📍 Google Maps Express Audit: What's Wrong and What to Do Next

📍 Why strategy cannot exist without diagnostics

Google Maps has long ceased to be just a navigator. For local businesses and service companies, it is part of the internet marketing funnel in Sweden: a person searches for a service, sees a card, compares ratings and photos, clicks ‘Route’, ‘Call’ or “Website” — and at that moment, you either get the customer or give them to your competitor.

The problem is that for many companies, the story goes like this:

‘We set up the listing a couple of years ago — and haven't really looked at it since.’ During this time, business hours, address, website, team, priority services may have changed, reviews may have appeared (and been forgotten), and competitors may have strengthened their profiles. As a result, the listing continues to exist, but loses traffic, trust and money — quietly and regularly.

An express audit of geoservices is a quick way to stop and ask a simple question:

‘Where exactly are we losing customers at the map level — and what can be fixed first?’

The purpose of the audit is not to ‘find a dozen more checkmarks in the settings.’ It is needed to:

• get an honest snapshot of the current state: how the customer and the algorithm see you;
• see the key points of loss — in data, visibility, content, reviews, analytics;
• understand whether maps have growth potential and whether it is worth investing in them as a channel.

What matters next is not the report itself, but what it turns into. A properly conducted express audit is the starting point for a meaningful 3-6 month strategy with priorities, KPIs, and a clear work plan, rather than hoping that things will get better on their own.

Express audit of geoservices is a brief but systematic ‘health check’ of your cards in Google Maps and other services. We don't delve into in-depth analytics for months ahead, but quickly answer the basic question: are you visible where your customers are, and are you losing trust due to errors in data, content, and reviews? Such an audit is necessary to soberly assess the starting point and understand whether it makes sense to continue investing in local promotion and strategy.

Express audit vs. ‘just looking at the map’

Most often, business owners ‘check’ maps like this: they open Google, see their location, a couple of reviews, “normal” stars — and that's where the diagnosis ends. This is a quick glance that answers only one question: ‘does the card exist or not’.

An express audit is a structured analysis based on a checklist. It's not about where to click, but about answering several key ‘business questions’:

• Are you even being found for the right queries?
• Not only by brand, but also by services, areas, ‘near me’.
• What exactly does a person see on the card?
• The name, rating, first photos, ‘open/closed’ status, hours, wording — and how it looks compared to nearby competitors.
• What causes mistrust or churn?
• Different addresses and phone numbers, old or strange photos, silence in reviews, discrepancies in opening hours.

The purpose of an express audit is not to confirm that ‘we're not doing so badly,’ but to honestly show where traffic and trust are currently being lost at the map level, so that we can then base our strategy on this rather than intuition.

Which platforms do we look at?

The express audit always focuses on Google Business Profile — this is the main entry point for most users who search for services via search engines and maps. This is where most calls, routes and website visits come from.

If necessary, we also look at other platforms: Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, industry and city directories. They complete the picture: in some places you may not be represented at all, in others the data differs from Google, which reduces the trust of both algorithms and customers.

It is enough to start with Google to quickly see the main problems and areas for growth. But it is important to understand that for sustainable results, you need to see the overall ecosystem of geoservices, not just a single map: it is the consistency of data and presence that gives the maximum effect.

Who can benefit from an express audit

An express audit is not a ‘toy for marketers’ but a working tool for different types of businesses:

• Small and medium-sized businesses with 1–5 locations.
• Cafes, salons, clinics, service companies, showrooms — those for whom every extra call and visit is noticeable in their daily revenue.
• Chains and franchises with dozens of locations.
• Here, it is important to understand which locations are dragging down overall visibility and reputation, where data is scattered, and where there is rapid growth potential without increasing the budget.
• Online services with a physical office or pick-up points.
• Even if the main part of the funnel is online, it is often maps that determine whether a person will come to the office, pick up an order, or use a service at the desired location.

Simply put, an express audit is useful for anyone for whom maps are not just a point on the screen, but a real source of customers, and who wants to understand the starting point first and then invest in a strategy.

An express audit is not a ‘quick comment based on impressions,’ but a short, structured check of several key areas: access and NAP, visibility and positioning, card design, reviews and reputation, and basic analytics. This analysis allows you to quickly understand not how something is technically configured, but where exactly you are losing impressions, clicks, and trust — and which areas make sense to work on first.

