# What Belongs on a Local SEO Checklist?

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> A local SEO checklist built on what Google says decides local rankings, plus listings, reviews, local pages and how AI assistants recommend local businesses.

- Canonical page: https://attensira.com/blog/local-seo-checklist
- Family: blog
- Last updated: 2026-10-04
- Author: Karl-Gustav Kallasmaa (https://attensira.com/blog/author/karl)
- Claims as data: https://attensira.com/claims.json?slug=local-seo-checklist

**In short:** A local SEO checklist covers what Google says decides local results, relevance, distance and prominence. Claim and complete your Business Profile, keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere, manage your directory listings, earn and answer reviews, build a page per location, mark it up, and check what AI assistants say when asked for a business like yours.

**Markets · a Tallinn plumber, Estonia in Estonian**

| Reading | From where | What the firm gets |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Tracked Google searches | Estonia, in Estonian | Daily positions, and whether an AI Overview appeared |
| ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI, Gemini | Read, but not from Estonia | Read daily, with a note that the answers may not be local |
| Claude | Its API, with "User location: EE" in the question | A labelled rate, not a local search |

_Example · worked example from the docs, Estonia as the primary market, 4 Oct 2026_

Local SEO is how a business with a place, or a service area, gets found by people nearby: in Google's map results, in the local pack above the organic links, in Maps, and increasingly in the answers AI assistants give when someone asks for "a good accountant near me". This checklist starts from what Google itself says decides local results, then adds the listings, reviews and pages that feed those factors, and the AI layer that most local checklists still leave out.

## What decides local rankings?

Google is unusually direct about this. Its Business Profile help pages say local results are based mainly on three things:

- **Relevance:** how well your Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.

- **Distance:** how far your business is from the person searching, or from the location in their search.

- **Prominence:** how well known your business is. Google adds that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking.

It also says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Every item on the checklist below feeds one of those three factors. Distance you cannot change, so the work is on relevance and prominence.

## What is on the local SEO checklist?

### 1. Is your Business Profile claimed and verified?

Claim your Google Business Profile and verify it. An unclaimed profile can be edited by anyone and shows less information. If you have several locations, give each its own verified profile.

**Pass:** the profile is verified, and every location has a profile of its own.

**Best source:** Google Business Profile

### 2. Does your primary category say what you are?

The primary category is the strongest relevance signal you control. Pick the one that describes what you are, not everything you do, then add secondary categories for real services. A dentist who lists "cosmetic dentist" as primary will show for different searches than one who lists "dentist".

**Pass:** the primary category names what you are, and every secondary category is a service you actually sell.

### 3. Is every field on the profile filled in?

Hours, holiday hours, services, service areas, attributes, a description in plain language, and photos of the actual place. Incomplete profiles give Google less to match a search against.

**Pass:** no field that applies to you is empty, and the photos show the place as it is now.

### 4. Do your name, address and phone match everywhere?

Your business name, address and phone number should read the same on your website, your Business Profile and every directory. Small differences, a suite number in one place and not another, an old phone number, a trading name in one listing, make it harder for search engines and AI assistants to be sure they are looking at the same business.

**Pass:** name, address and phone read character for character the same on the site, the profile and every listing you checked.

### 5. Are your directory listings kept to one version?

Directories feed each other and feed AI answers. Pick one canonical version of your details, then update the directories that matter: the general ones, the ones for your industry, and any that show up when you search your business name. Re-check them twice a year; old data has a way of coming back.

**Pass:** the directories that appear for your name and your category carry the canonical details, and the next re-check is in the calendar.

**Best source:** a search for your business name, and for your category in your town

### 6. Do you ask for reviews, and answer them?

Ask every satisfied customer for a review, make it easy with a direct link, and answer every review, good and bad, in a calm, specific way. Reviews feed prominence, and they feed what AI assistants repeat about you: BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey found 82% of consumers read AI-generated review summaries, and 23% would rely solely on them to make a decision.

**Pass:** asking is part of finishing every job, and no review from the last three months is unanswered.

### 7. Does each location have its own page?

One page per location, with the address, hours, the services offered there, directions, parking, and something specific to that place: the team, local photos, the neighbourhoods served. Do not swap the town name into the same text on twenty pages; that is a doorway page and it helps no one.

