The free Google Business Profile Audit, read for an optometry practice. You work through twelve questions about the listing as it stands today, and the page returns a score out of 100 with the biggest gaps ranked. It grades the pin, not the site: the categories, the frame-board photos, and the reviews someone skims before spending a vision benefit.
Run the free tool ↓Put the listing on one screen and answer from what is there today, the optical side included, not from what you set up when the practice opened. Twelve questions, no signup and no email wall.
Prefer a full page? Open the Google Business Profile Audit tool here.
A few of the twelve decide most of an eye care listing.
The primary category. Optometrist is usually right and rarely the whole answer. A practice is a medical exam and a retail floor under one roof, and the primary names only one of them. Pick the appointment you most want on the book, then spend the secondary categories, six more points, on the rest: eye care center, optician, contact lens supplier, claiming only what your scope covers.
Services and products. Six points, and the one question that asks about goods and not just appointments. It wants both: contact lens fittings, dry eye visits, frames, lenses. One line reading eye care is a half answer, and it scores like one.
Photos. Ten points. What gets scrolled is the frame board and the person who will do the fitting, not a stock eye chart. A frame wall also dates itself, so a restock is a reason to add more.
Reviews and posts. Reviews take three of the twelve and are the heaviest block on the board. A practice on annual recall also gets a second ask most businesses do not have: the pickup, when the glasses fit right. The replies themselves get drafted over on the review response writer. Posts are ten more points, and the easiest ten to leave sitting there, though eye care demand runs on a benefit year: plans resetting in January, spending accounts expiring, exams before school starts.
The score is nothing but your twelve answers totalled, so use it as a punch list. Where you hesitated is the more useful output: if you had to ask the optician whether anyone has answered a review this year, that is the finding. Not sure on verification is the most expensive hesitation on the board, because verification carries the heaviest weight and an unverified listing leaves the other eleven little to sit on.
A strong result is dull: verified, every field filled, photos going up most months, reviews arriving and answered. A weak one is rarely a bad listing, just a correct one nobody has opened since the practice changed software: full marks on the fixed items, near zero on anything needing a cadence. Annual recall hides that for years, because the schedule looks fine until a new practice opens in the plaza.
Two cautions. What the list ranks is points given up, which is not the same thing as effort, or as what fills a lane next week. And it cannot see competitors, review text, or how far your pin sits from the searcher. Weighting for all twelve sits on the generic Google Business Profile Audit page. A benchmark score for eye care would have to be invented, so there is not one on this page.
Neither practice below exists. Read them for the shape of an output, not as a forecast for yours.
Say a solo optometrist with an optical up front answers all twelve. Verified, primary set to Optometrist, no secondaries, every field filled, the products menu done. Between eleven and fifty reviews, the newest from this year rather than this month, replies when someone remembers. More than ten photos, all from the remodel. Never posted, Q and A empty. The score lands in the sixties, and the fix list opens with posts, then the missing secondary categories, then Q and A. None of that is a project: the secondaries are a five-minute decision, and Q and A is writing down what the front desk says on the phone all day.
Now imagine an eye care center in a plaza, open eleven years, answering yes to nearly everything: verified, categories set, every field filled, more than fifty reviews with a new one this month, replies on all of them, photos monthly, posts weekly. It lands in the low nineties, and gives up points in exactly two places: a services and products list reading eye exams and nothing else, and an untouched Q and A. Both are places where the optical side would have spoken for itself. A good score does not mean nothing is left, only that what is left is specific.
An eye exam cannot be shipped. Frames and contact lenses can, and that half of the practice competes with sellers who keep no hours and hold no pin on any map. Your listing is the one result that has to carry both halves at once.
So a good listing reads as a practice you can book and a shop you can walk into: categories, products and photos naming both halves, a description saying plainly whether you are taking new patients, and a website field pointed at an appointment page rather than a homepage.
Then the filter patients run before any preference: coverage. In eye care that is two questions, because the routine exam and the medical visit often bill to different places. A listing is the wrong home for a carrier list; Q and A is the right home for the short version, with the linked page answering in plain text. The site the pin sends patients to is graded on its own by the website report card, and whether an assistant names your practice when someone asks it for an eye doctor is the AI visibility checker's question.
Most of the twelve cost attention and nothing else. Verification, the categories, the products menu and a seeded Q and A come to one afternoon with the listing open, and once they are done they stay done. Photos and posts are the other kind: a few minutes that have to keep recurring. Where one person runs the optical counter, the phone and the benefit checks, that is the item that quietly stops in month three.
Handing it over runs the other way. Ongoing local SEO with profile work inside it runs $1,500 to $3,500/month for most practices, and $3,500 to $7,500/month in competitive metros or multi-location groups. Month to month, with the listing and accounts in your name. First-party lead dashboards run on more than 20 of the sites we manage, so calls from the pin get counted rather than assumed. The service sits on the eye care page, the figures on the cost answer for optometry practices, and the budget question has a tool of its own, what should you pay.
The question asks whether your primary is the most accurate and specific one, and it takes your word for it. The working rule: the primary describes the appointment you most want to fill, and everything else you legitimately qualify for goes into the secondaries, which are scored separately.
The audit scores one listing and never asks about a second. The practical test is whether the optical is a separate business with its own staff, hours and door, or a counter in your lobby. A counter is one listing, and splitting it splits the reviews, which are three of the twelve questions here.
No, and it never reads your listing at all. Coverage shows up indirectly, in three of the questions it does ask: the completeness one, which includes your description, the services and products one, and the seeded Q and A one. Those are the fields a patient checking plans lands on.
It cannot, because the score never sees the text. Three questions cover reviews: how many, how recent the newest is, and whether you reply. Content still matters to the person reading, though. A review naming one person at the optical counter is what the next patient reads about the whole practice.
Because the score covers what you control on the listing and nothing else. It cannot see how far your pin sits from the searcher, and proximity is a real input no checklist repairs. It cannot see competitors either, and nothing here forecasts a position. The <a href="/blog/google-map-pack">map pack guide</a> has the mechanics.
Google Business Profile Audit: full tool page and methodology · Marketing for optometry practices · SEO cost for optometry practices · AI Visibility Checker for Optometrists · Website Report Card for Optometrists · What Should You Pay? for Optometrists · Review Response Writer for Optometrists · All free tools
Working the fix list once is a good afternoon, but the photo and post questions need somebody every month, and in a small practice that somebody is already at the optical counter. Kelly WM is Orlando-based, working with local service businesses nationwide since 2008, and we will build you a free concept mockup of the site behind your pin.
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.