AI Didn’t Kill Google Search — Here’s Why GBP Still Wins

Summary

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Episode Overview

Podcast: Owned and Operated – A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Episode: AI Didn’t Kill Google Search — Here’s Why GBP Still Wins
Air Date: December 11, 2025
Host: John Wilson
Guest: Sam Preston, CEO of Service Scalers

This episode dives deep into the ongoing relevance and dominance of Google Business Profile (GBP) for home service businesses. Host John Wilson and Sam Preston explore why, despite the rapid rise of AI tools in search and operations, GBP remains the most valuable marketing asset. They discuss hands-on tactics for maximizing GBP effectiveness, share data-backed insights, and debunk common myths—offering listeners a clear playbook for using GBP to drive serious growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Impact (or Lack Thereof) of AI on GBP

• AI’s Limited Effect on GBP: Both hosts agree that despite AI’s proliferation (like ChatGPT, Perplexity), GBP remains relatively “insulated” in its effectiveness.

  • “AI has not impacted the gbp.” (A, 00:00)
  • “AI is going to pull [good reviews from your GBP] and someone's going to go like, oh, wow, that's really cool. I want that type of experience.” (B, 00:02)

• AI vs. Google Search Habits: There was a “fever pitch” of AI adoption, but users still double-check AI results against Google—especially for service providers, where AI answers have proven unreliable.

  • “All the information it’s giving me is wrong and I have to check it against Google anyways.” (A, 02:25)

• How AI and GBP Interact: AI search tools sometimes surface GBP reviews, but the competition for real, local search traffic continues to be led by Google proper.

2. The Massive Value of GBP

• Incredible ROI: John shares real figures on GBP investment vs. return, demonstrating GBP’s outsized role in revenue.

  • “I think we spend like ten grand a month on Google Business Profile investment. … it probably produces a half a million dollars a month of sales. Like, it's absolutely ridiculous.” (A, 10:57)
  • “It’s the craziest ROI we have… it’s worth every penny.” (A, 11:42)

• GBP as Primary Marketing Asset: The hosts repeatedly emphasize that GBP trumps almost every other marketing effort—certainly more than truck wraps or superficial website changes.

  • “This is the most marketing asset you have. If you're like, trying to figure out how to wrap your trucks better, like, nobody gives a. Like, work on your gbp.” (A, 00:30 & 34:51)

3. What is a Google Business Profile (GBP) and Why Does It Matter?

• Definition & Location: GBP appears in the “map pack” when users search for services. The goal is to land in the top 3, so buyers call directly without even visiting your website.

  • “GBP is effectively the first organic search that shows up… to drive phone calls. We really don't even want to drive people to your website from that.” (B, 06:14)

• Treat GBP Like a Website: Standout performers treat their GBP as their digital front door.

  • “People that do Google Business Profile best are the ones that treat it like it's its own website versus like it’s a campaign to drive to your website.” (B, 07:07)

4. Tracking & Attribution Best Practices

• Phone Number Tracking: Assign separate tracking numbers to each lead source (GBP, LSA, web, Angie's List, etc.) to accurately measure ROI.

  • “Every single GBP… is a separate phone number… The ability to separate that is sweet.” (A, 07:16)
  • “You want to be careful of that a little bit because of NAP consistency... For tracking it's really helpful. For ranking you want those to be consistent.” (B, 08:01)

• Consistent Reporting: Weekly and granular tracking of leads, revenue, and cancellation rates drive data-driven decisions on what channels to double down on.

5. GBP’s Relationship to LSA (Local Service Ads)

• LSA and GBP are Now Interconnected: Success in one drives success in the other due to platform integration.

  • “The rules don’t apply anymore because they merged LSA and GBP… If someone's LSAs aren’t doing good, okay, well what's your review cadence?” (A, 12:25)

• Best Results by Running Both: Agencies are now encouraged to sell both services in tandem for clients to maximize outcome.

  • “The clients that did both had significantly better results.” (B, 12:55)

6. The Big Three: What Most Influences GBP Rankings

(A) Proximity

• Location is King: You must be close to your ideal clients. Google heavily prioritizes physical proximity.

  • “Proximity is one of the big ones... pick a good spot, which again, location’s a marketing decision.” (B, 14:18 & A, 16:44)
  • “Location is a marketing decision… we moved towards the wealthiest section and… grew 50% the first year. Like, it was ridiculous.” (A, 16:44)

• Move or Open New Offices Smartly: Consider moving offices to more lucrative neighborhoods, or open compliant secondary offices to “game” proximity, but avoid overlapping service areas.

(B) Keyword Strength (Category Selection)

• Primary & Secondary Categories: Select the most relevant categories; don’t try to game the system with unrelated ones.