**Pass:** each location page says something true about that place that no other page on your site says.

### 8. Is each location page marked up?

Add LocalBusiness structured data (or the most specific subtype) to each location page, with the same name, address, phone and hours as the profile. The markup must match what the page shows.

**Pass:** every location page validates, and its markup matches both the page and the profile.

**Best source:** a schema validator

### 9. Do local sites mention you?

Local press, chambers of commerce, sponsorships, suppliers and partners that link to you or name you all add to prominence. These are also the pages AI assistants quote when asked for a recommendation in your area.

**Pass:** you can list the local sites that name you, and the local roundups that name your competitors and not you.

### 10. Is the profile kept current?

Use Business Profile posts for offers, events and updates, and keep photos current. Freshness matters less than accuracy, but a profile with photos from five years ago tells searchers something.

**Pass:** the hours, posts and photos describe the business as it is this season.

### 11. Do you track rankings from where your customers search?

A local ranking depends on where the searcher is, so a single rank number for "plumber" means little. Use a local rank tracker that checks from several points in your service area, and track the map pack and the organic results separately.

**Pass:** you read the map pack and the organic results separately, from more than one point in your service area.

**Best source:** a local rank tracker

### 12. What do AI assistants say when asked for a business like yours?

This is the step most checklists still miss. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI for "the best [your service] in [your area]" and similar questions, several times over several days, and note who they name and which pages they cite. The band below shows how many people already ask.

**Pass:** you know who the assistants name for your main service in your area, which pages they cite, and whether you are among them.

**Best source:** the answers themselves, asked repeatedly from your own area

## How many people already ask an AI for a local business?

BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults puts the AI layer in numbers. Nearly half have asked a generative AI tool for a local recommendation, and most read the review summaries AI writes. That is why check 12 sits on the same list as your Business Profile.

- **45%** used ChatGPT or other generative AI for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier (n=1,002 US adults)
- **82%** read AI-generated summaries of reviews (n=1,002 US adults)
- **23%** would rely solely on an AI review summary to decide (n=1,002 US adults)

BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, 1,002 US adults, 11 Feb 2026.

## How do AI assistants pick local businesses?

When an assistant answers a local question, it leans on the same kinds of sources it uses everywhere: directories, review sites, local press, roundups ("the 10 best coffee shops in..."), and threads where locals recommend each other. Your own website is where it checks what you do; the third-party pages are where it decides whether you are worth naming.

That has three practical consequences:

1. **Listings and reviews do double duty.** The same directory entry that feeds Google's prominence is a page an assistant may quote. Wrong hours on a directory become wrong hours in an answer.

1. **Local roundups matter.** If the "best of" articles for your town name competitors and not you, the assistant will too. A friendly, factual note to the author, with a reason you belong on the list, is legitimate work.

1. **Consistency is how you get recognised.** An assistant that sees three versions of your name may not connect them into one business.

## What if you serve customers at their address?

Plumbers, cleaners, movers and mobile services often have no storefront customers visit. Google handles them as service-area businesses: you set the areas you serve on the Business Profile and can hide your street address. The checklist still applies, with three adjustments.

- **Service areas, not a pin.** List the towns or regions you actually cover. Listing a whole country to look bigger makes the profile less relevant everywhere.

- **Pages per area only when there is something to say.** A page per town is worth it if the work, prices, regulations or response times genuinely differ there, or if you can show real jobs done in that area. Otherwise one strong service page and a clear list of areas does more than twenty thin ones.

- **Reviews that name the place.** A review that mentions the town and the job ("fixed a burst pipe in Tartu on a Sunday") is useful evidence to a reader and to an assistant asked for someone in that town.

## What does a service-area fix look like on the site?

An example pull request for the Tallinn plumber: the site's markup names the towns the firm serves and carries the same hours as its Business Profile, so the page and the profile stop disagreeing. It merges only when the owner approves it.

