Score your local visibility across Google Maps, your Business Profile, reviews, service pages and AI answers in about two minutes. See the jobs you’re missing, and get the fix in priority order. Your score is free, no email required.
The short answer
If you are not in the Google Maps pack for your service and city, it is almost always one of five gaps: an incomplete Google Business Profile, the wrong primary category, too few or too slow reviews, inconsistent business info across the web, or missing service and city pages. Score all five below and you will know exactly which one is costing you jobs, and in what order to fix them.
Your Google Business Profile is the single biggest lever for the map pack, and most contractors leave half of it blank. Claim and verify it, then get the primary category exactly right, because a roofer filed under general contractor competes in the wrong race. Fill every field: services with descriptions, service areas, hours, a real local phone number, and a steady stream of photos of finished work, which Google and homeowners both reward. Turn on messaging, answer questions, and post updates, because an active profile signals a real, current business. None of this needs a developer, and it is usually the fastest visible win, but it only holds if your name, address and phone match everywhere else on the web.
There is no magic number, and any agency that quotes you one is guessing, because ranking is relative to the other businesses in your city and category. If the three contractors above you have two hundred reviews and you have thirty, the total matters; if you are all in the same range, freshness and velocity decide it. That is the real lever: a steady drip of recent, detailed reviews that mention the service and the city beats a big pile of old ones. Ask every happy customer at the moment the job is signed off, make it one tap, and reply to every review, positive or not, because responses are a visible trust signal. Velocity you can control; a competitor’s five-year head start you cannot, so start the habit today.
Contractors are told two opposite things: build a page for every city, and never build city pages because they are spam. Both are half right. Thin pages that duplicate the same text with the city name swapped do get filtered and can drag the whole site down. Genuinely useful pages, one per real service and one per real city you serve, with local detail, specific projects, local reviews and honest specifics, help you rank for each combination without cannibalizing each other. The test is simple: if a page would still be useful with the city name removed, it is real; if it would be meaningless, it is filler. Build fewer, better pages tied to places you actually work, and interlink them sensibly.
This is exactly what the scorecard measures, and what a strong contractor presence covers in 2026. Work down it in order and your map position follows.
Local SEO is the slowest to start and the cheapest to sustain, which is why the smart move is to run paid while you build owned. Here is the shape of each.
| Channel | Speed | Exclusive? | Cost per job over time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angi / shared leads | Instant | No | Flat, rises as more share each lead |
| Google Ads | Days | Yes | Flat while you pay |
| Local SEO + GBP | Weeks to months | Yes | Falls, compounds, outlives spend |
Want the exact numbers for your business? Run them in our lead cost calculator, which shows your true cost per job across all three.
Most often the profile is unclaimed, filed under the wrong category, or suspended for an information mismatch. Claim and verify it, fix the category, and make sure your name, address and phone are identical everywhere. If it was suspended, that has to be resolved first.
Profile and review fixes can move the map pack within weeks. Service and city pages and citations compound over a few months. The point is that once it works, it keeps working, unlike paid leads that stop the day you stop paying.
No. AI answers and the map pack now settle many local searches before anyone scrolls, so being complete, well-reviewed and consistently cited matters more. The scorecard checks your AI visibility alongside the classic signals.
We will turn your score into a specific, sequenced plan for your trade and city, starting with the one gap costing you the most jobs. Free, no obligation.
Score my businessFor planning only; not a guarantee of specific rankings or results. Digital Success is the AI-era growth marketing arm of ISHIR.