Find out why customers near you are calling someone else.
When someone nearby searches for what you do, Google puts three businesses at the top and most people call one of them. This free check tells you who those three are in your town, how far back you are, and what it would take to get in front of them. If the numbers do not work for you, we say so and you owe us nothing.
Check my business, free →No card. No sales call. About a minute.
Built for local trades and services: plumbers, HVAC and heating, electricians, roofers, landscapers and lawn care, window and carpet cleaners, pest control, garage doors, auto repair, dentists and clinics, law offices, and anyone else who gets work from people who live nearby.
- A competitor, rated 4.6 stars from 128 reviews
- A competitor, rated 4.4 stars from 93 reviews
- A competitor, rated 4.7 stars from 67 reviews
- Your businessSomewhere below the fold, where nobody taps.
Illustration. The audit pulls your actual top three, live from Google, with their real review counts.
Why the same three companies get all the calls.
That search runs in your city all day. Someone pulls out a phone and types “plumber near me,” or your service plus your city. Google shows a map with three businesses above everything else, and those three get the calls. Marketers call it the map pack, or local SEO. Your customers just call it Google.
Getting into those three slots is not the same job as ranking a blog post. It runs on your Google Business Profile, your review count against the businesses already sitting there, how close you are to the searcher, and whether your website and your listing read as the same business. That is the only thing this audit scores.
- 01Your Google Business ProfileCategories, hours, photos, service area, and whether any of it is filled in.Yours to fix
- 02Reviews, counted against the three above youNot a target number. A gap, measured against the businesses already holding the slots.Yours to fix
- 03How close you are to the person searchingThe one input you cannot change. It is also why a competitor two towns over is not your real problem.Out of your hands
- 04Whether your site and your listing agreeSame name, same address, same phone, same business. Google checks.Yours to fix
Someone two streets away searches
- You
You are in the three. The phone rings.
Someone across town searches
- You
Same business, same day. You are ninth.
Two maps of the same business. In the first, a customer searching from 0.6 miles away sees the business ranked first of the three map results. In the second, a customer searching from 6 miles away sees three other businesses, with the same business down at ninth.
Illustration. Your audit measures this against your real service area and the businesses actually holding the slots.
If customers do not find you by searching a service and a place, this audit has nothing to tell you. Do not run it.
Three plain answers, in about a minute.
- 1. Exactly how many reviews you are behind your real top 3 competitors.
- 2. The monthly spend floor required to clear the top 3 in your category and city.
- 3. Whether your stated budget is even in the game.
If the math does not work, we say so. We would rather you walk away with the truth than spend a year burning a half funded campaign. The same foundation that wins on Google Maps is what makes you retrievable when customers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI for local recommendations. Two channels, one foundation.
What you get
- A binary verdict. Pursue, fix-then-pursue, commit-at-the-floor, or skip. No vague “do SEO and ads” non-answer.
- The real cost to top 3. Reviews to close the gap, months at a sustainable pace, monthly ad spend floor, and the total commitment.
- Your top 3 competitors. Pulled live from Google with their review counts and ratings. The same data we would use on a strategy call.
- A site readiness check. We scan your homepage for the 8 signals Google uses to decide whether your site and your Google Business Profile read as the same business. The first 3 are free on the report.
You have three ways to fix this.
Two of them are expensive before they are wrong. The third one is free, and it is the only one that tells you whether the other two are even worth doing in your city.
Hire a Vice President of Marketing
$180,000 to $240,000 salaryBefore benefits, payroll tax, and equity. Fully loaded lands closer to a third above the number you offer.
About 90 days to hireThen roughly 18 months before you know whether the hire was right.
Retain an agency
$120,000 to $300,000 a yearAd spend is usually on top, and the media is often marked up before it reaches you.
About 30 days to startYou meet the senior team once. The work goes to whoever is free that month.
Start with the audit
Free, and it may tell you not to botherIf the math does not work in your city, that is the answer, and it costs you 60 seconds to get it.
60 seconds to knowMonth to month after that, sized to what the verdict actually says you need.
Worth pursuing, after two fixes.
Your budget clears the floor for this category and market, and the rating is already at parity. The review gap is the whole job, and it is a known quantity: 141 reviews at a pace you can actually hold.
Feasibility score
68/ 100
What clearing top 3 actually costs.
You
41 reviews
Rating 4.6
Top 3 median
182 reviews
Rating 4.8
To close
141
8 a month is sustainable
141 at 8 a month
18 months
9 with paid acceleration
Spend floor
$1,800/mo
What the category costs to stay visible
Commitment
$32,400
Before it is defensible on its own
Your stated budget is $1,500 to $3,000 / month. The verdict above is that figure measured against the floor, not against the total: the commitment is what the floor adds up to over the time the gap takes to close.
Yours arrives with your own numbers: your review count against the three businesses actually sitting above you, what the gap costs at a pace you can hold, and a verdict that is allowed to say no. It runs on live Google data and takes about a minute.
A window cleaner in Utah Valley, one week later.
Not every audit comes back green. This one did, and here is what the owner did with it.
Recent local result
A window cleaning company in Utah Valley booked $28,440 in week one from a customer list that had been sitting idle for a year.
The audit said pursue. We built the system. The list did the rest.
This is for you if:
- You serve customers in a specific city or drive radius: trades, home services, contracting, professional services, retail, restaurant, clinic, or local B2B
- Customers find you by searching a service plus a place, or “near me” on their phone
- You already have a Google Business Profile, the listing with your hours, photos, and reviews on Google Maps, even if it is a mess
- You depend on the Google Maps top 3 to fill the pipeline, and you are not in it
- You have tried an agency or a tool and got reports instead of calls
Do not bother if:
- You sell online to the whole country. Ecommerce, national SaaS, and anyone without a service area cannot rank on a map. That is a different job, and it lives on the DTC page.
- You have no Google Business Profile yet. The audit reads the listing you already have. Email us and we will walk you through claiming it first, free.
- You want a “guaranteed top 3 in 30 days” promise. No honest agency offers this. The math does not work that way.
- Your monthly marketing budget is under $2,000 and you are not willing to wait until it grows.
- You expect rankings without changing anything on your site or your Google Business Profile. The work is on both ends.
Marketing budget over $10K/mo? You can apply directly instead of running the audit.
Roster cap: 5 active clients. Currently 1 Local opening.
I personally read every audit. Reply within 48 business hours.
The audit and the Strategic Review are free. If we work together after, pricing lands on your verdict, sized to what the math actually says you need. Not on this page.
Twenty years inside founder-led businesses. You work with me, not an account manager.
Find out where you actually stand.
The map shows three businesses. Fourth place means a customer has to tap “more places” to find you, and almost nobody does. AI assistants recommend a handful of local businesses, not all of them. There are only so many slots in either game. The audit tells you, with real numbers, whether you have a shot at one.
- Your business
- A competitor, rated 4.6 stars from 128 reviews
- A competitor, rated 4.4 stars from 93 reviews
Illustration. The audit pulls your actual top three, live from Google, with their real review counts.
P.S. If you scrolled this far, you have probably already searched your own category in your own city and seen who is sitting in those three slots instead of you. 60 seconds. Real numbers. We tell you whether to fight or walk. The cost of waiting another quarter is another quarter of those three getting your customers.