**example-plumber/site #38: Name the service area and match the profile's hours in the LocalBusiness markup**

`app/teenused/torutood/page.tsx`
```diff
 "@type": "Plumber",
 "name": "Example Torutööd OÜ",
-"openingHours": "Mo-Fr 08:00-17:00",
+"openingHours": ["Mo-Fr 08:00-18:00", "Sa 10:00-14:00"],
+"areaServed": ["Tallinn", "Harku vald", "Viimsi vald"],
 "url": "https://example.ee/teenused/torutood"
```

_Example · example markup fix, not a customer site_

## What are the most common local SEO mistakes?

- **Keyword-stuffed business names.** Adding "Best Cheap Plumber Tallinn" to the profile name breaks Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended.

- **Duplicate profiles.** Two profiles for one location split reviews and confuse everyone. Merge or remove the duplicate.

- **Fake or incentivised reviews.** Against the platforms' rules, easy to spot, and a lasting risk.

- **Ignoring the bad review.** An unanswered complaint is read by every future customer, and by every assistant that summarises your reviews.

- **A website that disagrees with the profile.** Different hours or a different phone number on the site tells everyone, people and machines, that one of them is wrong.

## What should you do first?

If you only have an afternoon, do these four things in order. Together they touch all three of Google's factors and show you where the AI layer stands.

| Step | What you do | What it feeds |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Verify the Business Profile and fix its primary category | Relevance |
| 2 | Make name, address and phone identical on the profile and your site | Prominence, and whether an assistant connects the two |
| 3 | Answer every unanswered review | Prominence, and the review summaries assistants write |
| 4 | Ask three AI assistants who they recommend for your main service in your area | Your baseline for check 12 |

## What does the AI step look like for a business outside the US?

A worked example. Take a plumbing firm in Tallinn that wants to know whether ChatGPT recommends it for "torulukksepp Tallinnas" (plumber in Tallinn), and set it up in Attensira with Estonia as its market and Estonian as its language. The table at the top of this page is what the product would and would not read for it, as of 4 October 2026.

Walk it row by row. The tracked Google searches are read from Estonia, in Estonian, because Estonia is one of the 14 countries with its own search location: the firm gets daily positions and a record of whether an AI Overview appeared. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI and Gemini are a different story. Estonia is not among the 42 countries those engines can be read from locally. Because Estonia is the firm's primary market, they are still read every day on every model, just not from Estonia, and each carries a note that its answers may not be local; the Estonian readings are also never compared with another market on those engines. Had Estonia been a second market added beside, say, Finland, those four engines would instead show "not measured" for Estonia, with the reason, and never as zero. Claude is read through its API with "User location: EE" stated in the question, which tells the firm how Claude answers someone who says they are in Estonia; it is labelled as exactly that, not as a local search.

Two lessons carry over to any country. First, check where each number was read before you trust it; an answer read from another country is a different answer. Second, for a market the tools cannot read locally, check 12 by hand, asking the assistants from a phone in your own town, is still the most honest local reading you have.

## What would the crew hand a local firm?

An example of the Inbox for the Tallinn plumber. The crew drafts the page rewrite and waits for a yes, asks the owner for the fact only the owner knows, and leaves local directories to the owner, because its prefilled forms cover software directories only.

**Inbox**

- **Approve** (writer): Rewrite the opening of your Tallinn service page
  The draft says what you fix, where you work and when you answer the phone in its first two sentences, the passage an assistant can quote.
- **Answer** (copywriter): Do you take emergency call-outs on Sundays?
  Answers disagree about it. Your answer is saved to the business profile the crew writes from.
- **Do** (outreach): Correct your hours on the local directory answers quote
  Prefilled listings cover software directories such as G2 and Capterra, not local ones, so this one is yours to update. Press Done when it is changed.

_Example · worked example, not a customer workspace_

## What can Attensira do for a local business, and what can it not?

We will be precise here, because local is a place where tools overclaim.

**What it does.** Attensira reads the questions your buyers ask on AI engines every day and records who each answer names and which pages it cites. It reads them country by country: a workspace can hold up to five markets, each a country with an optional language, so a business serving Germany and Austria can read the German questions in German. It reads tracked Google searches daily as a desktop search in your workspace's country and language, and records whether an AI Overview appeared. Fourteen countries have their own search location today, among them the US, the UK, Germany and India; a workspace in any other country is searched from the US, in English, and every reading records where it was searched. Its agents then do the work on the pages that decide your answers, and directory listings it prepares always wait for your yes.

