A local SEO audit is a check, in order of impact, of everything that decides whether a business shows up when someone searches for a service in its area: the Google Business Profile, the page it links to, consistent business details, reviews, rankings as searchers see them, and AI answers. On 11 November 2026 we ran one on 36 listings for dentists, plumbers and accountants in Milan, Bologna and Bari, in Italy: on 8 of 28 websites the phone number from the listing was missing, and 6 of the 36 listings led to a page that could not be read.
It usually starts the same way. The owner searches for their service from the shop counter, sees themselves at the top of the map and decides the listing is fine.
Except Google measures distance from the searcher, not from your counter. And the listing is only the first thing a customer passes through before they call.
The mistakes we see most often:
- checking the listing and never the page it sends people to;
- running a generic SEO audit built for websites, which ignores the map and the reviews;
- writing a 60-point list with no order, so the photos get fixed and the broken website link stays broken.
Here you will find:
- the test on 36 listings, check by check;
- the order to run the checks in, from the fault that loses you customers today to the polish;
- six blocks of checks, each with what to look at and where;
- the check almost nobody runs: what ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews say about you.
What a local SEO audit is (and what it sees that a website audit misses)
A local SEO audit checks how a business appears in results tied to a place: the local pack and Google Maps, organic results with a town name, and AI answers to "who does X in Y". A website SEO audit looks at crawling, indexing and content; the local one adds the listing, the details that must match everywhere and rankings seen from different neighbourhoods.
The two only overlap on the website, and even there they ask different questions. A local audit does not care how many alt texts are missing. It cares whether the page linked from the listing says where you are, which number to call and which services you offer in that area.
How local search works as a whole, with its three separate rankings, is covered in our local SEO guide. This page is about the checking.
What we found on 36 listings in Milan, Bologna and Bari (8 of 28 sites without the phone number)
The method, briefly. Using DataForSEO we took the 4 listings with the most reviews within 10 km of the centre of Milan, Bologna and Bari for three categories: dentists, plumbers and accountants. Only claimed listings with a website. We then downloaded, from a server and with a mobile user agent, the page each listing links to, and searched the code for the things a local audit checks. The data is Italian; the faults are not.
| Check | Result | Base |
|---|---|---|
| Linked page readable | 30 of 36 | all listings |
| Listing phone number on the page | 20 of 28 | readable pages, listing with a phone |
| Listing street on the page | 23 of 30 | readable pages |
| Tap-to-call link (tel:) | 16 of 30 | readable pages |
| Town in the page title | 11 of 30 | readable pages |
| LocalBusiness structured data or subtype | 8 of 30 | readable pages |
| Listing link still on http | 6 of 30 | readable pages |
| UTM parameters on the listing link | 1 of 36 | all listings |
| Listing with 5 photos or fewer | 5 of 36 | all listings |
The 6 unreadable pages deserve a line each, because no ranking tool will flag them:
- one listing points to a domain that no longer exists: the server cannot even resolve it;
- a Milan heating and plumbing firm with 437 five-star reviews links a domain that redirects, via JavaScript, to a Wix subdomain;
- a listing marked as temporarily closed links a Facebook page that returns an error;
- three sites return an almost empty page to anything that is not a browser, which includes some crawlers.
And among the listings that work?
The most useful case is a dental chain present in both Bologna and Bari. The Bologna listing links the national homepage, which shows neither the branch phone number nor its street. The Bari listing links the branch page, with address and number. Same brand, same website, two audits with opposite results.
The order of checks (what costs you calls today comes first)
A local audit is ordered by the cost of the fault, not by area. First the faults that block contact (suspended listing, broken link, wrong phone number), then what decides whether you appear, then what decides whether you get chosen, and finally measurement.
| Level | What you check | Why it comes first |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Contact | listing verified and not suspended, no duplicates, working website link, correct phone and hours | if it fails, you lose the customer who already found you |
| 2. Appearing | primary category, page linked from the listing, consistent name, address and phone | they decide which searches Google considers you for |
| 3. Being chosen | review pace, replies, photos, description, services | they decide who gets the call among the three pack listings |
| 4. Strengthening | structured data, directory citations, location pages, local links | they pay off once the first three levels are sound |
| 5. Measuring | UTMs on the listing link, profile performance, grid rankings, AI answers | without them, you cannot tell whether the work changed anything |
In our sample the website link, the first check in level 1, was broken on 6 of 36 listings. One in six. Before you talk about categories and reviews, open your own listing link on a phone.
