GBP Profile Health Check

What a GBP Health Check inspects

A GBP Health Check inspects your Google Business Profile field by field and flags everything that's missing, thin, or actively hurting you — then grades each flag by how much it's costing you. It matters because your profile is the single strongest signal for both outcomes that drive local revenue: showing up in the Google map pack, and being named when someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation in your area. A thin profile suppresses both at once. This check tells you, in plain terms, what's wrong and what to fix first.

How we grade your Google Business Profile

We grade your profile across the categories Google actually weighs:

• Categories — whether your primary category is the most accurate one and whether you're using relevant additional categories. The wrong primary category alone can keep you out of the pack.
• Services — and how granular they are. "Plumbing" is weak; "tankless water heater install," "sewer line camera inspection," and "emergency 24/7" are what both Google and AI booking agents read to match you to a query.
• NAP accuracy — name, address, phone on the profile itself, and whether they match the rest of your web presence.
• Hours — regular and special/holiday hours. Missing or wrong hours is both a ranking and a trust problem.
• Photos — volume and recency. Profiles with photos under 30 days old signal an active business.
• Posts and activity — whether you're posting regularly; dormancy is a negative signal.
• Reviews and response rate — review presence and whether you're replying, which Google reads as engagement.
• Attributes and Q&A — completeness of attributes and whether common questions are answered.

How to read your GBP health flags

The output isn't a single number — it's a list of flags grouped by severity, because a missing primary category and a missing holiday-hours entry are not the same problem:

• 🔴 Critical — directly suppresses ranking or eligibility: wrong/missing primary category, NAP mismatch, suspended-risk issues. Fix these first; nothing else compounds until they're clean.
• 🟡 Warning — meaningfully limits performance: thin services list, no recent photos, dormant posting, low review response rate.
• ⚪ Minor — polish that helps at the margin: additional attributes, extra photos, Q&A seeding.

Work top-down. A profile with three critical flags won't be rescued by perfect attributes.

What's in your GBP Health Check report

Your completeness score and the specific fields that are missing or incomplete, with the recommended fix for each — plus a short note on how the critical flags are likely affecting both your map-pack ranking and your AI recommendation odds. It's a prioritized punch list, not a score you have to interpret.

Why Google Business Profile health drifts

Profiles decay quietly. Google adds fields and categories you haven't adopted; hours go stale around holidays; photos age; a service you stopped offering lingers; Google occasionally edits your info via user suggestions. Re-run this quarterly at minimum — and any time your rankings dip — so drift gets caught before it costs you.

How to fix your GBP health flags

Critical flags are usually fast: correct the primary category, reconcile your NAP everywhere it appears. Warnings are where the competitive work lives — expand services to match what rivals list, refresh photos, restart posting. Because a thin profile also suppresses AI recommendation, fixing these flags is often the fastest lift to your AI Visibility score too — they share the same root signal. To clean up NAP across directories rather than just on the profile, pair this with a citation audit. Managing many locations? The API returns profile-health data per location so you can triage a portfolio by who has critical flags.

Frequently asked questions