Basics: access, NAP, and technical aspects

In this section, we look at how much control you have over your cards. Who is the actual owner of the profile, are there any duplicates, is the pin on the map correct? A single NAP (Name, Address, Phone) between Google Maps, your website and directories is not just a formality: it determines whether algorithms trust you and whether customers are lost due to different addresses and phone numbers. If the database is inconsistent, any further promotion efforts will simply have nothing to build on.

Visibility and positions

The task here is to understand whether you are actually involved in the customer's real choice or not. We look at what types of queries you are visible for (brand, ‘nearby’, category), in which areas you appear and where you ‘fall through’, and how intense the competition is around you. This gives us an answer as to whether it makes sense to fight for increased visibility and where exactly the cards can generate additional calls and visits, and where the potential is limited.

Content and design

This section is about what a person sees in the first few seconds when they open your card: cover, photos, videos, descriptions, attributes. We assess whether the profile looks lively and understandable, whether the visual image matches reality, and whether the languages (SV/EN/RU) are suitable for your audience. The goal is to see whether the card's design helps to sell and inspire trust or, on the contrary, causes the customer to close the window and go to a competitor.

Reviews and reputation

Here, it is not only the number of stars that is important, but the story that the reviews about your business tell. We look at the volume and freshness of reviews, the tone and style of your responses, the presence of conflicts and obvious fakes. This allows you to understand how comfortable a new customer is with choosing you and how much your reputation is currently limiting your growth, even if everything else in the card looks good.

Analytics and goals

In this section, we check whether it is possible to measure the effect of cards at all. Are there UTM tags in the links, where do they lead, what actions are already being recorded: calls, route planning, website visits. The task is to understand what figures you can use to make decisions and how to link the work with geoservices to real business goals, not just abstract ‘visibility on Google Maps’.

An express audit is not an abstract ‘feel-based assessment,’ but rather a clear process consisting of several steps: from a short briefing to a report and discussion. Our task here is to distract you as little as possible from your operations, while gathering enough data to give you an honest picture of where you are losing applications and trust through Google Maps and other geoservices, and what the logical next steps are — whether to refine your cards or build a full-fledged strategy for 3-6 months.

Brief: what we need from the business

At the start, we don't ask for complex documents or access. We need a short brief: a list of locations, key categories, and languages in which you actually work with customers, as well as your goals — more calls, visits, online appointments, brand awareness growth, etc. This allows us to look at the cards not abstractly, but through the prism of your tasks.

Data collection

Next, we gather facts: what your cards look like, what is visible in search results, what reviews are visible, what photos and videos the customer sees in the first few seconds. If you already have data from Google Business Profile Insights and GA4, we connect them to assess what actions (calls, routes, website visits) the cards are generating right now.

Report generation

The results are compiled into a structured report. It includes a brief summary ‘for the owner’ and a detailed checklist by section: access and NAP, visibility, content, reviews, analytics. All recommendations are divided into two groups:

• quick fixes that can be implemented in the coming weeks;
• strategic tasks that require systematic work.

Feedback and discussion

The final step is to discuss the results: a conference call or correspondence where we go over the key conclusions and answer questions. Together, we rank the tasks by impact and complexity so that you don't just get a report to put on the shelf, but a living list of actions that can be incorporated into your marketing plan for the coming months.

An express audit is not an abstract ‘report for the sake of reporting,’ but a clear picture of how your cards are currently performing and where you are losing money. The result is a snapshot of the current state, a specific checklist of corrections, and an assessment of growth potential — that is, the basis for a meaningful decision: whether to limit yourself to minor adjustments or whether it makes sense to build a full-fledged strategy for the next 3–6 months.

Snapshot of the current state

The first thing an express audit gives you is a sober picture: where everything is fine and where there are real problems. You can see which queries and in which areas you are found, how your listing looks to customers and algorithms, and at which stage of the journey — from search to click — you are losing the most traffic and trust.

Specific checklist of corrections

Instead of a vague ‘something needs to be improved,’ you get a structured list of actions with priorities, broken down by level:

• Level A — things that should logically be corrected in the first week (critical errors in data, hours, duplicates, basic design).
• Level B — steps for the coming month: work with content, reviews, localisation, additional platforms.
• Level C — strategic improvements that require more time and resources but produce sustainable results.

This turns the checklist into a plan that can be worked on step by step, without trying to ‘fix everything at once.’

Assessing growth potential

A separate result of the audit is understanding why it is worth investing in maps in the first place. We show where there are quick wins that can add calls, routes, and visits in the coming weeks, and what the approximate effect of even a basic set of edits will be. This helps you decide whether to limit yourself to minor refinements or to include a full-fledged geoservices block in your strategy.