Block one: the Google listing (ownership, duplicates, category)
Checking the listing starts with three questions: is it yours, is it the only one, and does it say the right thing? Google's guidelines for representing your business (checked on 11 November 2026) are explicit: "There should only be one profile per business", and you should "choose the fewest number of categories it takes to describe your overall core business".
- Ownership: who holds owner access? A former employee or a former agency is a risk, and it happens more often than you would think.
- Duplicates: search Maps for your name, phone number and address. If two listings come up, reviews and calls are split between them (how to find and merge them is in our guide to duplicate Google Business listings).
- Primary category: is it the service that earns you the most?
On that last question our sample was clear. Of the 12 listings found under the plumber category, only 3 use it as their primary category. The rest present themselves as boiler service, air conditioning, building firms or water damage restoration, and keep "plumber" as a secondary category.
That is not automatically wrong: a boiler service centre is right to say so. It becomes wrong when the revenue comes from plumbing repairs and the listing says something else. How to choose the primary category, with data on what the top three in the pack use, is in our guide to Google Business Profile categories.
Finish the block with opening hours, holidays included, and any suggested edits from users or Google waiting for review. The full list of fields is in our Google Business Profile optimisation guide.
Block two: the link between listing and website (where the phone number gets lost)
The page linked from the listing must confirm what the listing promises: same name, same street, same number, the service and the area. This is where our test found the most problems, and it is the step almost no checklist puts first.
What to check, in this order:
- Does the link open? On a phone, without cache. In the sample: a dead domain, a redirect to Wix, a Facebook page returning an error.
- Is the listing phone number on the page? It was missing on 8 of 28 sites: some showed a different number, some none at all.
- Can you tap it? A tel: link was there on 16 of 30 pages. Someone arriving from the map on a smartphone should be able to call with one tap.
- Is it the right page? 26 of 30 listings link the homepage. That is fine for a single-site business. A chain needs the branch page, as the dental chain shows.
- Is the address on https? 6 of 30 listings still link an http address. There is usually a redirect, but every extra hop is one more place for something to break.
If you have several branches or cover several areas, this is also where location pages come in: one per real branch, not thirty copies with the town name swapped.
One listing in six led to a broken page
In our test, listings with hundreds of reviews were not safe: one of the most reviewed in Milan leads to a JavaScript redirect. We start here: the listing, the page it links to and the phone number, before touching anything else.
Book a strategy callBlock three: structured data and consistent details (8 sites in 30)
LocalBusiness structured data tells Google, in a format that leaves no doubt, the business name, address, phone number and opening hours. In the sample, 8 of 30 sites had it, including subtypes such as Dentist, Plumber or AccountingService.
Google's Search Central documentation on local business structured data says you can add it to any page on your site, though it may make more sense on a page that contains information about your business. For the audit, that means the markup belongs on the page the listing links to, with the same details as the listing. Setting it up field by field is covered in our guide to LocalBusiness schema.
Then consistency beyond your site. Name, address and phone (NAP) need checking in the directories that matter: in the UK that usually means Yell, Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp and the portals in your sector. Which directories are worth the time is in our guide to local citations.
Is it worth fixing 40 directories? No. The top five in your sector, then stop: beyond that, the gain does not repay the hours.
Block four: reviews (compared with your category, not in absolute terms)
Reviews are checked against competitors in the same category and the same town, looking at how often new ones arrive and how you reply. The total on its own says nothing.
The sample shows it well. The four most reviewed dentists in each city range from 452 to 1,683 reviews. The four most reviewed accountants in Bari have between 4 and 17. An accountant in Bari with 30 reviews leads the local market; a dentist with 30 is far behind the leaders in their city.
