Free book · ITL Research
Is your business found on the map?
A practical guide to the Google Business Profile for local business owners: the searches you miss, reviews, photos and the map.
Download free PDF · paperback on AmazonAbout the book
Customers choose from the few businesses Google shows them first
Most local businesses treat their Google Business Profile as a listing they set up once. The ones that win treat it as a second storefront. Drawing on week-by-week tracking of neighborhood markets in New York City, the editors of ITL Research show what owners leave on the table, and what to do about it in an hour a week.
Six things our data shows
Most of the advice in this book is practical. These six findings from our measurements are what makes it necessary.
Each service has its own rivals.
A business does not compete in one market but in many, one per service. In South Brooklyn jewelers hold 90% of the top-three places for ring resizing, but watch shops hold 72% for watch repair and piercing studios and accessory chains 76% for ear piercing. Med spas that offer laser hair removal meet studios built around that one service. (Chapter 4)
Being seen is not being chosen.
A clinic we follow in Sheepshead Bay appears in 73% of the map searches in its zone and reaches the top three, where customers choose, in 10%. A jeweler nearby appears in 31% and reaches the top three in 5%. Both owners can truthfully say they show up on Google. (Chapter 4)
The small searches are spread thin and often weakly held.
In 312 treatment searches across 13 neighborhoods, 89 different clinics are first at least once, and the five that most often lead the plain med spa search are first in only 52. In 13% of med spa searches and 15% of jeweler searches, first place belongs to a business with fewer than 25 reviews or an unclaimed profile. (Chapter 4)
Almost a third of jewelers have never claimed their profile.
In South Brooklyn 31% of jeweler profiles, and 7% of med spa profiles, are not claimed by their owners: a storefront on the map with nobody behind the counter. (Chapter 3)
Paid advertising is thinner than owners assume.
Of 100 local med spa pages, 12 run Facebook or Instagram ads, and none of 39 local med spa searches showed a Google search ad. Of 83 local jewelers, 5 run such ads, and 4 of 39 searches showed a paid result, mostly from national sellers. In many local trades the map is the main road to the customer. (Chapter 11)
A click price measures the customer, not the search.
In Brooklyn cash for gold and ring resizing get about the same number of searches, around 280 a month, yet the suggested click prices are $36.12 and $6.94. Watch repair, with about 5,700 searches, costs $4.23. Seasons differ as much: coolsculpting searches peak in April at 1.88 times their December low, while IV therapy varies by only 1.26 times. (Chapter 12)
And one conclusion that runs through the whole book: Google now reads much as a person does, so the job is no longer to fool it but to make yourself understood, including the unusual cases a typical customer profile leaves out. (Chapter 7)
South Brooklyn, measured October 2026.
Contents
Every chapter can be read on this site
How the map works
- Why the map matters more than your websiteThe internet tends to narrow a market to a few winners. Local business escapes that, until a customer looks for it on a map that behaves like the rest of the internet.
- How Google picks who to showGoogle names three things it ranks local results on, and keeps the details to itself. Knowing which of the three an owner can move is most of the practical work.
- Your profile, field by fieldEvery field on the business profile answers a question a stranger is asking. Here is what each one does, and the mistakes owners make in all of them.
Manage your long tail
- The head term is crowdedEvery business in a category fights for the same one or two searches. Most of the searches that bring customers are smaller, and far fewer businesses are fighting for them.
- Collecting your long tailMost keyword tools show you the busy searches everyone already fights over. The long tail of your own trade you will have to collect yourself. Here is how we do it.
- Choosing your seedsA seed is one service in one place. Pick five you can win, write them down, and give them a season. This chapter shows how to choose them.
- PlantPlanting a seed means making one service in one place easy to find and easy to trust, everywhere a stranger might check. It takes an afternoon, not a campaign.
- Watch what sproutsOnce a month, from the same few spots, check what each seed is doing. The pattern matters more than any single reading.
- Deepen the winners, drop the restA seed needs a fair run before you judge it. Then feed what is growing, stop feeding what is not, and start again next month.
What supports the method
- Reviews and photosReviews and photos are the two fields a stranger checks before deciding. A small team can improve both without a budget, as long as the work becomes a habit.
- Reading your competitors and their adsThe businesses that come first for your seeds are the most useful free research you have. Read them for what customers value and where they are thin, and read their ads for what they are willing to pay for.
- Seasons and click prices as signalsThe calendar tells you when to plant a seed, and the click price tells you what other businesses think a search is worth. Both are rough signals, and both are free.
- One hour a weekThe method fits into an hour a week when each week has a fixed job. Here is a month of hours, a year of seasons, and what to review when.
Get the book
Download the free PDF (106 pages, 2.6 MB). Share it freely in its complete form. The paperback is on Amazon. Every chapter can also be read on this site.