  • “If you’re a plumber, be a plumber. Don’t be like a storage facility that's also a plumber… this is dumb.” (A, 32:02)
  • “The primary category is going to be the main thing you want.” (B, 24:28)

• Subcategories Help: The main category will drive the majority of calls, but subcategories (done right) can add incremental value.

• Multiple Trades, Multiple Locations: If you want to maximize value for different services, you may need multiple dedicated GBPs (and thus, offices).

(C) Reviews

• Reviews are King: Quality, frequency, and recency matter. Volume is vital, but spreading reviews across all profiles is key.

  • “Reviews are still king and will consistently be king.” (B, 14:18)
  • “Are they good or are they bad? Are there pictures? What's the frequency? What's the volume? All those different things matter.” (A, 28:17)

• Incentivizing Reviews: Use team incentives, customer rewards, and automated follow-ups to drive more, better reviews.

  • “Companies that spiff their team members get the best results… Rewarding customers works, too—give them Starbucks gift cards or whatever.” (B, 27:00)
  • “Cash prizes… small contests… automation to push reviews.” (A, 28:17)

• Tools & Automation: Use programs that assign review requests to the relevant GBP for each job, ensuring all locations’ profiles remain active and rise in ranking.

  • “Wherever the job is, it sends the review and a picture from that job to the closest Google Business Profile to that job. Fucking awesome.” (A, 29:45)

7. Debunking GBP Optimization Myths

• Don’t Get Distracted by Minor Optimizations: Hours, proximity, reviews, and categories matter most. Tactics like geotagged photos rank near-last in importance.

  • “Geotagged photos—it was literally 186 on a list of 187.” (A, 32:18)
  • “People are focusing on like the least valuable part versus… is it just working?” (A, 32:55)

• For Agencies, the Long List Still Matters: Agencies must optimize for every possible factor, but owners should focus on the 3–5 that move the needle most at their scale.

  • “If you’re fairly new… you need to focus on the primary things that are going to drive you leads right now.” (B, 35:00)

8. The Changing GBP Landscape

• Constant Platform Evolution: Google is always “trialing” new changes (ex. removing Q&As), and sporadic traffic drops may relate to algorithm adjustments as much as seasonality.

  • “We’ll see like a drop… and we’ll realize they’re testing something… sometimes you’re doing all the right things and you still have a drop.” (B, 36:27)

• Education First: If your budget doesn’t allow agency support, there are plentiful DIY resources on YouTube.

  • “If you are small enough to where you don't have the money to pay somebody else… 80% of what we do is on YouTube that you can go learn.” (B, 37:32)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• ROI Powerhouse:
  “We spend like $10,000 a month on GBP… it probably produces a half a million dollars a month of sales. Like, it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
  — John Wilson (A), 10:57

• On AI & Habits:
  “I think we, everyone went through this, like, mass period of like, let's do everything with AI… and then everyone was like, oh, all the information it's giving me is wrong and I have to check it against Google anyways.”
  — John Wilson (A), 02:14

• Location = Marketing:
  “Location is a marketing decision. People don't treat it like a marketing decision, but it’s 100% a marketing decision because Google’s going to like prioritize you.”
  — John Wilson (A), 16:44

• Practical Review Tactics:
  “Companies that reward for reviews get better… reward customers for giving you a review… say, ‘Hey, we're doing a review challenge inside work and giving out Starbucks gift cards or whatever.’”
  — Sam Preston (B), 27:00

• Keep It Simple:
  “If you're a plumber, be a plumber… don't be like a storage facility that's also a plumber.”
  — John Wilson (A), 32:02

• GBP’s Place on the Marketing Pyramid:
  “This is the most important marketing asset you have is your gbp. Like almost nothing else matters. So if you're… trying to figure out how to wrap your trucks better, like nobody gives a, like work on your gbp.”
  — John Wilson (A), 34:51

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Value of GBP & ROI: 00:14, 10:57, 11:42
• AI & Search Behaviors: 01:06, 02:14, 03:05
• GBP Functionality & Setup: 06:14, 07:07
• Phone Tracking & Attribution: 07:16, 08:01
• GBP vs. LSA Discussion: 12:25, 12:55
• Top Three GBP Ranking Factors: 14:11, 14:18, 16:44, 23:09
• Location as Marketing Decision: 16:44, 20:01, 21:49
• Keyword/Category Selection: 23:09, 24:32, 25:28, 32:02
• Review Tactics & Automation: 27:00, 28:17, 29:45
• Debunking Minor Optimization Myths: 32:18, 32:55
• Constant Platform Changes: 36:27

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Practical Takeaways & Action Items

• Prioritize GBP over other marketing projects—treat it as your digital storefront.
• Invest in strategic location selection for your core audience, even if it increases rent or overhead.
• Track all lead sources separately, balancing tracking needs with NAP consistency.
• Dedicate real budget and resources to ongoing GBP optimization—especially reviews and accurate categories.
• Don't sweat minor optimization tactics when the basics (location, category, reviews) aren’t perfect.
• Constantly monitor changes to Google’s platform and be ready to adapt.
• If you’re small, DIY and focus on the main levers until you can invest in more advanced tactics or professional help.

