By the Third Eye Marketing team · Updated 14 October 2026 · 5 min read
The short answerTick off 25 checks across six areas: findable, understood, accurate, trusted, answerable and measured. Most local businesses can fix the first four in a week or two. Our
free scan checks the technical items automatically.
Findable
- Your site loads over HTTPS and is fast on a phone.
- robots.txt does not block search and answer crawlers (for example Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot).
- Your key pages are in an up-to-date XML sitemap.
- Important pages are not hidden behind a login, popup or heavy scripts.
- You have an llms.txt file (optional, an emerging convention).
Understood
- Structured data describes your business (LocalBusiness or a specific type), with address, phone and opening hours.
- Your main services are marked up and described on their own pages.
- FAQ sections are marked up as FAQPage.
- Your social profiles are linked from the site and in your markup.
- You describe the business in one consistent way everywhere.
Accurate
- Name, address and phone are identical on your site, Google, Yelp, Facebook and Apple.
- Opening hours, including holidays, are current everywhere.
- Your primary Google category is correct and specific.
- Old or duplicate listings are merged or removed.
Trusted
- You have at least 20 genuine Google reviews (BrightLocal found 47% of consumers avoid businesses with fewer).
- You have recent reviews (74% only consider the last three months).
- You reply to every review, good and bad.
- You ask for reviews as part of your normal process, without incentives.
Answerable
- Your site answers the questions customers ask: what, where, how much, how to book.
- Each answer starts with the direct answer in the first sentence.
- Your key pages include real photos, staff and specifics, not just generic copy.
Measure
- You have a short list of customer-style questions to test.
- You test them across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI, Copilot and Claude, signed out, on a schedule.
- You track Search Console and Google Business Profile insights.
Want this done for you, with a baseline scorecard? See how we measure or book a free call.
Sources
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026, published 11 February 2026 (1,002 US adults).
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