u/TangibleSEO

And you don't need me to do it.

I'm not going to tell you to rebuild your website, post on Facebook three times a week, or get listed on 100 directories. You probably won't do any of that. You're busy running a business.

Here's what you can actually knock out this weekend.

Take your phone and record a walkthrough of your shop. Outside first, the sign, the lot, the entrance, then inside, the counter, the waiting area, the bays, your shelves and racks and your guys working. Then shoot 20 or 30 photos of the same stuff. Nothing fancy, no photographer.

Cut the video in iMovie, one day of work max, and upload all of it to your Google Business Profile. That's the whole assignment.

Why does it work? Honestly, no idea. Maybe Google likes profiles that have a video intro and pushes them up. Maybe people just click the listings with video more. Maybe they spend more time on them. Maybe they trust them more. I don't know. What I can tell you is it's never once been a waste of time.

Will it get you +30% year over year? No.

Could it get you a few more calls out of the visibility you already have? Absolutely.

For context, the screenshot is from a tire shop client I started working with in May 2025. 1,730 more phone calls this July compared to last July. Photos and video were part of that, not all of it, so don't read the number as "post 50 photos and this happens." But it's the one piece on the list that costs nothing and doesn't need anybody's help, which is why it's the part I'm posting about.

We spent the last 12 months taking 5 auto parts store locations to #1 for their main keyword, and there is no quick setup that could have made it happen any faster.

To be fair, some results showed up right after the first round of profile changes. Things like adding a 30-second intro video or removing irrelevant additional categories gave visible movement almost immediately.

But let me go in order. Here's the list of things that each moved profile visibility at least a little bit:

1. Adding fresh photos every month
2. A 30-second intro video
3. Responding to reviews. And honestly, I ended up building a full playbook for generating new reviews for them, it brought in around 10-30 natural reviews per month per location
4. Location pages on the website, no AI, with unique photos and unique text, that kind of thing
5. We cleaned up all the citations on the major platforms like Apple Maps, Yelp, Bing Places

I'll add that what mattered most here was consistency. The improvements each month were small, but the trend was always there. And a year later, this is the result. Maybe Google just needs time to catch up, maybe the profiles hit some critical mass at some point. Either way, the numbers speak for themselves.

Not sure if you scrolled all the way down to the phone calls screenshot, so here's a quick summary:

The 12-month picture (June 2025 to June 2026):

Local pack, "auto parts near me", 7x7 grids with 1-mile spacing:

→ Location #1: Avg Map Rank 14.7 → 5

→ Location #2: 14 → 5.6

→ Location #3: 8.4 → 3.7

→ Location #4: 8.7 → 3.9

→ Location #5: 8.6 → 3.6

GBP customer actions (YoY):

→ Phone calls +26.4%

→ Directions requests +19.2%

→ Website visits +36.6%

→ Total actions +26.6%

Anyway, happy to answer any questions.

But my main advice is this: make improvements every month, watch the trend, and trust that sooner or later it pays off.

Good luck everyone!

Follow-up to my audit post from a while back. A few people asked how I actually report once the audit is done and optimization is rolling, so here it is.

The thing I learned the hard way: most GBP reporting is a wall of numbers that looks impressive and tells the client nothing. Views up 30%, great. Did the phone ring more? No idea. So now I track a short list that actually maps to whether customers are showing up.

Here's what I look at and why:

1. Conversion actions

Calls, direction requests, website clicks. Closest thing GBP gives you to a sale, so it's where I start. For auto parts and service clients calls dominate hard. One multi-location client I'm on, calls were ~74% of all customer actions. If I'd optimized for "views" and ignored that, I'd be chasing the wrong number completely. I also break it down per location, never just network total, because the network number hides the one store quietly tanking.

2. Action rate, not raw views

Action rate is just actions divided by views. It's the sanity check on everything else. Had a client whose views climbed month over month and everyone was thrilled, except action rate was sliding the whole time. Translation: more people seeing the profile, fewer doing anything. Raw views told the opposite story. In the same panel I watch the Search vs Maps split (Maps is where "near me" lives, and for this client Maps views grew 56% YoY vs 24% on search) and the actual query terms, splitting branded vs non-branded so I can tell if we're pulling new demand or just the people who already knew the name.

3. Review signals, not just the star rating

Everyone reports "4.8 stars" and stops. I look at velocity (are fresh reviews still coming in or did it die two years ago), response time, and reply coverage. Had a client sitting on a great rating with a 35-day average response time. Looks fine on paper, terrible operational signal, and an easy fix once you actually surface it. Star rating alone buries all of that.

4. Everything over time, per location

A single month's number lies. I pull every metric above WoW/MoM/YoY and drill into each location. One client had a single store whose calls quietly dropped for two months straight while the network total still looked fine, because the other locations covered for it. You only catch that at the location level.

The one people skip the most is action rate. Everyone's hypnotized by views going up. But views are just traffic. Action rate is what tells you if that traffic is worth anything, and it's sitting right there in the dashboard getting ignored.

Curious what everyone else runs. What's the one GBP metric you think is the most overrated?

I've been doing Google Business Profile audits for years. Auto parts stores, tire shops, dental offices, restaurants, law firms. At some point I stopped counting but it's definitely 100+.

And it's always the same stuff. Every time.

So I finally put together a proper template that covers everything I check. Not a quick checklist — an actual audit framework with sections for the business AND up to 3 competitors side by side.

Here's what it covers:

• General GBP info (name, categories, hours, description, service area, phone, social profiles)
• Reviews (rating, quantity, response rate, review frequency, keywords in reviews)
• Posts (frequency, recency, consistency)
• Services and Products (descriptions, pricing, completeness)
• Photos and Videos (upload frequency, recency)
• Q&A
• Optional features (booking URL, menu/services links)
• Competitor comparison across all of the above

A few things I keep seeing that people miss:

Business hours matter more than you think. If your business closes within an hour, Google already starts deprioritizing you in results. Monday morning, you open at 7 AM while competitors open at 9? You're the only option. Every customer is yours.

Service area can hurt you. If customers come to your location and you don't do mobile services or deliveries — remove your service area. Having it set when you don't actually go to people can tank your rankings. I see this on almost every audit.

Review frequency > review count. 500 reviews means nothing if the last one was 6 months ago. Google wants to see a steady stream, not a one-time push.

Secondary categories are almost always wrong. Primary category gets attention. Secondary categories get ignored. But they directly affect which searches you show up for.

Here's the template: Google Sheets link

Make a copy and use it however you want. No email gate, no DM nonsense.

If you've got questions about any section or want to compare notes on how you do your GBP audits — happy to chat in the comments.