I search local businesses in this area every single week. It's part of what I do. And I keep seeing the same problems come up, over and over, whether I'm looking at a contractor in Groton, a restaurant on Bank Street in New London, or a service business somewhere out in Waterford.
Some of these businesses are doing okay. A few are doing really well. But most of them are leaving calls and customers on the table due to simple, fixable issues with their Google Business Profile.
In competitive handgun shooting, there's a concept that sounds obvious but takes discipline to actually apply: you don't fire until you've got a clean sight picture. You don't rush. You fix your fundamentals first, then you take the shot. Local SEO works the same way. Before you spend a dollar on Google Ads, before you think about social media, you need a clean sight picture on your Google Business Profile. It's your most important piece of digital real estate.
Here's what I find wrong with most of them.
This one sounds like a small thing. It isn't. When a potential customer searches for a plumber in Groton or a restaurant in Mystic on a Saturday morning and your Google Business Profile says you're closed, or shows no hours at all, they click somewhere else. That's it. You just lost them.
I recently reviewed a range of business listings and found that many had outdated or missing hours, and some profiles had not been updated in years. In several cases, businesses displayed identical hours every day of the week, even though their operating hours differed on weekends.
If you haven't checked your hours in the last six months, do it today.
Google gives you 750 characters to describe your business. The vast majority of businesses either leave it blank or write something like "We provide quality service to our customers." That sentence tells Google and your potential customer nothing.
Your description should include what you do, where you do it, and who you do it for. If you're a landscaper serving New London, Waterford, and East Lyme, say that. If you specialize in hardscaping or irrigation, say that. You've got space to use. Use it.
The description isn't a direct ranking factor the way some other factors are, but it helps Google understand your business and helps a customer trying to decide between two listings make the right call.
Your primary category on Google Business Profile is one of the most important decisions you make. It directly affects which searches you show up for in the Map Pack.
I see businesses in the New London area that have picked something close but not quite right. A general contractor should be listed as "General Contractor," but is listed as "Construction Company." A family dentist is listed as "Dental Clinic" instead of "Dentist." These distinctions matter more than most people realize.
Beyond the primary category, most businesses aren't using secondary categories at all. If you own a restaurant in downtown New London that does catering, add catering as a secondary category. If you're a plumber who also installs water heaters, that secondary category could be the difference between showing up for a very specific, high-intent search and not.
Your Google Business Profile should have recent, actual photos of your business. Exterior shots. Interior shots. Your work, if you're a contractor or tradesperson. Your food, if you're a restaurant.
I've looked at businesses with zero photos uploaded. I've looked at others where the only photos are blurry cell phone shots from 2017. And I've seen businesses where the photos that show up prominently are ones customers uploaded, which you have zero control over.
When someone is deciding between two businesses, and one has a dozen good photos and one has none, they're picking the one with photos. Every time.
You don't need a professional photographer. You need a decent phone and decent light. Aim for at least 10-12 good photos covering your space, your work, and your team. That's enough to make a real difference, and you can add more over time."
Google is paying attention to whether you're an active business or a dead listing. One of the easiest signals you can send is using Google Posts, which is essentially a mini social media post directly on your Business Profile.
Most businesses in this area never use Google Posts. I'm not talking about posting every day. I'm talking about once or twice a month, something short. A seasonal promotion. A recent project. A reminder that you're open. Something.
When I look at a business's profile and see no posts, no updated photos, no recent activity of any kind, it tells me they've claimed the profile and walked away. Google notices that. Your customers notice it too.
Artificial Intelligence Visibility.
There's another reason this matters now that most business owners haven't fully realized yet: AI-powered search. Google's AI Overviews, voice assistants, and recommendation engines are increasingly pulling information directly from trusted local business signals.
An active, complete Google Business Profile with accurate categories, updated photos, consistent reviews, and regular activity helps establish legitimacy and trust not only with Google Maps but also with the AI systems that decide which businesses get recommended in search results. In many ways, your Google Business Profile has become part of your digital reputation file. Businesses that keep their profiles current and active are far more likely to be surfaced when someone asks AI tools questions like "Who's the best landscaper near me?" or "What's the highest-rated plumber in Southeastern Connecticut?"
Here's something I run into regularly. A business has 60-70 Google reviews with an average of 4.6, and they have no idea how they got them. A competitor a few miles away has 8 reviews and a 3.9. In a search for that service in that area, the first business is going to win almost every time.
Reviews are part of your local SEO, not just your reputation. The number of reviews, the quality of the rating, and how recent the reviews are all factor into where you show up in local search results.
Most business owners don't ask for reviews consistently because it feels uncomfortable. But most happy customers will leave one if you simply ask them at the right moment, with the right words. "If you were happy with the work, would you mind leaving us a Google review? It makes a real difference for us." That's it. That's the ask.
The other side of the reviews problem: businesses that have reviews with no response at all. I respond to every review, positive or negative. When someone takes the time to leave a five-star review, acknowledge it. Thank them by name if you can. It takes thirty seconds, and it signals to everyone reading that there's a real person behind the business who pays attention.
And if you have a 2-star review sitting there for 18 months with no response, a potential customer is going to assume that's just how you operate. Respond professionally. You're not responding to the person who left it; you're responding to the thousands of people who will read it.
If you own a service area business, meaning you go to your customers rather than having them come to you, your Google Business Profile needs to reflect that. A lot of businesses in the trades around New London and Groton either haven't set up a service area at all, or they've listed it too narrowly.
If you serve Norwich, Waterford, East Lyme, Old Lyme, and Colchester, those should all be in your service area. If you've only listed New London because that's where you're based, you're invisible to people searching in those other towns.
None of these are hard fixes. Most of them you can do yourself in an hour if you know what you're looking at. The problem is that most business owners don't know what they're looking at because nobody ever sat them down to explain it.
That's what I do. I've been doing it for 15+ years for local businesses up and down this shoreline, and the same issues come up every time. It's not a mystery. It's just details, and details are everything.
Want to know what's wrong with your Google Business Profile? Give me a call at 860-317-2347 or drop me an email at robert@letitbe-local.com. I'll take an honest look at where you stand and tell you exactly what I find.