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In summary:
GBP remains utterly dominant for home service business lead generation, even as AI transforms other parts of the web. Nailing proximity, category/keywords, and ongoing reviews will yield the majority of results, with granular optimizations providing incremental gains as you scale. AI tools haven’t dethroned Google for customer search habits—so keep your focus where it counts.

Transcript

[A]

AI has not impacted the gbp.

[B]

And that's where I see, like, GBP and AI still, like, mixing is. You're going to have a review that's really good on your gbp and AI is going to pull that and someone's going to go like, oh, wow, that's really cool. I want that type of experience.

[A]

I think what's fun about Gbps, I think we spend like 10 grand a month because it probably produces a half a million dollars a month of sales. Like, it's absolutely ridiculous.

[B]

You get bad reviews or no reviews. It doesn't matter how good your marketing team is at what they do. Google's not going to show you, like.

[A]

This is the most marketing asset you have. If you're like, trying to figure out how to wrap your trucks better, like, nobody gives a. Like, work on your gbp.

Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. Today we're going to be talking with Sam Preston, the CEO of Service Scalers, and we're talking all things Google Business Profile, how to scale it, what to do right, what to do wrong. It should be a pretty interesting conversation. Gbps have been a huge part of our success, so I'm looking forward to learning from. Welcome back to the show.

[B]

What's up?

[A]

I'm excited to talk gbps, bro. I'm excited. I'm excited to talk freaking gbps. You know what's been kind of funny about Google Business Profiles? I'm curious, like, what you've, what your take on this is. It seems like AI has not impacted the gbp. I mean, maybe I'm just being dumb or I'm like behind the times or something, but like, I don't. It does, like, it's almost like the insulated, I don't know, problem.

[B]

Yes. I mean, yes and no. So like, it has on AI searches. It hasn't inside of Google. Like, from a tactical standpoint on the back end, we're still not doing a ton of like, AI to just like automate the entire, like, our systems and processes. But we are starting to see people use different search tools like Perplexity or, you know, Comment or any, any of the, you know, chatgpt. And we're starting to see more rankings being pulled in, more information being pulled in because of people's gbps.

[A]

And this might just be me. So I'm like, curious if you have data on this. I think we, everyone went through this, like, mass period of like, let's do everything with AI, like, chat, GPT, whatever, and, and then I think like, so it reached this like, fever pitch like five months ago, I think. And then everyone was like, oh, all the information it's giving me is wrong and I have to check it against Google anyways.

And so then I think, I'm sure, like, it'll climb back, but it feels like we're in a valley where like, yes, people are using it to like, help brainstorm. Like, that's how I use it. I'm like, okay, I need an idea. Here's what I'm thinking. Like, give me something, but then I'm going to take anything that you give me and I'm going to go actually, like, check it somewhere else. So like, I still have not looked for a service provider on there. Because every time I've looked, like, the answers are like, ridiculous.

[B]

I have looked for a service provider. In fact, that's how I chose my doctor. I was looking for a primary care doctor. And so I did like some like, chatgpt on like pull the best reviews. And the doctor I chose was like, in my network. And then specifically there was a review where he had like, text somebody at their house to check up on how they were doing. And so I was like, cool, I'm gonna go with that guy. Cause thoughtful guys don't have that. And that's where I see like, GBP and AI still, like, mixing is. You're gonna have a review that's really good on your GBP and AI is gonna pull that and someone's gonna go like, oh, wow, that's. That's really cool. I want that type of experience. But yeah, like, I'm still like, even in my searches, I'll search something on.

You know, chatgpt and then I'll realize that's not, that's not the results I want. So I move back to Google and copy and paste the same query into that. And so I think it is definitely. I think the way people are using it are. Is very mixed. It is getting more adoption. But I still think people are so used to Google that that's the type of results that they want and they're going to keep going well.

[A]

And Google.

Hat like their AI answer feature.

Like, kind of gives the same information. But again, maybe that's me because I'm biased to Google because I pay him like a million dollars a year. So like.

Like, all right, I have to use you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So today we're talking gbps, I think gb. Yeah. So I feeling a little insulated. I think gbps are funny. So we, we saw this Study, I don't know, a couple weeks ago and it was like 100, I want to say 187 might be like slightly off, but 187 different things that matter for your GBP ranking. Like, yeah, are the hours you're open on there, are you putting photos, are you geotagging photos?