The report itself does not change anything — it only shows where you are currently losing traffic and trust in Google Maps and other geoservices. The real value comes when the results of the express audit are turned into a clear strategy for 3–6 months: with goals, priorities, and steps that can be integrated into your overall marketing plan, rather than a ‘one-time thing.’

Why you need a strategy after the audit

Simply ‘ticking off the checklist’ means returning to the same point in a couple of months. An express audit shows what is wrong, but without focus and priorities, the effect quickly gets lost in minor tasks. A strategy is needed to turn a set of observations into a conscious plan for change, taking into account your goals, the season, your resources, and the role of maps in your overall marketing system.

Formulating goals

The next step is to call a spade a spade: what exactly do you want to achieve? For businesses in Sweden, this most often means:

• an increase of X% in calls from Google Maps;
• growth in the share of ‘near me’ queries and local impressions;
• strengthening the brand in a new area or city where you are not yet well known.

A clearly formulated goal helps you understand which audit blocks are more important and which can be postponed.

Define KPIs and metrics

To prevent your strategy from becoming just a nice-looking document, you need measurable indicators. In local marketing, these are usually:

• the number of calls, routes, and clicks to the website from cards;
• the dynamics of reviews and average ratings;
• visibility and coverage for key queries and areas.

This way, you can see not only that you are ‘doing something with the cards,’ but also how exactly this affects customer behaviour.

Create a roadmap for 3-6 months

Based on the audit, goals, and KPIs, a roadmap is formed: tasks are broken down into sprints or months, and dependencies and priorities become clear. We separately note what it makes sense to do within the team (e.g., collecting feedback, part of the content) and what is more profitable to outsource — technical configuration, analytics, strategic support. As a result, working with geoservices ceases to be a one-off activity and becomes a manageable part of your marketing.

The same express audit can lead to completely different decisions — it all depends on who you are: a single point, a network, or a seasonal business. In this section, we analyse typical scenarios that arise from the audit: where it makes sense to focus on a single location, where to establish uniform standards for dozens of locations, and where to pay particular attention to seasonality and fluctuating demand. This helps you quickly recognise your business in the examples and understand which strategy format makes sense for you.

Maps should not exist separately from other marketing activities. If Google Maps and other geoservices generate calls, routes, and requests, they need to be linked to the website and SEO, advertising, CRM, and sales — in order to understand what part of the result is brought about by local presence. In this section, we will discuss how to turn cards into another controllable channel within the overall system, rather than a ‘side effect’ of digital marketing.

Linking to the website and SEO

Maps bring in ‘hot’ leads, and the website helps to convert them into applications.

For business, the logic is as follows:

• a card on Google Maps answers the question ‘go/call/open the website?’;
• the website answers the questions ‘what can you do’, ‘how much does it cost’, ‘why you specifically’.

When the website accepts traffic from maps normally (clear pages, local landing pages for regions/languages, unified NAP), you don't just ‘collect clicks,’ you get measurable applications and sales. Maps begin to work not separately from SEO, but as its continuation in local search.

Link with advertising

Advertising gives a surge of visibility, maps — a point of decision-making. Very often, a user:

1. sees your ad,
2. then types the name into the search engine,
3. clicks not on the ad, but on the card in Google Maps.

If the card is weak, you pay for advertising, and the customer goes to a competitor at the geoservices level.

An express audit before launching campaigns is necessary as a ‘general cleaning of the database’: to put data, reviews, and visuals in order so that advertising does not lead customers to chaos on the map, but rather reinforces an already adequately designed presence.

Linking to CRM and sales

To understand how much it is worth investing in maps, it is important to see not only impressions and clicks, but also leads in CRM.

• We record the source ‘Google Maps / geoservices’ in applications and calls;
• We compare this with data from GBP and analytics;
• Calculate how much revenue maps actually generate.

Then working with geoservices ceases to be a ‘marketing toy’ and turns into a full-fledged sales channel that can be compared to advertising, SEO, and other sources — and you can defend the budget for its development with numbers, not feelings.

When it comes to express audits and working with Google Maps, business owners almost always ask the same questions: ‘How quickly will I see results?’, ‘Do I need a website?’, ‘What should I do about bad reviews?’, ‘Can I do without a strategy?’. In this section, we have compiled short, straightforward answers to dispel any doubts and help you understand whether this format of working with geoservices is right for you.