people who are looking for something you don't sell.”
Check 15
Divide what you want to spend in a month by 30.4. That's your average daily budget. Busy days can cost more than that, quieter days less.
Google says that on any one day you won't pay more than “two times your average daily budget for most campaigns”, and in a month no more than “30.4 times your average daily budget for most campaigns”.
Quotes are copied from the linked pages as they read in November 2026. Pages change, so the link is the final word.
Want us to go through all 15 with you?
Book a free strategy call. We'll look at your Business Profile, your website and your Google Ads with you and tell you what to fix first, whether or not you hire us.
FAQ
Checklist questions, answered
Is the checklist really free?
Yes. There is nothing to buy and no email to give. The whole checklist is on this page.
Where do these checks come from?
From Google's own help pages for Google Business Profile, Google Search and Google Ads, and from OpenAI's page about its crawlers. Each check links to its source, so you can read it yourself.
Will this get my business to the top of Google?
Nobody can promise that. Google's own page says "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." These are the basics Google itself points to, so they are the right place to start.
Can you go through it with me?
Yes. Book a free strategy call and we will look at your profile, your website and your Google Ads with you, and tell you what we would fix first.