And like, are you a plumber? You know, which I think was, it was, it was interesting. Like, and then they ranked it in, in sort of importance. So today I thought we'd be like sort of breaking down what's a gbp? How to improve it and then like, what are the, what are the needle movers? Like, what matters the most? If you're trying to scale your business, let's do it. So, so we can spend a minute or two on like what's a gbp? Like, what is it? What's a Google Business Profile? One of the tools I've personally seen make a huge difference for service business owners is quo formerly open phone. Because when you miss a call, you're not just missing a conversation, you're losing business. Whoa. Is the modern business phone solution powered by AI that helps you stay responsive and connected. It logs calls, creates summaries and automates next steps from drag and drop setup to AI powered call tags. Every detail is designed to make your phone system smarter, your customers happier and your team more in sync. It's one of those tools that makes you wonder why you didn't already switch 90,000 businesses already have. Start your 7 day free trial at the link below and get 20% off your first 6 months just for being a part of the owned and operated crew. Whoa. No missed calls, no missed customers.

[B]

Yeah. So Google Business Profile is effectively the first organic search that shows up when somebody is searching for your service in that area. So it usually looks like the map like you go to Google, you search for plumbers near me, you're first going to get lsa, then you're going to get Google Ads, if there are any paid ad advertisements on that search. And then right after that you're going to get this little box over here, there's like three listings and then to the right is the map. That is the gbp, the map pack. The Google my business. And the goal behind any kind of marketing initiative is to show up in that really the top three. And then to drive phone calls. We really don't even want to drive people to your website from that. We want people to call you directly from your Google Business profile, which I.

[A]

Feel like people are trained to do.

[B]

Yeah. The people that do Google Business Profile best are the ones that treat it like it's its own website versus like it's a campaign to drive to your website.

[A]

I think that's a perfect way to think about it. You know like my pro tip for people, something that helped us a lot is phone number tracking. Everything. I don't even know how many phone numbers we have. It's probably like a million or something ridiculous. But so every single LSA account had a separate phone number. Every single GM gbp like Google Business Profile is a separate phone number. Angie's List has a separate phone number. The website. Because what we want to be able to do is separate. Hey, exactly how many leads a month do I get from this Google Business Profile? Yeah, is it valuable or not? So that's been a huge win. So like my little pro tip for people separate the phone numbers.

[B]

Yep. You want to be careful of that a little bit because of nap consistency. So that same as for like name, address, phone number, you want those to be consistent across the board and any public facing profile. But it can be different and for the purposes of tracking it's really helpful. For the purposes of ranking you want those to be consistent and you'll just have to choose your poison when it comes to those things. So I generally tend to want to lean towards the tracking because ultimately in my business if I can prove to you that I'm sending you phone calls and making you money, you'll keep paying me money. Right. And so that's the way I lean. But you know, that's obviously something you need to make your own decision on.

[A]

I think I lean towards tracking too. I think I love. So if we get 500 leads a week, the ability to know what percentage is organic, existing customer and organic for us means like website, like non paid pages. So website, Google Business Profile, our legacy numbers, recurring customers versus paid like lsa, Angie Thumbtack, whatever. Yeah, the ability to like know is hyper valuable. So for us because then we know, hey, plumbing buys 20% of its leads, H Vac buys 5 and electric buys 40. Okay, like what can we do with that information?

[B]

Yes and no. So inside of your Google Business Profile you're going to be able to see how many people, how many phone calls Google Business Profile sent you and how many people clicked from your, your, your phone calls to your website.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now what the phone number really is going to help you do is inside of your CRM tie revenue to that, that, that, that source. And so that's where you get to really get into it. But lead volume, you can probably get at a high level without that. It's when you want to go, okay, hey, great. We drove 1,000 phone calls from Google Business Profile. How much money did that make me? That's when the other one is. Can be better.

[A]

Yeah, we're doing that on a weekly basis. So like paid and organic. We're tracking leads, revenue cancel rates. Kind of interesting. Like, hey, does. What's my cancel rate for Google Business profiles versus Angie's List versus Modernized versus Thumb. You know what, how many of those leads actually sit? How many do we book? And then like, ultimately, what's the ROI for it? Which is kind of interesting, but the ability to separate that is sweet. I think what's fun about gbps is what we have found. I think the sentence of like, it's your own website hits home for me. What we have found is like, the more we invest in SEO, like, SEO is like the gift that keeps giving.

And it feels similar with GBP where, like, the more you invest in it, it's the gift that keeps giving. So like, let's. It's. I, I said this number years ago on a podcast. And like, people texted me the next day being like, dude, literally, how do you even do that? And I was like, y. I think we spend like ten grand a month on Google Business Profile investment. And that can be like softwares to drive reviews or like photos or the phone number softwares or. I. I don't even know where all it goes, to be honest, but it's like rents for the sub locations and it's like, yeah, it, it is worth every penny of $10,000 a month because it probably produces a half a million dollars a month of sales. Like, it's absolutely ridiculous. And it's the craziest ROI we have. So it's like, as we go through the things of like how to. How to do it, it's worth the squeeze, I think, is my big message for the listener.

