Gbp¶

All-Green Heatmap May Mean Rural Scan, Not Dominance¶

From legacy section: Prospect Analysis

Pattern: Heatmap showed all green but avg rank was 18.06. The grid was centered on a rural/low-competition area. Rule: When a heatmap shows all-green: (1) check if grid is centered on rural/low-density area, (2) if yes, reframe as "home territory strong, growth opportunity in populated corridors." Correlate visual with actual target market geography. Date: 2026-03-05

GBP centroid in the wrong region is a killer prospect diagnostic¶

From legacy section: Prospect Analysis

Why: 23rd and Fourth (interior designer, Saratoga Springs) was "invisible in Saratoga searches" — investigation showed their GBP centroid was registered ~30 miles southwest, near Schenectady. An LD heatmap centered on the GBP's apparent location showed average rank 20+ with <10% top-10 coverage; a second scan centered on the actual showroom showed zero visibility on any pin. That single finding — "Google has your business filed in the wrong neighborhood" — became a stronger one-sentence pitch hook than any score breakdown. Common for Service Area Businesses where the original setup defaulted to a service-area centroid instead of the physical address. How to apply: When a prospect says "I'm in X but I'm invisible in X searches," and they have a GBP, ALWAYS run two LD heatmaps: one centered on where the GBP currently appears (Google Maps zoom-out view shows the pin), one centered on their actual storefront/showroom. If the centroid is off by 5+ miles, the delta is your story — a fix that requires no on-page SEO, just GBP cleanup. Especially valuable for SABs, decade-old businesses with stale GBP setups, or any business that changed locations. Date: 2026-05-20

GBP keyword-stuffing detection: don't sync clean directories to a dirty Google Business Profile¶

From legacy section: SEO NEO / Workbook

Pattern: First real customer audit (Rotor-Matic Sewer & Drain Solutions, Watervliet NY, audit 19b72432, free Light, 2026-04-30) surfaced a Light-prompt blind spot. The customer's GBP name was Rotor-Matic Sewer & Drain Solutions - Drain Cleaning — keyword-stuffed (their primary_service "Drain Cleaning" appended to the actual business name with a - separator). Local Dominator's listings audit does literal-string compare against the GBP name, so it flagged Yelp / Facebook / Hotfrog as "name incorrect" — those directories use the real (clean) business name "Rotor-Matic Sewer & Drain Solutions." The Light prompt then assumed the GBP was source-of-truth and the Quick Win section recommended changing the Yelp listing to match the keyword-stuffed GBP name. Acting on that advice would have (a) violated Yelp's content guidelines forbidding descriptive keywords in business names, (b) propagated the keyword-stuffing problem to a second directory, and (c) increased the customer's risk of GBP suspension (Google can suspend GBPs with keyword-stuffed names without warning, sometimes years after the fact). Caught 2-3 hours after delivery. Customer correction email drafted same day. Rule: When auditing citations, the GBP is NOT automatically the source of truth — it's frequently the dirtiest version. Detection heuristics for keyword-stuffed GBP names (any one of these = treat GBP as suspect, not authoritative): - Trailing - <text> / | <text> / — <text> where <text> matches or contains words from payload.business.primary_service (the smoking gun pattern) - Trailing geographic descriptors: - <city>, of <city>, <city> - Marketing keywords inserted: Best, Top, #1, Affordable, Cheap, Fast, Emergency, 24/7, Premier, Professional, Licensed, Certified - Multiple cross-directory listings (Yelp, Facebook, Hotfrog, etc.) agreeing on a cleaner name than the GBP — quorum > 1 directory using the same shorter name = strong signal that's the real name When detected, the prompt should: 1. Surface "Your Google Business Profile name includes what looks like service-category keywords. Google's GBP guidelines explicitly forbid descriptive keywords in business names; profiles violating this can be suspended without warning." 2. Recommend editing the GBP DOWN to the clean cross-directory name (drop the appended segments), NOT syncing the other directories UP to the bad GBP. 3. Treat any "name incorrect" flags from Yelp/Facebook/Hotfrog as resolved-pending-GBP-fix, not as separate fixes the customer should make. Why this matters: customers paying for visibility audits are often the exact ones who hired aggressive SEOs in the past who keyword-stuffed their GBP. Telling them to propagate that to other directories is the worst possible advice — it cements an existing risk. Date: 2026-04-30

Always run a fresh heatmap before scoring Map Visibility / Competitive Position — defaults are not benign¶

From legacy section: SEO NEO / Workbook

When scoring the /70 Light tier framework, the two dimensions that need heatmap data (Website Map Visibility, Competitive Position) default to 3/10 each when no scan was run. The defaults FEEL conservative but in practice they're often wrong by ±15 points on the total score. Rock Academy fresh data: 16→34 (+18). Putnam Place: 25→39 (+14). Mid-Ohio: 20→30 (+10). Anderson: 20→30 (+10). The defaults systematically penalize clients who are actually winning the local map war (Rock Academy held #1 on 26% of pins; Putnam Place top-3 on 77%) and they're equally unreliable in the opposite direction — Tali Kogan dropped 18→12 with fresh data because a "claimed-but-empty" GBP scored worse than the assumed no-GBP fallback. Why: Across 10 client audits run with stale assumptions, then re-run with fresh heatmaps, the average score shifted 6.9 points. Several clients had the diagnosis wrong (Rock Academy's earlier audit said "no map visibility" — fresh scan showed they were the local leader). The signal cost of treating defaulted scores as defensible was high: top-3 critical-gaps narratives were targeted at the wrong problem. How to apply: 1. For any /70 Light audit, fire the LD heatmap scan first — never rely on the default-3 fallback unless LD is unreachable (rare, document the degradation explicitly). 2. Pick the keyword that matches the GBP primaryType — not what the business calls itself. Meat & Co GBP is barbecue_restaurant, so keyword is "bbq" not "butcher". Mid-Ohio's bright spot is red light therapy, not the broader "tanning salon" GBP category. Wrong keyword = irrelevant competitor set + misleading rank data. 3. Hand the Place ID to the LD scan, not coordinates alone — LD's /v1/scans endpoint validates the place_id against Google. Stale or invented place_ids fail with "Place ID is no longer valid." Always resolve via Places API first. 4. Heatmap mapping is STRICT per canonical spec Section 3.5 — pct_in_top_3 drives Map Visibility, pct_ranking_1 drives Competitive Position. Don't conflate them. Date: 2026-05-18