Diners search, tap the map, and pick from the first few pins, often without your website loading. This audit scores your Google Business Profile out of 100 on twelve things you control, from your cuisine category to whether the menu is listed, then sorts what to fix first.
Run the free tool ↓Pull your listing up in another tab and answer twelve questions about it: categories, hours, photos, reviews, posts, menu, Q and A, messaging. About two minutes, and the score and fix list appear right here, with no email wall.
Prefer a full page? Open the Google Business Profile Audit tool here.
Verification leads at 15 points, worth checking rather than assuming: restaurant spaces turn over, and the last tenant's pin can still be sitting on the map at your address.
Three bands come back: strong at 85 and up, decent with gaps from 60 to 84, needs work below 60. Read the fix list before the number. Restaurants collect review count and recency almost passively, 18 points a plumber has to chase, so a listing nobody has touched since opening week scores better than it deserves.
A strong result is boring: verified, cuisine-specific category, hours that match this week, photos added this month, the menu listed as items, somebody posting the special. A weak one is rarely a neglected listing, but one set up carefully the week the doors opened and left alone since.
It is self-reported: it never reads your live listing and cannot see competitors, rankings, or how far your pin sits from the searcher, a real input on a crowded block that nothing here moves. The weights and the fix order are on the general Google Business Profile audit.
Both restaurants below are made up, with round numbers.
Say a neighborhood taqueria answers the twelve questions. Verified, contact fields filled in. More than 50 reviews, newest this week, replied to sometimes. Twelve photos, all from the year it opened. Category set to Restaurant. No secondary categories, no menu items, no posts, no Q and A. That comes back in the fifties, the bottom band, on reviews most trades would take. The fix list, sorted by points given up: weekly posts, the specific category, secondary categories, the menu, Q and A, photos.
Now imagine a brunch spot with two rooms across town, running the audit on the original listing, since each location gets its own run. It posts weekly, replies to everything, adds photos monthly, and seeded its Q and A. It scores in the low nineties, strong band. Three items still came off, the biggest being completeness: those hours have not moved since the patio was built, and the kitchen stops seating an hour before the posted close. A strong band still hides the field that sends a table of six to a dark dining room.
Nobody fills in a form to eat. They tap directions, tap call, tap order or reserve, and the decision often ends inside Google. The listing is not the top of a funnel here, it is the storefront, open at eleven at night when the kitchen is not.
Thin margins make the second point. An order routed through a delivery marketplace hands over a cut, and a table booked through a third party carries somebody else's terms. A profile whose website field and buttons point at your own pages sends that tap somewhere you pay no commission. What we build for restaurants is on the restaurants page.
The site behind the pin is graded by the website report card for restaurants; whether an AI assistant names you when somebody asks where to eat belongs to the AI visibility checker for restaurants. The profile sits under Google Business Profile, ongoing work under local SEO.
None of it needs an agency. A week of specials posted from a phone, the menu typed in once, ten photos shot before service: front-of-house work, and on restaurant margins the free version is often the right call.
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 multi-location groups. Month to month, no long contract, and you own the profile and the accounts. Restaurant figures sit on what SEO costs for a restaurant, the budget question on what should you pay, for restaurants.
Kelly WM is Orlando-based, working with local service businesses nationwide since 2008. This audit is one of more than 50 free tools at kellywm.com/tools, none behind an email wall.
Yes, ten points, one of the heaviest questions behind verification. Restaurant is the generic pick and earns partial credit. The specific one names the food: taco restaurant, ramen restaurant, brunch restaurant. That choice sets which searches your listing can match, so spend the five minutes.
Your menu. The question asks whether items are listed on the profile itself, with descriptions and prices, not whether a menu exists somewhere. A PDF link is a different thing. Six points, and it is what gets read at a red light.
Ten or more to start, then a few every month, since cadence is scored as well as count. Shoot the plates you serve now, the room with people in it, the bar, the patio. Customers upload their own, and yours are the ones you control.
No. It never reads your live listing, so completeness scores whatever you tell it. That is the honest limit, and it is why hours deserve a look before you answer. Set special hours ahead of the closings, and post a close that matches the last seating.
The questions that decide where a group goes: parking, whether you take reservations, the biggest party you can seat, gluten-free and vegan options, high chairs, whether the patio takes dogs. Five points, and the cheapest work on the list. Answer them before somebody guesses.
No, and nothing on this page forecasts a ranking. On a block with a dozen kitchens, distance from whoever is searching does a lot of the work, and a place two doors closer can sit above a better-kept listing. It covers the fields you fill in yourself, not your competitors, your review text, or where you rank today.
Google Business Profile Audit: full tool page and methodology · Marketing for restaurants · SEO cost for restaurants · AI Visibility Checker for Restaurants · Website Report Card for Restaurants · What Should You Pay? for Restaurants · Review Response Writer for Restaurants · All free tools
Knock out the top three items on your fix list, the ones that fit between lunch and dinner service, then decide if the rest is worth handing off. If you want a look at the site behind the pin, ask for a free homepage mockup, yours to keep.
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.