The 12-point local visibility check

Of the 187 factors Whitespark's 2026 study scored, primary category came out number one for the map pack. Not in the top ten. Number one.

Most businesses pick something close enough and never revisit it. "Contractor" instead of "Roofing contractor". "Plumber" instead of "Drainage service". Go look at the top three results for the search you want to win and check what they've chosen.

Score 0 if you can't remember what you picked, or you picked it in 2019.

Keywords in the business title is the third strongest factor in that same study, which is why so many businesses stuff them in. It also violates Google's guidelines and gets profiles suspended.

The honest version: use your real name. If your real name happens to contain what you do, that's a genuine advantage and you should use it consistently everywhere.

Score 0 if your profile says "Mike's Plumbing | Emergency Plumber Denver | 24/7 Drain Repair" and your van says "Mike's Plumbing".

"Business is open at the time of search" entered the top five map-pack factors for the first time in 2026. It came from nowhere. If you're closed when someone searches, you can be pushed out of a pack you'd otherwise rank in.

Check holiday hours too. A profile that says you're open on a public holiday when you're not generates a bad review, and a profile that says closed when you're open costs you the call.

Score 0 if you have no hours set, or you've never touched holiday hours.

Sounds trivial. It's the tenth strongest map-pack factor. Drag it and check. Pins drift, especially for businesses in industrial parks, strip malls, or anywhere with a shared address.

Score 0 if you've never looked.

"Keywords in GBP services" jumped 75 places in the 2026 rankings, from 110th to 35th. That's one of the biggest single moves in the whole dataset, and almost nobody has filled this section in.

It takes twenty minutes. List every service you actually offer, using the words a customer would use rather than the words the trade uses.

Score 0 if the services section is empty or has three generic entries.

31% of consumers now say they will only consider a business at 4.5 or above. A year earlier that number was 17%. 68% won't go below 4.0.

If you're sitting at 4.3, you're being filtered out by roughly a third of people before they've read a word.

Score 0 if you're below 4.0. Score 1 if you're between 4.0 and 4.5.

89% of consumers expect a response. 19% now expect it the same day, up from 6% a year ago. 81% expect it within a week.

Here's the part that matters more: 50% of consumers react negatively to a generic response. Which means the obvious fix, running replies through AI, actively works against you. Google also lists AI-generated profile content as a suspension risk in its own right.

Write four sentences yourself. It takes less time than reading this paragraph.

Score 0 if you don't reply, or you reply with the same three lines every time.

Not "sometimes when a job goes well". A repeatable step at the end of every job, with a direct link, sent the same day.

Review quantity is the ninth strongest map-pack factor and consumers now consult an average of six review sites before deciding. Volume compounds and it's the one input entirely within your control.

Score 0 if it's ad hoc.

The strongest factor for local organic rankings, ahead of links, ahead of everything. One page listing eight services will lose to eight pages.

Score 0 if you have a services page. Score 2 if you have a page per service, each written properly.

Test it on actual mobile data, not your office wifi. Most local business sites are carrying a page of unoptimised photos and four tracking scripts nobody remembers installing.

Score 0 if you haven't tested it.

Your site, your Google profile, Facebook, Yelp, industry directories, old listings you forgot about. Every variation is a small vote against you being one consistent business.

This one is boring and it has become more important, not less. Three of the top five factors for showing up in AI answers are citation-related.

Score 0 if you've changed address or number in the last three years and haven't done a sweep.

Open ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity. Ask each one for the best [your service] in [your town]. Do it three times, because the answers vary run to run.

Are you named? Is anything it says about you wrong?

45% of consumers now use AI tools to find local businesses, up from 6% a year ago. It's the third most-used tool for local recommendations, ahead of Yelp.

Score 0 if you've never looked.