Google Business Places Optimization.
When a Portland customer types "painter near me" or "orthodontist in Sellwood" into their phone, Google does not show your website first. It shows the map pack. Three businesses in a box, with stars, photos, and a Call button. If you are not in those three, you are invisible. We claim, verify, fix, and optimize your Google Business Places (GBP) so you are the business those customers call, visit, and book.
What a Google Business Places actually is.
A Google Business Places is the listing Google shows when someone searches for your business by name or finds you in the map pack. It is free. It is the single highest-leverage piece of local-search real estate on the internet for a small business. It is also, for most small businesses, the single most-neglected piece of their digital presence.
The profile controls everything a prospective customer sees before they visit your website (if they visit at all):
- Your name, address, phone, and hours as Google displays them across Search, Maps, Assistant, and Google Business messaging.
- Your primary and secondary categories, which are the single most important ranking signal for the map pack.
- Photos and videos that customers see before they decide whether to call you.
- Reviews and star rating, which influence both click-through rate and ranking position.
- Posts, which are weekly mini-announcements Google favors for freshness.
- Service list and product catalog, which let Google match you to specific search queries.
- Attributes like wheelchair-accessible, woman-owned, LGBTQ-friendly, free Wi-Fi, same-day service, all searchable filters.
- Q&A section, which anyone can post to. If you do not seed it with the right questions and answers, a competitor or a confused stranger will.
What is in the free Google Business Places audit.
Every engagement starts with a comprehensive audit of your current listing (if you have one) and your local-search footprint across the internet. The report is yours to keep whether or not you hire us. The deliverable checks:
Claim and verification status
Do you control the listing, or is it unclaimed or claimed by someone else?
Category selection
Is your primary category the highest-intent one for your ideal customer? (This one change can move you from page 3 to the map pack.)
Name, address, phone consistency
Across Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Facebook, Instagram, and 30 other directories your local customers actually read.
Photo audit
Count, freshness, geotagging, coverage of interior, exterior, team, and work product.
Review audit
Count, velocity, average rating, response rate, any policy-violation risk.
Post activity
When did you last post, how often, and does the content align with queries your customers use?
Service and product listings
Are all offerings present, described, and priced (where applicable)?
Attribute completeness
Which searchable filters are you missing?
Q&A audit
Are there unanswered questions? Any misinformation planted by competitors?
Competitor position snapshot
Where do your three closest competitors sit in the map pack for your top five target queries?
Google Insights pull
If you have the profile, we show the last 90 days of calls, direction requests, website clicks, and photo views.
A prioritized fix plan
Ordered by impact, with specific time estimates so you know what is a 10-minute fix versus a monthly commitment.
The audit takes us 60 to 90 minutes, uses no sensitive data from your side, and ends in a written report formatted like a professional consulting deliverable. You read it, ask questions, and decide whether the monthly plan makes sense.
How we claim, verify, fix, and optimize your listing.
You stay the owner of your profile the entire time. We work as a manager you add to it, and we never need your Google password.
Claim and verify
If your listing is unclaimed, we sit with you for ten minutes to claim it under your Google account. Google then confirms you are the real owner by postcard, phone, email, or a short video of your storefront. We handle the process; you do the confirming.
Grant us access
You add us as a manager on the profile. It is a two-minute step we walk you through, and you can revoke it any time. Ownership never leaves your hands.
Fix the foundation
We correct categories, hours, service areas, and the name-address-phone details across every major directory, then build out services, attributes, and the Q&A section from the audit's prioritized fix plan.
Optimize, every week
Fresh posts, photo updates, review responses drafted for your approval, and a monthly report showing calls, direction requests, and website clicks so you can see the listing working.
What we need from you
Four things, most of them once: manager access to the profile (or ten minutes together to claim it), your accurate basics (legal business name, address, hours, phone, service area), a batch of real photos of your team, your space, and your work (phone pictures are fine, we handle the rest), and a quick yes or no on the review responses we draft. After setup, your time commitment is minutes per month, not hours.
Why this is urgent for every small business.
From Portland to every corner of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, local economies run on small service businesses competing for the same nearby customers. Those customers have shifted behavior. They do not open Yelp. They do not visit your website first. They ask Google:
For each of these queries Google returns a three-business map pack before any organic website links. Customer behavior data shows 76 percent of those searches result in a visit within 24 hours and 28 percent end in a purchase. The map pack is where local revenue is decided.
And yet most small businesses have a Google Business Places listing that is incomplete, out of date, missing photos, missing posts, missing reviews, or simply unclaimed. Every week those gaps cost the owner calls that go to the three competitors who bothered to optimize. The gap compounds quietly until the owner wonders why business has been slow for six months. It is not the market. It is the listing.
The report is free. What you do with it is up to you.
We run the full Google Business Places audit and hand it to you as a finished, owner-ready deliverable at no cost. It is yours to keep. Much of what it surfaces (categories, attributes, posts, review responses) you can act on yourself, so we tell you exactly what to fix and you choose how it gets done.
Take it and run
Do it yourself.
- The report lists every finding, ranked by impact, in plain language.
- Each item explains what is wrong and what “fixed” looks like.
- Work through the changes and you climb toward the local map pack. No strings, nothing to buy.
Have us do it
Short on time or technical resources?
- Posts, photos, review responses, citation cleanup, Q&A: it adds up to real ongoing hours.
- If you would rather not run it, we have the skills and the team and will scope a reasonable proposal.
- You decide afterward. The audit stands on its own either way.
Either path starts the same way: a free Google Business Places report on your business. Book a quick call and we will run it.
How this fits with our other search services
Google Business Places optimization is local search. Search Engine Optimization is traditional website search. Generative Engine Optimization is visibility inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. A small business needs all three, and they reinforce each other. We measure and report on all three for free, then show you exactly where the gaps are.
A written report you own, whether or not you hire us.
The free Google Business Places audit is a 60 to 90 minute process that ends with a written report you keep. Book a consult and we will schedule the audit the same week.