Google and local search
Your Google listing decides it before they reach your website.
For a Thunder Bay business the listing, the photos, the hours and the reviews are the whole decision. The website is what they check afterwards, if at all.
Google, Apple, Bing and Yelp all carry you, and they usually disagree.
Google is the big one. The other three are the ones nobody checks, which is exactly why they are wrong.
Claimed, categorised, hours confirmed through every holiday, photographed regularly, every review answered.
Apple
Opens by default on an iPhone and answers to Siri. Does not read your Google listing. Free in Canada.
Yelp
Small on its own, but its data now reaches places well beyond Yelp itself, carrying whatever it has about you.
Bing
Almost nobody checks it, which is why the phone number there is often the one from two businesses ago.
Six local SEO fixes, in this order.
- The profile, claimed and complete.An unclaimed listing can be edited by strangers, and Google lets anyone suggest a change to your hours.
- The category.The single biggest lever on which searches you appear in, and the one most often left on something vague.
- Hours, including the holidays.Google puts a warning on listings that have not confirmed a holiday, and people do turn up to a locked door.
- Photos, added regularly.Not a batch from four years ago. A listing that stopped being photographed reads as a business that stopped caring.
- Reviews, answered.Every one, in your voice. Of everything on this list, this is the cheapest to fix and the most visible to the next person reading.
- The other three maps.Same name, same address, same phone number, character for character.
Getting named when somebody asks an AI.
45%
of consumers now ask an AI tool for local recommendations, against 6% a year earlier.
BrightLocal, March 2026 · n=1,002, US sample, no Canadian equivalent published
This is newer and worth being honest about. There is no setting for it, and Google says plainly that no special markup exists for their AI answers.
What does appear to matter is being accurate and consistent across the places these tools read, and having enough recent, answered reviews to be worth mentioning.
We can check whether you get named today, fix the accuracy and consistency underneath it, and check again in ninety days. We cannot promise a result, and anybody who does is guessing.
Questions
The questions that come up every time.
How long before we show up higher on Google?
The fixes themselves go in quickly. Where you rank on the map moves more slowly, over weeks and months, and part of it nobody controls, including how close the person searching is standing. Anyone who promises a position is guessing.
Do we need a website to show up on Google Maps?
No. The Google Business Profile is what appears on the map, and it is where most people decide. A website helps, but the listing comes first.
Can you get bad reviews taken down?
Only the ones that break Google’s own rules, like spam or reviews from people who were never customers, and we can flag those. Be wary of anyone who offers more. For the rest, what helps is a calm, specific reply, because the next customer reads that too.
Does any of this help with ChatGPT and AI answers?
It appears to, and we are honest that it is new. These tools lean on accurate, consistent listings and recent reviews, which is the same work. We check whether you get named today and again in ninety days.
Four platforms, checked in front of you.
Fourteen of the twenty-two points are about exactly this: the seven on the Google listing, the five on reviews, and the two that check whether the other platforms carry you and agree with each other.
The other halves: social media management, and the restaurant version of all of it on restaurants and bars. If you would rather do it yourself, start with what the Google listing actually does.
Book the 22-point audit