**What it does not do.** It does not read answers or rankings at city or neighbourhood level, and it does not read Google's map pack. If your customers search "near me" within one city, pair a dedicated local rank tracker for the map results with Attensira for the AI answers. Its prefilled directory forms are software directories such as G2 and Capterra; local and industry directories are ones you file yourself.

If you serve several countries, the [markets docs](https://docs.attensira.com/tracking/markets) show how to read each one in its own language.

## FAQ

### What are the most important local SEO ranking factors?

Google names three, relevance (how well your Business Profile matches the search), distance (how far you are from the searcher) and prominence (how well known you are, including reviews and ratings). It also says there is no way to pay for a better local ranking.

### How do I manage business listings across directories?

Pick one canonical version of your name, address, phone, hours and categories, then update every directory to match it, starting with the ones that show up when you search your business and your category. Re-check them twice a year, because directories pull data from each other and old details creep back.

### Do reviews affect local rankings?

Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. Reviews also shape what AI assistants say, and BrightLocal found 82% of consumers read AI-generated review summaries. Ask every satisfied customer, and answer every review, especially the bad ones.

### Do AI assistants recommend local businesses?

Yes, and increasingly. BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found 45% had used ChatGPT or other generative AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% the year before. Ask them for a business like yours in your area and see who they name.

### Can Attensira track local rankings for my city?

Not at city level. Attensira reads AI answers country by country, in up to five markets per workspace and in the language buyers there use, and reads tracked Google searches from the workspace's country where that country has its own location (14 do today; others are searched from the US, in English). A primary market outside the 42 countries where ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI and Gemini can be read from a local browser is still read on every model, with a note that those answers may not be local; a second market outside that list is shown as not measured on those engines, never as zero. It does not read city-level map packs, so pair it with a local rank tracker if the map pack is your main channel.

## Sources

Each entry below is one claim on this page. `retrieved` is the date the exporter or a human last saw the source say this, and nothing more: it is not a publication date and not a promise of re-verification. `cite` is the anchor on the canonical page where this claim is rendered.

### attensira-local-ai-countries

Attensira reads ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI and Gemini from a browser in a market's country only in a fixed list of 42 countries. A primary market outside the list is still read on every model, exactly as before, but the consumer models' answers there may not be local, and a note says so.

- source: https://docs.attensira.com/tracking/markets (docs.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/local-seo-checklist#claim-attensira-local-ai-countries
### attensira-secondary-market-gap

In Attensira, a secondary market that a consumer model cannot be read from is a gap: no call is made, and it is shown as not measured, with the reason, never as 0%.

- source: https://docs.attensira.com/tracking/markets (docs.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/local-seo-checklist#claim-attensira-secondary-market-gap
### attensira-claude-location-stated

Claude is read through its API with the location stated in the question (for example "User location: DE"), and is labelled as not a local search.

- source: https://docs.attensira.com/tracking/markets (docs.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/local-seo-checklist#claim-attensira-claude-location-stated
### google-local-ranking-factors

Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, that more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

- source: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091 (support.google.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/local-seo-checklist#claim-google-local-ranking-factors

> There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.
### brightlocal-ai-local-45

In BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US adults, published 2026-02-11), use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% to 45%; 82% read AI-generated review summaries.

- source: https://www.brightlocal.com/research/local-consumer-review-survey/ (www.brightlocal.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/local-seo-checklist#claim-brightlocal-ai-local-45
### attensira-markets-country

An Attensira market is a country, optionally with a language; a workspace, topic or prompt can hold up to five markets, and each prompt is read on every model from each market.

- source: https://docs.attensira.com/tracking/markets (docs.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/local-seo-checklist#claim-attensira-markets-country
### attensira-rank-tracking-countries

Attensira's rank tracking runs each tracked search as a desktop Google search in the workspace's country and language; 14 countries have their own location (the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, India, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Estonia), and a workspace in any other country is searched from the US, in English.

- source: https://docs.attensira.com/measure/google-search (docs.attensira.com)
- retrieved: 2026-10-04
- cite: https://attensira.com/blog/local-seo-checklist#claim-attensira-rank-tracking-countries