Guide · Business information
Review AI answers about a local business
Check local AI answers against real locations, service areas and opening hours without creating pages for places you do not serve.
Choose a real local task
Choose a service and place the business actually covers. A relevant question should reflect what the customer needs, not a list of nearby towns.
Keep the service and the place together. A prompt about a whole country can't tell you whether you serve one neighbourhood.
Keep it narrow enough to check against your records. Asking whether a plumber covers one named town is easier to review than asking for the best plumber nearby.
Write the place the way a customer would say it. A town name, a district or a postcode area each sets a different boundary, so keep the exact wording in your record.
Create a facts sheet
Prepare the trading name, customer contact route, location and service details. Confirm who is responsible for maintaining each fact.
Keep private addresses out of public examples. A detail nobody can confirm stays unknown until someone at the business checks the current record.
Use the business name exactly as it appears on your signage, website and paperwork. Google's guidelines ask for a Business Profile name that matches the real-world name customers know.
The same guidelines say unnecessary information in the name isn't permitted, such as service or location details that aren't part of the real name. Keep those out of your facts sheet name too.
Separate base and coverage
A business address and a service area are different things. Write down what each record means before you compare it with an answer.
A home service business may travel to customers. A shop may need a visit. Ask the owner which fits, and don't turn being nearby into a promise.
Write both facts down even when they look obvious. A shop with a delivery service has an address customers visit and a separate area it delivers to, and an answer can confuse the two.
Match your profile type to how you serve customers
Google's Business Profile help describes two ways to serve an area. A service-area business visits or delivers to customers but doesn't serve them at its own address.
A hybrid business serves customers at its address and also visits or delivers to them. It can show its shopfront address and set a service area as well.
Google's guidelines say a service-area business should hide its business address from customers. Their example is a plumber who runs the business from home.
Google says you can set up to twenty service areas, by city, postcode or another type of area. A radius around your base is no longer an option.
Google also says the overall area shouldn't extend more than about two hours' driving from where the business is based. Check your own list against that before comparing it with an answer.
Ask the owner which type fits and record the answer in the facts sheet. An answer that gives a home address for a service-area business is a finding to raise.
Review your public profile
Google recommends keeping Business Profile information complete and accurate. Check your profile against your website and current records, and note any conflicts in hours or contact details.
Ask the owner to resolve each one. This review is about accuracy. It doesn't tell you where you'll appear in an AI answer.
Check the category and the phone number as well. A profile number that rings a different branch, or an old mobile, is a conflict in the same way as wrong hours.
Check opening hours, including the exceptions
Regular hours and exceptional hours are separate records. Google's guidelines ask for regular customer-facing hours, with special hours for particular days such as holidays.
Google's help on special hours says they suit short changes, such as a holiday or a special event. They also cover a closure of up to six days in a row.
Google suggests confirming hours for official holidays even when they match your regular hours. That tells customers the holiday hours were checked rather than left to chance.
Some businesses shouldn't list hours at all. Google's guidelines name businesses that operate only by appointment, and those whose hours vary by activity.
Put the regular hours, the special hours and the dates they apply in the facts sheet. Then compare an answer's hours with the right record for the day it describes.
Record the whole answer
Keep the full response with its location context and source links. Separate a mention of your business from a statement that you serve the area, and check each against your facts sheet.
If an assistant names a similar business, note the exact wording. A matching name doesn't mean it's yours.
Opening hours deserve a check of their own. An answer may give last year's holiday hours, or hours from a different branch, without saying where they came from.
Set the location before you ask
Where a prompt is asked from can change the answer. Record the location you set, or the one you believe applied, beside every local answer.
Some APIs let the person sending the request state a location. OpenAI's web search guide describes an approximate user location made of country, city, region and time zone.
Anthropic's web search tool takes a similar set of fields. Perplexity documents a location filter that accepts country, region, city, latitude and longitude.
In a consumer app you often can't see which location was used. Write what you know, such as your own town and whether location services were on, and mark the rest unknown.
A sent location still doesn't prove where the assistant ran, or where your customers are. Treat each answer as one reading from one place.
Write a service area page customers can check
Your website is the record you control most directly. A clear service area page gives an owner, a customer and an assistant the same list to read.
List the areas by name, in the same words as your profile. Say plainly whether you travel to customers, they come to you, or both.
Add the details that change a customer's decision, such as call-out charges, minimum jobs or days you cover each area. Leave out anything the owner can't confirm.
