The air quits on a Saturday afternoon and nobody reads a website. The homeowner searches, looks at three map results, and calls whichever one looks like it will answer. This audit scores your Google Business Profile out of 100 on twelve things you control, then hands back the gaps in the order they are worth fixing.
Run the free tool ↓Have the live profile open beside this page and grade what a homeowner sees today, not the setup you remember from three summers ago. Twelve questions, a few minutes of your time, no signup and no email wall. The score and the ranked fixes print below the moment the last answer lands.
Prefer a full page? Open the Google Business Profile Audit tool here.
The audit asks every business the same twelve questions. In this trade the damage is lopsided: a few decide a no cooling call at nine at night, a few decide a changeout bid three weeks later.
The number lands in one of three bands: needs work under 60, decent with gaps up to 84, strong at 85 and up. Where the points came off tells you more than the total, and in this trade they come off on a schedule.
A strong result reads like a maintenance log: verified, one accurate primary category, hours that match whoever actually picks up after six, a photo added since the last season change, a review dated inside the last few weeks, posts going out without anybody chasing them. A weak result almost never belongs to a careless contractor. It belongs to a busy one, because demand at both ends of the year leaves the profile shaped like the calendar: two clumps of reviews around the heat wave and the freeze, a gallery dated the year the trucks got lettered, and nothing in between. That empty middle costs you, because the shoulder months are when replacement bids get compared side by side, and by April the newest thing on your profile can be nine months old.
The limits, plainly: this is self reported and never touches your listing, so it cannot see competitors, rankings, review text, or how far your pin sits from the house that is calling. How the weights and the fix order work sits on the general Google Business Profile audit.
Two invented shops, with round answers on purpose.
Say a three truck residential shop. Verified, primary category right, roughly 30 reviews. No secondary categories, hours still showing the Saturdays they stopped working, no description, a handful of photos left over from the wrap, newest review from July, no replies, no posts, two services listed, no Q and A, messaging off. It comes back at 44, well down in needs work, and the fix list prints six items: post weekly, fill every field, add photos monthly, reply to every review, add secondary categories, seed the Q and A. Review recency does not make that top six, which is the quiet trap: it is one of the first things an October shopper notices.
Now imagine the company across town that sells changeouts. Over 50 reviews, the newest from this month, every one of them answered, photos going up monthly, no blank fields, messaging actually watched. It scores 79, decent with gaps, five items off. The largest is the primary category, still the repair listing from the years before there was an install crew, then occasional posts, an empty Q and A, a thin services list, one secondary category where there should be several. A company can do the hard parts and still be sorted into the wrong half of its trade by one dropdown.
Three people read the same profile, and each one stops at a different corner of it.
No cooling, in July, on a phone. Decided in minutes. Does it say open now, is the number one tap away, is there a review recent enough to prove somebody is still working, and does the truck in the photo look like a truck that exists. Hours left over from an older schedule are how that call ends up at the next result instead.
A replacement, over three weeks, next to two other profiles. That reader wants install work visible in the photos, the systems named in the services list instead of bundled as heating and air, and the questions nobody asks out loud answered in the Q and A: financing, whether the estimate is free, how long the labor warranty runs.
A tune up, in the shoulder months. Small ticket, and the only one of the three you can go out and get when nothing is breaking. If the maintenance agreement is not in the services list with a plain description, it is not on the profile at all, and the quiet weeks are when somebody would have signed up.
The profile itself is covered on Google Business Profile and the ongoing work on local SEO. The website that pin points at gets its own score from the website report card for HVAC companies, whether an assistant names you at all from the AI visibility checker, and what we build for contractors is on the HVAC page.
None of this needs an agency. A post a week, ten photographs that are actually of your own work, a services menu written out line by line, and a Q and A you seed yourself add up to roughly an hour a week. The honest problem is scheduling that hour. It does not exist in July, it does not exist during a January cold snap, and it sits wide open in April.
If you would rather it were somebody's job, ongoing local SEO runs $1,500 to $3,500 per month for most businesses, and $3,500 to $7,500 per month in competitive metros or for multi location operations. Month to month, no long term contract, and the profile and the accounts stay in your name. The full breakdown sits in what SEO costs.
Kelly WM is Orlando based, working with local service businesses nationwide since 2008, and this audit is one of more than 50 free tools published at kellywm.com/tools, none behind an email wall.
No. None of the twelve questions asks for a street address, so a hidden one costs you nothing, and it is the normal setup for a trade that works at the customer's house. The pin under that hidden address still sits somewhere, and proximity is a real input this audit cannot see or fix.
Pick the one that matches most of what you actually sell, then add the rest as secondary categories. A shop whose revenue is mostly summer repair and a shop that mostly sells replacement systems should not carry the same primary, even on the same street. Choosing one does not throw the other away.
Because count and recency answer different questions. Fifty reviews from two heat waves ago still earn the count, and recency is where a seasonal profile hands points back. It bites hardest in the months you are not busy, when replacement shoppers are reading three profiles against each other. Ask on maintenance visits too.
The quiet months are the easy ones. A pre season tune up, a finished changeout with a photo, what a duct repair actually involved, a plain note on how rebate programs work without quoting amounts that change by year and by utility. Posts carry ten points, the same weight as your primary category, and April is the month there is time to write one.
No, and nothing here promises that. The twelve questions cover the parts of the profile you control. Distance from the homeowner searching is a real input the score cannot see, and a competitor whose pin sits closer to that neighborhood can beat a better kept listing. Use it as a punch list, not a forecast.
Google Business Profile Audit: full tool page and methodology · Marketing for HVAC companies · AI Visibility Checker for HVAC Companies · Website Report Card for HVAC Companies · Review Response Writer for HVAC Companies · All free tools
Fix the top three items on your list during the next quiet stretch, because whatever the profile looks like when the first heat wave lands is what it looks like all summer. If you want a second opinion on the number, send it over, and a free concept mockup of the homepage behind that pin is yours whether you do or not.
Book a free consultation → Or call/text directly: (407) 694-2055Tell us a little about the business and we will come back with an honest read: what we would fix first, what it costs, and whether you need us at all. Prefer to see work before you talk numbers? Get a free homepage mockup, built for your business, yours to keep either way.
Brandon reads every one of these himself. You will hear back shortly with an honest read on what we would do first, what it costs, and whether it is worth it for you.