What to record in the audit:
- how many reviews arrived in the last three months, for you and the top three in the pack;
- how many negative reviews have no reply;
- which words recur in the text: Google shows them as topics under the listing.
How to get more without breaking the rules is in our guide on how to get Google reviews; how to reply case by case, in the one on responding to Google reviews.
Block five: rankings as searchers see them (from many points, not your counter)
Map rankings need measuring from several points across your area, because Google orders the local pack partly by distance from the searcher. A single search from your office tells you where you rank for people in your office.
On its local ranking help page Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and that distance "refers to how far each business is from the customer who's searching". So the audit needs two measurements:
- the grid: the same search repeated across a mesh of points, using one of the local SEO tools that do it;
- the pack comparison: who the three listings ahead of you are, which category they use, how many reviews they gained in recent months (how the local pack works is covered separately).
If you work at customers' premises and do not receive visitors, add a check of your service area: hidden address and areas that match where you actually work.
Block six: measurement (one listing in 36 had UTMs)
An audit that leaves no measurement in place has to start from scratch next time. Step one takes two minutes: add UTM parameters to the website link in the listing, so map visits in Google Analytics are not mixed in with organic ones. In the sample, 1 listing out of 36 did it.
Step two is reading your profile performance data: calls, direction requests, website clicks, month on month. It is the most direct gauge of work on the listing, and it is already there.
AI answers are part of the audit (what ChatGPT and AI Overviews read)
When someone asks ChatGPT or Google "who does X in Y", the answer is built from listings, reviews, directories and websites: the same pieces you check in the blocks above. A local audit now includes a simple test: ask that question and note who gets named, and from which sources.
We saw it on this very topic. For "local seo audit" in the UK and the US, Google shows an AI Overview citing guides such as BrightLocal's, Reddit threads and YouTube videos; in Italy, for the Italian query, there was no AI Overview on 11 November 2026.
For a local business the practical point is this: consistent details across listing, website and directories improve the chances of being cited correctly, with no guarantees. Our full test, on nine city searches, is in the guide to local AI visibility.
How long it takes and how often to repeat it (a morning, then quarterly)
For a single site, in our experience, the first local audit takes a morning; for a chain, add the time to repeat blocks 1, 2 and 5 for each branch. The first round is the longest, because you build the list of competitors and directories.
After that, repeat it every quarter and straight after any change: a move, a new website, a new phone number, a new branch. Those are the moments when the broken links and wrong numbers we found in the test appear.
If you want someone else to do it, we went through market prices line by line in our article on what local SEO costs. If you want us to do it as part of an SEO project, we always start at level 1.
Frequently asked questions
No. A website SEO audit looks at crawling, indexing and content. A local one adds the Google listing, consistent name, address and phone number, reviews and rankings measured from several points in your area.
Yes. Blocks 1, 2, 4 and 6 only need your listing, a phone and Google Analytics. For grid rankings you need a dedicated tool, and for structured data some access to your website.
It depends: for the listing, website, reviews and performance data, no. To measure rankings from several points in your area, yes, because a search from your own office is not representative.
It depends on how much the map drives your enquiries: every quarter if it is your main channel, and always after a move, a new website, a new number or a new branch.
No, not on its own. It finds what to fix and in what order. Rankings change once the fixes are made, and distance from the searcher remains a factor you cannot control.
Yes. Open the website link from your own listing on a phone and confirm the page loads and shows the same number. In our test it failed on 14 of 36 listings, between unreadable pages and missing numbers.
In short (and the check worth more than the rest)
Contact first, then the map.
The page linked from the listing matters as much as the listing.
Reviews compared with your category and town.
Rankings measured from many points.
UTMs and performance data, or the next audit starts from zero.
The idea we take away from the test: the 36 listings were the most reviewed in their cities, yet 14 had a problem on the very first check, the website link or the phone number. A broken link on a listing with 400 reviews costs more calls than on one with 10. A local audit matters most to the businesses already at the top.
