Google Business Profile Audit: What You Should Actually Check in 2026
Your phone used to ring from Google. Now it doesn’t. Or it does, but not nearly as often as it should. You search your own trade in your own town and there are three competitors sitting above you. You don’t know why. You’ve poked around your Google Business Profile a few times. You’ve read a few tips. Nothing changed.
This article is for you. In the next 15 minutes you’ll learn exactly what a proper Google Business Profile audit looks like in 2026, what the 12 things you need to check actually are, and how to know whether your profile is quietly costing you jobs. If you’d rather we just do it for you, the flat price is £97 and the PDF arrives in 48 hours.
What a Google Business Profile audit actually is
A Google Business Profile audit, sometimes called a Google My Business audit or a GBP audit, is a structured health check on everything Google sees about your business. The point is to find the gap between what Google thinks you are and what you actually are, and close it.
A proper audit looks at three things:
- Your profile itself (what Google is displaying)
- Your website and citations (what other trusted sources say about you)
- Your competitors (what you’re up against locally)
When those three line up, Google trusts you and ranks you. When they don’t, it doesn’t. That’s basically the whole game. Our full method is on the how it works page.
The 12 things a real audit checks
Here’s the checklist we run on every £97 Rank Rescue Audit. Copy it if you want to DIY, or bring us in.
1. Category accuracy
Your primary category is the single biggest ranking lever on your profile. Most tradespeople pick the wrong one. “Plumber”, “Plumbing Contractor” and “Emergency Plumber” are all different categories and Google treats them differently. An audit checks whether your primary category matches your strongest competitor and what your customers actually search for.
2. Secondary categories
You get up to 9 additional categories. Most businesses use 1 or 2. Done right, secondary categories pick up long-tail searches. Done wrong, they confuse Google and tank your ranking.
3. Business name cleanliness
Adding keywords to your business name is a Google policy violation and the single fastest way to get suspended. An audit checks whether you’re doing it, and whether competitors are abusing it, because you can report them.
4. NAP consistency
NAP is Name, Address, Phone. Google cross-checks your profile against every other place your business appears online: Yell, Thomson Local, Checkatrade, Facebook, your website, Companies House. If the phone number is different on Yell than it is on your profile, Google flags you as untrustworthy and hides you.
5. Service area accuracy
If you’re a service-area business, you set a service area. Most people set it too wide or too narrow. Too wide and Google can’t rank you anywhere specifically. Too narrow and you miss real customers. An audit tells you the right radius.
6. Review velocity
How many new reviews are you getting each week, and is that number going up or down? Google’s local algorithm cares about momentum. A business getting one new review a week outranks a business that got fifty reviews in 2023 and none since.
7. Review sentiment
Not just star count. Google reads the actual words. If every 5-star review says “quick response” and “friendly” but none say “installed my new boiler”, Google doesn’t rank you for boiler installation. An audit checks whether your reviews contain your actual service keywords.
8. Photo volume and freshness
Google weights recent photos heavily. A profile with 40 photos all uploaded 4 years ago does worse than one with 12 photos uploaded in the last 90 days.
9. Google Posts
Google Posts are the most under-used feature. Businesses that post weekly rank higher than businesses that don’t. An audit checks your post history and cadence.
10. Q&A section
People ask questions on your profile and you probably don’t answer them. An audit checks unanswered questions, whether competitors have planted misleading answers, and whether you’ve seeded the section with 10 to 20 of your own.
11. Attributes and services
Google added dozens of attribute fields (appointments, women-owned, online estimates, etc). Filling these in is worth measurable ranking improvement. Most businesses fill in zero.
12. Suspension risk signals
Certain patterns put you at risk: keyword stuffing, duplicate listings, virtual office addresses, inconsistent hours, stale photos. An audit flags all of these so you can fix them before Google does.
The Rank Score
After running all 12 checks we give you one number from 0 to 100: the Rank Score.
- 0 to 30 is critical. You are essentially invisible.
- 31 to 50 is at risk. Small issues are stacking up.
- 51 to 70 is average. Room to move.
- 71 to 85 is strong. Fine-tuning opportunities.
- 86 to 100 is excellent. Keep doing what you’re doing.
Most UK tradespeople we audit score between 38 and 62. The top 10 percent are above 80. The gap is almost always fixable inside 14 days.
DIY or done for you?
You have two options. DIY: block out 6 to 8 hours, work through the 12 checks yourself, and action the fixes. Done for you: pay £97, fill out a 3-minute intake form, and get a branded PDF in 48 hours with every problem and every fix in plain English, plus an optional upgrade button if you want us to also do the fixing.
Most people pick done-for-you, because 6 to 8 hours of your Saturday is worth a lot more than £97.
FAQ
What’s the difference between a Google Business Profile audit and an SEO audit?
An SEO audit covers your whole website and everything Google sees. A Google Business Profile audit focuses on your GBP and local map ranking factors. For a local trades business, the GBP audit is the one that moves the needle fastest.
Is a £97 audit really enough?
For 95 percent of UK tradespeople, yes. The biggest wins come from fixing things you already have. You don’t need a £1,000 audit to discover your primary category is wrong.
How fast do you deliver?
48 hours from payment and intake form submission. Most are delivered in 24 hours.
What if the PDF isn’t useful?
We refund you. See our refund policy.
Ready to stop losing jobs to page one? See the pricing page or start with the audit below.
