5 signs your Google profile is losing you calls.

For most local businesses, the Google Business Profile, the box with your name, reviews, hours and a call button, matters as much as the website. People compare a few profiles side by side and call the one that looks most trustworthy and most current. Grab your phone, search for your business and your service the way a customer would, and go through these five signs.

1. The basics are wrong or missing

What to look for: old hours, a missing or broken website link, a phone number that goes to voicemail, the wrong main category, or a service area that leaves out towns you actually work in.

Why it matters: Google says it ranks local results mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. If your category and services don't match what people search, you show up less often. And if someone drives over or calls during hours you've listed but aren't open, you probably won't get a second chance.

2. It looks like nobody's home

What to look for: no posts in months, only a logo and one or two photos, and no recent answers to questions.

Why it matters: a customer comparing three profiles will usually trust the one that looks active. Recent photos of your work, your team or your vehicles, and the occasional short update, show that the business is real and busy.

3. Your reviews are few, old or unanswered

What to look for: fewer reviews than the competitors listed next to you, nothing new in the last few months, or reviews with no reply from you.

Why it matters: reviews are often what people read before they call. Replies matter too: a calm, polite answer to a bad review can reassure a reader more than the review worried them. Ask every customer for a review, not only the happy ones; Google doesn't allow picking who gets asked or offering anything in return. More in our guide to Google review management.

4. Your website doesn't back it up

What to look for: no page that explains each main service, no mention of the towns you serve, a site that's slow or hard to use on a phone, or pages that don't show up when you search Google for site: followed by your web address.

Why it matters: Google uses your website to understand what you do and where. A profile that links to a thin or outdated site has less to stand on, and a customer who taps through to a page that's hard to read on a phone often goes back to the search results.

5. Nobody is watching the numbers

What to look for: you don't know how many calls, website visits or direction requests your profile brought in last month, or which searches people used to find you.

Why it matters: Google shows these numbers to the profile's owner for free. Without them, you can't tell whether a change helped, whether a competitor is pulling ahead, or whether something broke, like a link or your hours.

How did you do?

• 0 or 1 signs: you're in good shape. Keep it current and check again in a few months.
• 2 or 3 signs: worth an afternoon. Start with the basics and reviews, since they're the quickest to fix.
• 4 or 5 signs: your profile is probably costing you work you never hear about, because people who don't call never leave a missed call.

None of this changes overnight. Search results usually take a few months to respond, and the businesses that do well tend to be the ones that keep at it every month rather than fixing everything once.

Next step

Want a second opinion? Get a free Google visibility check: we look at your profile, your main listings and a few searches your customers would use, and email you a short summary of what's holding you back on Google, within 2 business days. No call needed. If you'd rather hand it over, see our Google Business Profile management and what our local SEO service in Kitchener-Waterloo covers each month, and read what to ask before you hire any SEO company. And if most of your enquiries come by phone, read AI receptionist or answering service?

Written by Nuvelo Labs, Kitchener-Waterloo. General information only.