The 10-minute check customers run on your business

Before someone calls a business they have never used, they check whether it is real, still operating, good at the work, and easy to reach. This page turns that check into a list you can run on your own business in about ten minutes. Each section says what good looks like and gives the quickest fix. It is the same set of criteria I use when I look at a business for the first time.

How to run it

• Use your phone, in a private browsing window, so the results are not shaped by your own browsing history.
• Search three ways: your business name, your business name with your town, and your main service with your town.
• Write down what you find in each section below before you fix anything, so you can see what changed afterward.

Your Google Business Profile

Your profile is what shows in Google's map results and beside a search for your name. A customer can call you, read your reviews, and judge your photos from it without ever opening your website.

• A profile exists, and the business is its verified owner.
• The primary category is the main service you want to be found for.
• The phone number, hours, website link, and address or service area are all correct.
• The photos are recent and real: your work, your crew, your vehicles, or your storefront.
• The website link goes to the right page on your current site.

Quick fix: If no profile shows for your name, create or claim one and complete Google's verification. Then fill in the category, hours, phone, website, and service area, and add a handful of real photos. The Google Business Profile guide covers the details.

Reviews and your responses

Reviews answer two questions for a stranger: do other people like this business, and how does the owner respond when something goes wrong.

• You have Google reviews, and some of them are from the last few months.
• The recent reviews describe the business as it runs today.
• You have replied to recent reviews, including the critical ones, calmly and specifically.
• Every testimonial on your website traces back to a real customer.

Quick fix: Send every recent customer a direct link to leave a Google review (every one, not only the ones you expect to be happy), and reply to every review from the past year, starting with the negative ones. The reviews guide goes further.

A search for your business name

This is the search people run after a referral, a yard sign, or a truck they passed on the road. It should lead straight to you.

• Your website is the first regular result for your business name, and for your name with your town.
• The business profile that shows beside or above the results is yours.
• Nothing else ranks for your name that could be mistaken for you: a lookalike listing, a directory page that routes calls to someone else, or a business with the same name in another state.
• The top results describe the business as it is now: the current name, location, and services, not an old job, an old address, or an old website.

Quick fix: If your site does not come up for your own name, search site:yourdomain.com to confirm Google has indexed it, make sure the homepage title includes the business name, and link to the site from your Google Business Profile. If a fake or lookalike listing appears, report it to Google from the listing in Google Maps, and check Google's help pages for the current reporting options.

A phone number and a form that work

Everything else on this list is wasted if the call does not connect or the form sends nothing.

• The phone number on your site is real, is answered or gets a call back, and matches your profile.
• On a phone, tapping the number starts a call.
• The number in the page code, in tap-to-call links, the footer, and structured data, matches the number people see.
• A form submission sent from your phone arrives in an inbox someone checks the same day.
• The form shows a thank-you only when the message went through, and an error with your phone number when it did not.
• Every button does what it says: "Book a call" opens a calendar, and "Get a quote" opens the quote form on the page you are on.

Quick fix: Call your own number from a phone that is not yours, then submit your own form from your phone and note how long it takes for someone to respond. If the form fails, Build contact forms that actually reach you shows how to make it reliable, and speed to lead covers the response time.

A real face and a name

People hire people. A business with no visible owner or crew is harder to trust, and harder to tell apart from a lead broker.

• Your site names who runs the business and shows a real photo of them.
• Photos show your actual crew, vehicles, shop, and finished work, not stock photos of people who do not work for you.
• No placeholder sits where a photo should be: no broken image, gray box, or instruction text left over from the build.
• The about page says where the business is based, who does the work, and how long it has been operating.

Quick fix: Take a photo of yourself and one of your crew or shop with a phone, in daylight, against a plain background, and put them on the homepage and the about page.

The same name, address, and phone everywhere

When the phone number on a directory differs from the one on your site, a customer has to guess which one is real, and may wonder whether the business is still open.

• The business name is written the same way on your website, Google Business Profile, Facebook, Yelp, Apple Maps, Bing Places, and industry directories.
• Your main phone number is the same everywhere. If you use call tracking numbers, you know where each one is published.
• Your address, or your service area if you work at customers' locations, matches everywhere it appears.
• The structured data in your site's code carries the same name, phone, and address as the visible page.
• Listings with an old address, phone number, or business name have been updated or closed.

Quick fix: Search your phone number in quotation marks, then your old numbers and old addresses. Update every listing that is wrong, starting with Google, Apple Maps, Bing, Facebook, and Yelp.

Social profiles that are not dormant

A Facebook page whose last post is years old makes a stranger wonder whether anyone is still there.

• Every social profile linked from your site exists and belongs to the business.
• Each profile you keep has recent posts, ideally photos of real jobs.
• Profiles you have stopped using are closed, or point clearly to where you are active.
• The phone, hours, and website link on each profile match everything else.

Quick fix: Keep the one or two platforms your customers actually use, post a real photo of recent work there, and remove links to the rest from your site.

Evidence that you know the work

Once a customer believes the business is real, they want to believe it is good.

• Your site shows real finished jobs, with the type of work and the town.
• Each main service has its own page explaining how you do the work, what affects the price, and what the customer should expect.
• Any licenses, certifications, insurance, and memberships you mention are real and current.
• The questions customers ask most often on the phone are answered on the site.
• Something published under your name shows you know the trade: a project write-up, a how-it-works page, or an answer to a common question.

Quick fix: Write up one recent job: what the customer needed, what you did, and a photo of the result. Then turn the question you answer most on the phone into a page.

What to fix first

1. Anything that stops a customer from reaching you: the phone number, the form, and the buttons.
2. Anything that sends customers to someone else: lookalike listings, wrong links, and old phone numbers.
3. Anything that makes the business hard to verify: the profile, the reviews, a missing face, and listings that disagree.
4. Evidence of the work: job photos, service pages, and published answers.

Run the check again every few months, and any time you change your phone number, address, or website.