Work through the details.
Tick a check after you review it. A tick means you looked at the item; it does not certify that it passed. Your ticks stay on this page and are not saved.
0 of 12 checks reviewed.
Start with the right business details
Give a potential customer a clear way to recognize and contact the business. Begin with records your team can verify.
Compare the name on your homepage, contact page, signs, and business profiles. Make a trading name and a legal name easy to understand when they differ. Correct old names or obvious mistakes.
Check the phone number, contact method, public address or service-area description, and opening hours. Have someone on your team confirm that the information reflects how you actually operate.
Be specific about the work you do
A useful question concerns a service you provide in a place you serve. A broad category alone can leave too much room for interpretation.
Write down your priority services in customer language. For example, water heater repair and water heater installation are different jobs. Use those details when choosing audit questions, and leave out work you do not provide.
State the places you serve and any practical limits on availability. Check that emergency, same-day, or weekend claims are accurate. Give people a useful answer instead of copying the same paragraph across a long list of cities.
Make the important information easy to find
Review the experience as a potential customer. The first job of a service page is to explain the service and the next step clearly.
Open the public page without signing in. Can you find the service, location, contact details, and next step? Check small text, broken menus, missing images, and any important information that appears only in an image.
Find the page or section that explains each priority service. Make sure a visitor can reach it through your navigation or a useful internal link. One clear, accurate page is a better starting point than a collection of empty pages.
Check whether public pages can be discovered
Ask your webmaster to check the pages meant for the public. Discovery and indexing are things to verify, not outcomes this checklist can promise.
Use the owner's verified Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools account to inspect important pages. Ask your webmaster to investigate unexpected access or indexing restrictions. Keep private pages private.
Check that the sitemap contains the public pages you want discovered and that navigation links reach the intended pages. Record broken links or outdated destinations. A submitted sitemap does not prove that a page was indexed.
Back up the story you tell
Useful content gives a reader something concrete to understand or verify. Start with your own work and the questions customers bring to your team.
Review service claims, qualifications, project examples, and business details. Use original examples that your team can stand behind. Correct unsupported or outdated statements instead of adding impressive-sounding claims.
Choose a question customers ask before hiring you. Explain the practical answer, including relevant price factors, limits, or preparation. Use what your team knows instead of repeating a generic answer already found everywhere.
Keep a record you can act on
An answer is an observation. Keep the evidence separate from your explanation of it and from the change you decide to make.
Record the exact question, product or model, date, location, answer, and cited sources. Keep questions that name your business separate from questions that do not. Check question sets and answer coverage before comparing percentages.
Write down the observed issue, the evidence, and one practical next action. Assign an owner and a date. First verify that the change was made correctly; a later change in an AI answer does not by itself prove what caused it.
Try three question patterns.
Replace the brackets with real details. These are example patterns, not measured popular searches. If you try them yourself, record the exact product and question instead of assuming every AI tool gives the same answer.
Who is the best [category] in [city, state]?
A discovery question from a buyer who has not named a business.Which [category] in [city] handles [service]?
A question about work you actually offer in a place you serve.What services does [business] in [city] offer?
A branded question. Keep its results separate from discovery questions.
An answer can name your business without citing your website. No answer returned is different from an answer that leaves you out. Our methodology explains how we keep those results separate.
From an observation to a useful action.
- What you observed
- A sample answer names another plumber. Separately, your team notices that your water heater page does not explain whether you offer repairs, installations, or both.
- What you can check
- Confirm the services with the team. Review what the page actually says. The missing detail does not establish why the AI named another business.
- A proportionate next step
- If the page is incomplete, describe the services accurately. Assign someone to check the updated page, record the date, and keep any later answer comparison in context.
This is a fictional example of the process, not a customer result.
Leave with one clear next step.
You can use the worksheet yourself or hand it to the person who maintains your website. Write down the page, the evidence, the action, the owner, and a date to check the work. Keep the task specific enough that someone can tell when it is finished.
This guide draws on Google Search Central guidance about useful original content and page discovery, Microsoft Bing guidance for local business information, and our published audit methodology. It does not guarantee crawling, indexing, recommendations, or leads.
Questions about the checklist? hello@topofanswers.com