Free tool

Local Visibility Grader

Grade your own local visibility in about four minutes, and find out which part is holding the rest back.

Self-assessed, and it says so

This scores your own answers rather than looking your business up. That makes it fast, free and completely private — and it makes it only as accurate as what you enter. Where you are not sure, say so; the questions you cannot answer are usually the ones worth investigating.

Twelve questions about how you show up

0 of 12 answered

1.Have you claimed and verified your Google Business Profile?
Verified means you completed the postcard, phone or video check — not just that the listing exists.
2.Has your primary category been reviewed in the last year?
A category chosen once at setup and never revisited is the most common thing capping an otherwise healthy business.
3.Do your name, address and phone number match everywhere they appear online?
Google, Apple and Bing cross-check a web of directories. One old suite number or disconnected line costs you confidence.
4.Are your hours — including holiday and seasonal hours — currently correct?
5.Have you added photographs to your profile in the last three months?
6.How does your review count compare with the three businesses ranking above you?
Search your main term, look at who is in the map pack, and compare. Their number is the benchmark, not a national average.
7.When did you last receive a review?
Recency matters more than the lifetime average. A 4.9 with nothing since last year performs worse than a live 4.5.
8.Do you ask for a review every time a job is completed?
9.Do you reply to reviews, including the negative ones?
The reply is read by every prospect who scrolls the profile. It is the only place they can see how you behave when something goes wrong.
10.Does your site load in under three seconds on a phone on mobile data?
Not on your office wifi. Most local traffic arrives on a phone on a network you do not control.
11.Can someone call or book you in one obvious tap from the homepage?
12.Has your main social account posted in the last month?
Prospects check whether the account is alive before calling. A dormant page undoes some of what the search result earned.

Reading the result

What to do with your grade

Start with the weakest area rather than the easiest one. Listings and reviews are usually both the lowest-scoring and the fastest to move — often weeks rather than quarters — and rankings follow them rather than leading them. A listings problem left alone caps everything you spend on search afterwards.

Do not treat a low website score as a design problem. Speed and mobile behavior are separate from how a site looks, and a recent redesign is no guarantee of either. That score decides how much of the traffic you already pay for ever reaches a phone call.

And treat a high overall grade carefully. It means nothing is broken, which is the floor rather than the finish line — in a competitive category three businesses with the same clean fundamentals and more reviews will still sit above you.

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About this tool

Questions people ask

No, and that distinction matters. This grades your own answers — it does not look your business up or measure anything. It is useful because it asks the right questions in the right proportions, not because it has any information about you. For the measured version, use the scorecard.

Get the measured scorecard

Because local search weights them differently. Listings and profile accuracy carry the most, reviews are close behind, the website matters for converting the traffic you already have, and social is the smallest ranking factor of the four. Scoring them equally would tell a business with a great Facebook page and a dead Google profile that it was doing fine.

Answer “not sure” — it scores as a zero, which is the honest treatment. If you do not know whether your listings match everywhere, they almost certainly do not, because that is not something that stays right by itself.

No. The grade, the breakdown by area and the diagnosis all appear on the page. The form below the result is there if you want a strategist to go through it with you, and it is optional.

It means the fundamentals are in order, which is necessary rather than sufficient. Ranking also depends on how competitive your category and market are — a strong profile in a crowded metro can still sit below three businesses doing the same things with more reviews.

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