Getting found
How a local business gets found.
When someone in your town searches for what you do, three things decide who they see: the map listings at the top, the regular results under them, and, more and more, an AI assistant's answer. Each one reads different things. This page says what each of them reads and what we do about it, plan by plan.
Which plan includes what is on the pricing page. This page is the long version.
What Google says it looks at
Google publishes how its local results are ranked. Three factors, in its own words.
Relevance
"how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for"
Your listing and your site have to say what you do and where, in the words people type. "Roof repair" and "hail damage" bring different searchers than "roofing services".
Distance
"how far each business is from the customer who's searching"
Where the searcher stands against your address and the area you say you serve. A business that never names its towns is guessing on the one factor it can state outright.
Prominence
"how well-known a business is"
Reviews, mentions, links, and the same name, address and phone number everywhere your business is listed. This is the slow one, and the one that separates the top three from the rest.
- "Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results."
- "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking."
- "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."
Why reviews and AI answers are now part of the job
A website alone used to be the job. The 2026 numbers say the listing, the reviews and what the AI assistants repeat about you are just as much of it.
None of this can be bought. Google bans paying or rewarding people for reviews and so do we. What can be built is the habit of asking, the listing the AI assistants read from, and pages that answer the questions your customers actually have.
Source: BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 1,002 US consumers
- 97%
- read reviews for local businesses
- 47%
- won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews
- 31%
- will only use a business rated 4.5 stars or higher
- 45%
- used ChatGPT or another AI tool for a local recommendation in the past year, up from 6% the year before
- 82%
- read the AI-written summary of a business's reviews
1 of 3 · Startup and Scale-up
Found
Everything Google needs to list a business correctly, done at launch and checked every month after.
Your Google Business Profile, set up with you
Claimed or created, then filled in: a primary category and the secondary ones that fit, every service with a line of description, hours, the towns you serve, your first photos, and the site linked so visits from the listing show up separately in your numbers. Google verifies the listing with the owner, by video, postcard or ID, so this happens on a short call with you rather than behind your back.
A title and description for every page
The title is the blue line in the results and the description is the gray one under it. We write them for the search each page is meant to answer, service and town included, instead of leaving the page name Google would invent.
Every town you cover, named and marked up
The service area appears on the page in plain words and again in the structured data Google's map results read from. A business that serves twelve towns and names one is invisible in eleven.
Sitemap and Search Console, in your name
The sitemap tells Google which pages exist. Search Console is Google's own report on your site: which searches showed it, how often it was clicked, and what is broken. It is set up in your Google account, so the report is yours to read whenever you like.
Speed, measured before launch
Every page is measured on a phone connection before the site goes live, because a slow page loses the visitor before it loses the ranking.
Every month: checked and kept
Search Console is read, anything it flags is fixed, and the Google listing is looked over. Listings drift: Google accepts edits from the public, and an unattended profile can end up with wrong hours or a closed sign. That is the part of the monthly fee that keeps you found.
2 of 3 · Business and Business Pro
Local search
Everything in Found, plus the work that moves a business up: the plan, the pages, the reviews, the listings, and a report that says what happened.
A keyword plan before we design
We look at what people in your metro actually search, using Google's own data, and pick the ten to twenty searches that matter to your business. Each one is assigned to one page, so the site is designed around the searches instead of decorated with them afterwards.
A page per service and per main town
One page answers one search. A hail damage page for a roofer reads differently from a re-roof page, and a page for the next town over says something about that town. What we do not do is copy one page twelve times with the town name swapped; Google reads that as filler and ranks it that way.
Question pages Google and the assistants can quote
The questions your phone rings with, answered on the site and marked up so a search engine or an AI assistant can lift the answer. This is the part that decides whether an assistant recommends you or the business that wrote it down.
Reviews, set up as a habit
Your review link, a card with a QR code for the truck or the counter, the text message to send after each job, and replies to the reviews that come in. Nobody is paid, nobody is filtered, because Google forbids both and would take the reviews down. The habit is what produces the count.
Listings everywhere, all matching
Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and the core directories, each with exactly the same name, address and phone as the Google listing. Mismatches are one of the quiet reasons a business sits below competitors with fewer reviews.
A tracking number and a monthly report
A phone number that forwards to yours goes on the listing and the site, so calls from Google are counted rather than guessed. The report is one page a month: where you show up for the tracked searches, listing views, calls, form leads, what we did, and what we do next.
3 of 3 · Enterprise
Search program
For a platform, a store or a business with many locations: research, content and technical work, scoped with you and run every month.
Research across every market you serve
Full keyword and competitor research, per location or product line, with the gaps written down before anything is built.
A content plan and the writing to it
Pages and articles planned by month against the research, written, published and measured.
A technical audit and the fixes
Crawl, index coverage, speed, duplicate pages, structured data across the catalog or the locations. The unglamorous half, done properly once and then kept.
A dashboard and a monthly call
The numbers in one place, and a call every month to go through them and decide the next month's work.
What we do not do
Every account is in your name: the Google listing, Search Console, analytics, the domain. If you leave, they leave with you.
Promise a position
Nobody can. Google says so itself. We promise the work, the report, and honesty about what the report shows.
Buy reviews or links
Both get a business penalized, and both are the reason owners distrust anyone who says the letters SEO. We build the asking habit and the pages worth linking to.
Hold your accounts
The Google listing, Search Console, analytics and the domain are all in your name from day one. If you leave, they leave with you.
Lock you in
The monthly fee is month to month. Cancel, and the site, the listing and the numbers are still yours.
Questions owners ask
- How long until it works?
- The listing can show within days of verification. Ranking for competitive searches takes months, and depends on how many reviews you collect and how strong the businesses above you are. That is why the report exists: it shows movement, or the lack of it, every month.
- I already have a Google listing. What happens to it?
- We work on that one. It keeps its reviews and its history. A second listing for the same business is against Google's rules and would get both suspended.
- Do I need to do anything?
- Two things. Fifteen minutes on a call for the listing verification, because Google will only verify with the owner. And, on the Local search tier, sending the review text after jobs. We give you the text and the card; the sending is yours.
- Is this the same as Google Ads?
- No. Ads are paid placements above the results and stop the day you stop paying. This is the listing and the pages that show up on their own. If you want ads as well, we set up the tracking so you can see what they bring.
- Can you guarantee page one?
- No, and neither can anyone else. Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Anyone guaranteeing it is guaranteeing something they do not control.
- What is in the monthly report?
- One page. The searches we track and where you show up for each, views and actions on your Google listing, calls to the tracking number, form leads from the site, what we did that month, and what we plan next.