[B]

Yeah, GBP still is still one of the strongest lead. Yeah, it really is. It's one of the strongest lead drivers for the majority of our clients. And not just the strongest from a volume standpoint, but also a cost per lead. Like, I was in an account the other day, I seeing like a $32 cost per lead, which, you know, for plumbing in a major area, like, that's really good for H vac. That's really good. You're not going to get that in LSA. You're not going to get that in PPC.

[A]

Well, LSAs and GBPs are like the same now too. Whereas like we have a bunch of episodes probably from two years ago where it's like, here's how you win with LSAs and like those rules don't even apply anymore because they merged LSA and gbp. So like you have to have a great GBP so that your LSAs can deliver. So if someone's LSAs aren't doing good, okay, well what's your review cadence? Like are they good reviews, are they bad reviews? Are you doing photos, are you changing hours? What's your primary category? Like all the norm, you know, all the big stuff. They're intrinsically connected.

[B]

We actually saw that earlier this year where we were selling a bunch of like one offs like either GBP or lsa and we started seeing the, the clients that did both had a significantly better results.

[A]

You have to.

[B]

And so I ended up, you know, training the sales team, like, hey, if you're going to sell one of these, try to sell both because it'll go better for them. Now if they already have, like someone's already taking care of their LSA and doing it fine. But like if you're not doing lsa, you just want to do gbp, it's, it's just not going to result in this, you know, as good of results as if you did both. So we really encourage people to try like if you're going to do it, do both.

[A]

Yeah, we started doing this thing where we were driving. We've been driving reviews to all the gbps and photos to all the gbps. And you know, we use the like heat map thing that like tells us like you're rank 4, 20 or 1 or whatever. And it's been improving for like a couple months straight, which is pretty cool. And with it like more calls, which is obviously great, but also like more paid calls. So both of them are work because we need both. We need the organic calls, we need the paid calls. Let's dive into like what are the big hitters that people can do?

Like top, I don't know, top 10, like things that people can take away from this and let's improve our gbp.

[B]

Yeah, I mean I think the first thing you should realize is like when somebody searches, you have a shot to show up in the top three. And the first thing that is going to hit or going to allow you to it is proximity. Like how close are you to that person? It doesn't matter how good John's GBP marketing is. Me in Charleston, if I search for, you know, Plumber near me. I'm literally like, John's never going to show up. And so proximity is one of the big one. Next is going to be keyword strength. Do you even have the keywords in your profile? And so you usually have like one primary keyword that you're going for and then you have, you know, sub categories there. And so you have to make sure that the categories that you're selecting are there and the keywords are there. It doesn't matter, you know, how much I search for a restaurant as close as I can to John. He's never going to show up unless you guys start selling tacos, in which case I'm just saying that would be amazing. It would be amazing. You should, you should. Third is going to be reviews. And I think those are the top. To me, like the top three things that you should be focusing on. Reviews are still king and will consistently be king. So if you are very close and your keyword strength is perfect, but you get bad reviews or no reviews, it doesn't matter how good your marketing team is at what they do. You're just not like, Google's not going to show you. And so now if you have those three things set, then we can get into like all the other like small practices on speed to lead and how fast you're responding to reviews and making sure that you have your services selection and photos and videos and back backend optimizations and all that kind of good stuff. But the first things that you want to do is make sure you're in a good location. Right. You know, because I know you and you could talk about this like specifically went out of your way to put your location in a perfect spot.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Make sure you have your keyword set and make sure you're getting consistent reviews.

[A]

Yeah, I, yeah, I think we can riff on, riff on each of those and I think that. But yeah, I think those are good. Proximity. Yeah, maybe with each one. So it's proximity, category and keywords and then reviews. And I think each of those has like three things to, to work on. But yeah, we've, we say this a lot at our workshops.

But location is a marketing decision. People don't treat it like a marketing decision, but it's 100% a marketing decision because Google's going to like prioritize you. So if I search plumber near me, like physically right now, I'm going to get five plumbers, but they're all within one mile. And so like, how do you get within one mile of the people that you Want to be working for three miles within the people you want to be working for. And that's like the densest area that you could have a gbp. I think they say five miles is like, that's the circle that you sort of want to be in. Because, like, I'm not going to get someone if I search, you know, hot water repair today or something, I don't even know. I'm just not going to get somebody from the other side of Cleveland without paying, but I'm not going to get that organically. So the way to win that pick a good spot, which again, locations, a marketing decision took us a long time to find the place that we're in because we wanted to be. We're in the wealthiest section of our county and that was where we wanted to be. And we came from like a really sort of rundown area of the city. So, like, we weren't anywhere near our customers and it showed. And then we moved here and we grew 50% the first year. Like, it was ridiculous. So move. Your headquarters is always a good one. I think that's the best one because you can game it and we'll talk about that. But if you move your headquarters, they'll see your vans, they'll see your texts, they'll see you around. So there's like, there's a good benefit of just physically moving to wherever the best spot is. The way you can game it is you can open up, you know, make sure you're following Google's terms of service, but you can open up like a secondary office somewhere, have a CSR or something, report there, make it a functional office and drive reviews to it. And if that's in the dead center of the wealthiest part of your city, then amazing. You're probably going to do great. But that's the ways to win proximity and yeah, totally, like, huge win versus, like, look, if you run an amazing business, you're in the middle of nowhere or like you're completely surrounded that mile around you. No one could ever hire you, you know, it's of no good. Might as well not be there.

