Google Business Profile scorecard
Completeness across the fields Google's own guidance ties to local pack visibility — checked from your own profile.
Your profile, field by field
Business info tab — up to 9, beyond the one primary category.
Total across the Photos tab, not just a cover image.
Profile completeness
— solid base, but a few fields are costing free visibility.
Scores completeness, not ranking. Reviews, proximity and relevance still matter and aren't measured here.
A Google Business Profile isn't a one-time setup — it's a page Google keeps grading. Categories, photos, hours, answered questions and how recently it's been posted to all feed into whether it shows up in the local pack and how it looks once it does. Most profiles get claimed and then left exactly as they were on day one.
Where to find each field
Log into the profile at business.google.com. "Categories" sits under the business info tab — one primary category plus up to nine secondary ones; most trades only ever set the primary and miss free extra visibility from relevant secondary categories. Photos live under the "Photos" tab, counted by total uploaded, not just a cover image. "Hours" needs checking against what's actually true today, including holiday hours if there's a seasonal closure. The Q&A section sits on the public listing itself — anyone can ask a question, and if nobody from the business answers it, Google shows it unanswered to everyone who visits. "Posts" is a separate tab for publishing short updates, offers or photos, which Google's own guidance associates with more profile engagement.
A worked example
Claimed and verified (20 points), two secondary categories set (8 points), 8 photos uploaded (15 points), hours accurate (15 points), no Q&A answered yet (0 points), nothing posted in 30 days (0 points): 58 out of 100. The two zeros are the cheapest wins on the list — answering the existing questions and publishing one post takes under ten minutes combined.
What this isn't
This scores completeness, not ranking — a fully filled-in profile still competes on reviews, proximity and relevance, which this scorecard doesn't touch. It also doesn't check profile suspensions, duplicate listings, or category accuracy against Google's actual approved list, which changes over time. Cross-check the categories picker inside the profile itself for what's currently available, and re-run this check every few months rather than treating a good score as permanent — photos age, hours drift out of date over a bank holiday, and posts stop counting as recent the moment 30 days pass.
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