Avoid a separate thin page for every town that only swaps the place name. Google's spam policies name pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page as doorway abuse.
A separate page for an area makes sense when it carries real local information, such as a different team, address or set of services. Otherwise one well organised page is easier to keep accurate.
Keep local business markup in line with the page
Local business markup is code that labels your name, address and hours for machines. Google's documentation asks for the most specific LocalBusiness type that fits, such as Plumber or Electrician.
Google lists the address and the name as required properties. That creates a question for a service-area business that hides its address on its profile.
Don't publish a private address just to complete the markup. Ask the owner and the maintainer to decide together, and record the decision in the facts sheet.
Schema.org defines an areaServed property for the geographic area where a service is provided. If you use it, the areas should match the service area page word for word.
Google documents seasonal hours using validFrom and validThrough dates. Remove or update them when the season ends, so the markup doesn't contradict the page.
Google's general guidelines say markup must be a true representation of the page content. If the visible page and the markup disagree, fix the source record first.
Check third-party records
If an answer cites a page you don't own, read its published correction process. Keep the page address and the disputed detail in your review.
The owner decides whether to contact them. Don't copy a directory or collect its listings. Asking for a correction is not the same as getting one.
One old detail can turn up on several directories. Note which ones repeat it, and start with the one the answer actually linked.
Review the next observation
First confirm the corrected public detail. Then repeat the local observation on comparable terms, keeping the page change and the answer as separate records.
Check whether the wrong detail stays, changes or disappears. One better answer is worth recording, but it doesn't show that every assistant or every local customer sees it.
Set the next review for a date after any correction has had time to reach the source. Google says service area edits may take up to forty-eight hours to show on a Business Profile.
Send the proposal to the business owner through their usual process. They decide what to publish. Keep the correction to the fact and leave out claims about quality or popularity.
Fix the record the business controls before asking anyone else to change theirs. A correction request is easier for a third party to check when your own website and profile already show the right detail.
Review several places one at a time
A business that serves several towns needs a prompt for each one. One question about the whole county can't show whether an answer is right about a single town.
Keep each place as its own group, with its own prompts and dates. Don't add towns together or rank them against each other, because each rests on its own small sample.
Google's guidelines allow one profile for each location that has separate staff and a separate service area. Check that each location's profile matches that location's own page.
When one town keeps getting a wrong detail, look at the sources that answer links. The problem may sit on a single directory page rather than on your website.
A worked example
Fern Workshop travels to two named service areas. Its public website and a saved answer disagree about coverage.
| Detail | Observation | Review or next step |
|---|---|---|
| Service area | The owner's record names two areas. | Check the public service area page against the current record. |
| Saved answer | The answer names a third area. | Keep the unsupported detail and ask the owner to review it. |
The disputed area needs the owner's confirmation. A base address alone can't settle the coverage question.
Common questions
Do I need to publish a private address?
No. Use only the public details your business chooses to publish, and keep private addresses out of the worksheet.
Does this improve local rankings?
It's a method for checking accuracy. It doesn't promise a search position or an AI recommendation.
Do I need to publish a private address?
No. Use only the public details your business chooses to publish, and keep private addresses out of the worksheet.
Does this improve local rankings?
It's a method for checking accuracy. It doesn't promise a search position or an AI recommendation.
Check your understanding
Which source should settle a disputed service area?
Read the answer and explanation
- The current business record confirmed by its owner.
- A similar business name in an answer.
- An assumed distance from the base address.
Answer. The current business record confirmed by its owner.
A base address doesn't define every area served. Ask the owner to confirm the actual coverage.
Answer and explanation
The current business record confirmed by its owner.
A base address doesn't define every area served. Ask the owner to confirm the actual coverage.
Your next steps
Sources and method
A Carqo review method. Provider statements link to the relevant documentation.
- Google Business Profile guidance Link checked 13 October 2026
- Google Business Profile Help, guidelines for representing your business on Google Link checked 4 November 2026
- Google Business Profile Help, manage your service areas Link checked 29 October 2026
- Google Business Profile Help, how to set special hours Link checked 4 November 2026
- OpenAI API documentation, Web search Link checked 4 November 2026
- Claude API documentation, Web search tool Link checked 4 November 2026
- Perplexity, web search tool Link checked 4 November 2026
- Google spam policies for web search Link checked 4 November 2026
- Google Search Central, local business structured data Link checked 29 October 2026
- Schema.org, areaServed property Link checked 29 October 2026
- Google structured data policies Link checked 4 November 2026