[B]

Yeah, proximity is an interesting one because you, you definitely want to move. And there's definitely the game of, like, get to the place that you want to be where you know the wealthiest people in your area are, but also you want to find opportunities where there's not as much competition. Right? Yeah, I would rather be the single plumber in an area.

[A]

And what actually kind of happens is I think you do. If you prioritize location, you do End up being the only one. And the reason you have, the reason I have to nail down like location is a marketing decision is because you will probably pay more for rent. It's the same like, hey, are you on a main street as a restaurant or are you on a side street? Well, the difference in revenue is probably like 80% but you have to be on the main street even though the rent's three times as much. So it's a similar cost or like, you know, analysis. I think where, hey, I'm in, I'm in the wealthiest section of our county.

This is the least dense quadrant for home service companies to be at because they can't afford or they don't want to afford the rent to be here. They're all in industrial parkways in like where we used to be in the most rundown areas because that's where they can get the cheapest rent.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So yeah, I actually think it ends up being the same thing. If you can over invest in your facility, you will win and there will be less competition.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I'm, you know, to. Your other point is having multiple locations is a good thing. A couple things on that you want to make sure is that you're not overlapping the map. So when you're putting in your locations and your zip codes and your neighborhoods and stuff like that, you do want to make sure that they don't overlap. You will get your hand slapped. We do have, you know, some clients who move locations and then just never shut that GBP down. So I'm not saying not to do that. Just whatever you do, make sure you don't do anything that requires you to re. Verify you're in that area. But you can still keep posting, keep getting reviews there, keep doing some of the basic stuff to have you drive leads from that area. And then, you know, getting, just talking about locations. You're going to get 20 different sections that you can put locations are. You can put one like I do all of Ohio or Akron. The more details that you put in there, the better off you're going to be. I would suggest putting all 20 and I would go down to neighborhoods or zip codes or whatever it is to be as specific as possible and cover as much of the area as possible. But yeah, those are the things from a proximity standpoint. I'm, I, I think you're right. It's a, it's a marketing play and I think.

[A]

Be where you want to be. Yeah, I think just be where you want to be like we used to. I could show our service titan map. But it's kind of interesting because we used to be 30 minutes from where we are now or like 25 minutes or something and we moved towards the wealthiest section and like, you know, it shows like density, like how much revenue do you do? And it's the darker green it is, the more revenue. And like that used to be like white, like we didn't do anything and now it's like dark green and like the best section. So be where you want to be.

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[B]

Yeah, primary secondary category. The big mistake we see is we just. People don't put a lot of subcategories. They'll put like one keyword and they won't put others.

[A]

If, if I may and I, I've seen people try to game this in a way that like it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. So like the primary secondary categories have to make sense for what you're offering. Like, basically. So I've had people try to pull off like self storage and plumbing. Those don't make sense. That's not something that makes sense. Google doesn't care. The customer doesn't care. Like no one thinks that's going to make sense. My best example for that is like what you said earlier. If I start selling tacos, if somebody searches plumber and my primary category is Mexican restaurant, like I sh. I will not show up. Right? It just doesn't make sense. And like vice versa, like yeah, Chipotle shouldn't show up if somebody searches like plumber near me. It just doesn't make any sense. So as you think about keywords and categories, what we found, I'm curious what you've seen. But like, so we have multiple Offices. And it's pretty much like what the primary category is, is what you're getting. Like you might get a little bit of something else if it's very Pareto. Like, if I have plumbing as my primary category and H Vac as my secondary category, out of 10 calls, I'm getting eight plumbing.

[B]

Yeah. Your primary category is going to be the main thing that you want drives.

[A]

It drives.

[B]

Definitely driving.

[A]

So it almost requires multiple offices if you are running multiple trades to drive like the most value through gbp.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I would say, like, obviously it depends on the size of company you are and how much marketing revenue or marketing budget that you have to throw at that. So if you have enough money. Yeah. Go get more offices and really focus those offices. But you're going to run into the issue real quick of location.

Being an issue because you can't overlap that. So you can't have one office that's just plumbing and then right on top of another office that's, you know, electrical. And so, you know, you can absolutely still drive that. You just have to do it well and make sure that you're adding in those subcategories and making sure that you're posting about those other. Those other services.

[A]

Services. Yeah.

[B]

But your primary one is always going to be the thing that Google recognizes you the most with.

[A]

Yeah. And I think if you're doing multiple trades, what we've done is.

One electric or two electric, one or two plumbing, one or two H Vac. And like built on where do we want more plumbing and how do we drive more organic. So our big growth push for next year is our plumbing department. So we're going to be adding like 4GBps in plumbing.

[B]

I love how aggressive you are.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Four doesn't even feel like that crazy to me, but, I mean, maybe it is. I don't know.

[B]

Well, I mean, most of the conversations I have is people are like, well, we think we're going to add one. So I just. I love.

[A]

Well, I think, like, the more. Yeah, I mean, we're really bullish on this. Like, the more money you can put into gbp, you will win. It is the gift that keeps giving to me. It's like as. As much of our marketing budget as humanly possible that can go into this, the better. Like, how do we increase reviews? How do we put more photos up, how do we add more GBP profiles? Like, how do we just continue to scale this effort? Because the ROI is like 30 or 40 times versus, like, you know, LSA is 10 times. Yeah, like, it's just a ridiculous, outlandish return on our money. So, yeah, GBPs are huge. Last one was reviews. I don't like. How are you thinking about it? What are the things you're seeing that matter?

[B]

Reviews matter. Reviews are obviously the, you know, one of the most important parts of this entire marketing game. The companies that spiff their team members are going to get the best results. And it doesn't always have to be like, you know, something boring. It can be something big, something interesting. You know, it could be as simple as, you know, giving them a gift card to something or, or, I don't know, an award or something like that. But doing nothing is going to result in nothing. So companies that reward for reviews get better. The other thing I really like is when you are rewarding customers for giving you a review and so tax on site, finish a job and have like a gift card on hand and say, hey, we're doing a review challenge inside work and giving out Starbucks gift cards or whatever.

[A]

You allowed to do that?

[B]

Coffee company, why not? Like, Google's never gonna see that. And just, yeah, they literally just say, hey, if you scan this QR code and leave us a review, whichever one you want, like whatever you want, we'll give you this, you know, $10 gift card. So Google, like, literally, unless Google's on site is never gonna know that we.

[A]

Did cash prizes, which has been really helpful for our team. And ideally, like, you paid out pretty fast and then like small contests to drive it. And then like the easy one is like automation. So what we found, so the reviews, I think you can break it down into a bunch of different things, but there's like review quality. Are they good or are they bad? Are there pictures or no pictures? What's the frequency? What's the volume? So like, frequency is like, was Your last review 5 years ago or was it yesterday? Obviously the one that got it yesterday is going to be more valuable. The one that got a hundred yesterday is going to be more valuable. The one than the one that got two last week. So volume, frequency, quality. Is it a photo? I think all those different things matter. So we, yeah, we have a bunch of automation set up to like drive that.

It's been improving quite a bit. I like, we're in the. I think we're at like 60 to 70 a week now. And when we really started pushing on this a couple months ago, we were like 20 or 30 pulling up the scorecard.

[B]

Now, did you feel any difference in volume? Like call volumes when you hit certain tiers like, you know, we see a difference. Like once you hit like a hundred reviews, it kind of like ticks up and then once you hit like certain other levels. But like, did you feel any difference in call volume when you hit like a bigger tier?

[A]

Yeah, paid volume goes down.

And then our gbps, like we use that heat map thing and our gbps are all ranking higher. So what we used to do is we used to focus all of our reviews on one GBP at a time and like hyperload this one, then switch it, then switch it. Now we like the software we're using equal spreads them. So then it like you could have a hundred and it, what it does is it wherever the job is, it sends the review and like a picture from that job and a few other things to the closest Google business profile to that job. Fucking awesome. Okay, so what it ended up doing is like all of our GBPs started ranking from like some of them like we haven't touched and they haven't gotten a review in like six months.

And they've really like started shooting up, which has been sweet.

[B]

That's happening.

[A]

It's been really good. So yeah, the automation side of it has been good because you want to be able to keep a consistent, frequent, high volume and then add new ones as you keep going and expand, like GEO Scope. Anything I'm missing, like, what else do you think I should be doing on reviews to get better?

[B]

Rewarding your team members, making sure that you're doing it with your customers. Another, you know, tip is happy calls. Obviously, if you're not doing, oh yeah, you should be doing those. But you have a good experience.

[A]

Can you leave us a review?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, like just hitting them. The automation process of, you know, after the tech has left, if they have not left a review, hitting them a couple times via email or text message, you basically just want a really solid outbound campaign to get that review.

And so hit them in person, hit them on via text message, email, and then a phone call and do everything you can. And then obviously if it's not a good experience, like, you know, not bugging them too much. But I think people are used to it at this point. Like I got a text message from like two months ago when I bought a new car to go leave them a good review. And so, you know, I get it.

[A]

When I go out to dinner, I get it everywhere. Yeah, it's just sort of a part of the deal. Yeah. All right, so the big takeaways, proximity matters. Ideally, the cl, you want to be where you Want to be?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Primary category will be the majority of your calls. And just like, don't play stupid games with primary. Secondary categories. Like, if you're a plumber, be a plumber. I. Yeah, like, don't be like a storage facility that's also a plumber. Like, this is dumb.

And then reviews, like, get more. Make sure they're good and get them frequently, which is like all stuff we know. I think we can debunk a couple things too of like, you know, that list is like 187 things. Like things that like, don't matter that much. And like one of them was like, hey, geotagged photos. It was literally 186 on a list of 187. It was the second to lowest possible thing to rank versus, like, are you getting reviews? Are you near where your customers are? Yeah. Are you open? Like, that's a big one. Like, are your hours updated? Did you change it to 24 7? Like, are you open? Which it. It's all like the five most important things are all the things you can probably think of. But like, my guess is people aren't. I bet more people are focusing on like, you know, did I enrich like this photo versus, like, are my hours right? Like, I think people are focusing on like the least valuable part versus, like, is it just working?

[B]

Yeah. And I think it's a. It's obviously different if you're running it yourself versus, like me as a marketing agency. I have to think of the 186 different things. 100% because I have to go compete because you're going to grade me on my ability to drive you leads. And so there are those things and those are important too, you know. You know, for example, all that like backend optimization that nobody talks about. Like, so for example, you can put on there like, hey, no one here speaks Spanish. That's an important thing because in otherwise you might get calls for someone who wants to be talking to somebody who speaks Spanish or if you do, if you're like, hey, I've got a tech here that speaks fluently, that's an advantage that you can take, you know, take advantage of in that market to drive calls for somebody that is looking for that and you get pretty, pretty detailed there. And so like all those little things on the back end is things that I care about because it's the, the. It's the thing that the other marketing agency or just somebody doing it in person isn't doing. So that's like the advantage can try to take over or take Advantage of.

[A]

Well, I think, I think that makes sense because to me, I, I, I think my point wasn't, my point wasn't like the whole list doesn't matter. It was more like I think people are like, the whole list does matter. Like we basically do everything on that list, right? Yeah, I think that people are just like trying to mess with the wrong thing or, or they're just like not focusing it at all, which is like the greatest sin. Like you have, like this is the most important marketing asset you have is your gbp. Like almost nothing else matters. So if you're invest, if you're like trying to figure out how to wrap your trucks better, like nobody gives a, like work on your gbp.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If you're, if you're fairly new or you know, rather small, you need to focus on the primary things, right, that are going to drive you leads right now so that you can keep, keep growing. If you're bigger, then that's when you really need to focus on, you know, how do you get to 20 or 30, you know, phone calls a week kind of thing? Like, how do you get to that next size? And that's where you have to be really consistent. You have to be posting three to five times a week. You have to have like all those small like details done. So, 100% like the, the main three things that you should be focusing on. It doesn't matter what size is going to be proximity, keyword strength, and reviews. And then after that there's a, you know, a list of a thousand different things that you could potentially do or not. Thousands, a couple hundred different things that you should be thinking about to get the most out of your GBP marketing.

[A]

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[B]

I know Google is trialing, getting rid of Q and as we start to see on some of our clients, I saw something I see moving it. So for now keep adding the Q&As, but like within really soon it may not even matter anymore. So which I think is an interesting choice. But yeah, GBP is changing. It always is. We're always seeing some new stuff. Like we'll be in a client's account, we'll start, we'll see like a drop. It'll go from like, you know, 50 leads a week and down to 40. It's like, what happened? And we'll realize, like, they're testing something and you're like, please Google, for the love of everything good, don't do that. So just know that like, sometimes that like, literally you're doing all the right things and you still have a drop. And it might be because they're trying to test something out new. Or it could be seasonal. There's like seasonality. There's a myriad of things it could be.

But yeah, you know, do it, do it. If. If I'm ranking gbp, it's God tier, right? Like, it is the.

[A]

Oh, totally. Yes.

[B]

Everyone should be doing it. Yeah, everyone should be doing it. If you are small enough to where you don't have the money to pay somebody else to do it, whether internal or an agency, go to YouTube. You know, 80% of what we do is on YouTube that you can go learn and just make it happen. So highly encourage it. Definitely should be focusing on it.

[A]

Sweet. Thanks everybody. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure you give us a five star review wherever it is you listen to podcasts and sub on the YouTube. I'm desperate.