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A Monthly Presence Audit You Can Run in 20 Minutes

Your online presence drifts quietly — stale hours, an outdated category, unanswered reviews, a social bio pointing at last spring's promotion. Here is a short, repeatable monthly checklist for your Google profile, reviews, and social, in about 20 minutes.

Nothing about your online presence breaks loudly. It drifts. Your hours quietly go stale after a holiday. A category stops matching what the shop actually does now. Reviews pile up without a reply. A social bio still points at a promotion that ended in spring. None of it triggers an alarm — it just slowly costs you visibility and trust with the exact customers who are checking you out.

The fix is not a big annual overhaul you dread and postpone. It is a short, repeatable pass over the three surfaces customers actually look at: your Google Business Profile, your reviews, and your social profiles. Done monthly, with a little preparation, it fits in about 20 minutes.

Here is the checklist.

Start with your Google profile

For most local businesses, the Google Business Profile is the first thing a customer sees — the panel with your hours, photos, and reviews, deciding whether they call, visit, or keep scrolling. That is why it goes first.

Three checks catch most of the drift:

  • Hours. Confirm your regular hours, and add special hours for any upcoming holidays or events so customers never see conflicting information. You can set both regular and special hours right in the profile. Stale hours are one of the fastest ways to lose a customer who was ready to walk in.
  • Category. Your primary category is the setting Google leans on hardest to decide which searches you show up for. Confirm it still describes the business as it is today — if your service mix has shifted, update it. Keep it specific and honest; Google tells you not to use categories as keyword slots.
  • Name, address, phone. These three should match your website and your other listings exactly. When you edit your profile information, check that the phone number, address, and name are the real-world ones, with no city names or keywords bolted on.

While you are there, add a photo or two and glance at the description to make sure it still reflects what you offer.

Work through your reviews

Reviews are the second surface, and they are where recency matters most. A wall of five-star reviews from two years ago quietly stops doing its job — around 74% of consumers focus on reviews written in the last three months. That is why nearly everyone checking you out cares more about this month than last year. It is also why reviews are worth checking every single month: 82% of people consult ratings and reviews before a first-time purchase.

Three quick reads:

  • Rating and volume. Note your average rating and how many new reviews landed since last month. A slipping rating is an early signal worth reading closely — the words usually tell you why before the number does.

More on Online presence operations

  • What Is the Difference Between Brand Monitoring and Reputation Management?
  • Altyaa Is Live: One Place That Handles Your Online Presence — and Waits for Your Yes
  • The Tools a Local Business Actually Needs (and What to Skip)
  • The Weekly Online Presence Checklist for Local Businesses

The marketing team that grows your online presence — across Google, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

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  • Response coverage. Scan for anything from the last month or two without a reply, and answer it. Aim for every review getting a response. Google's own guidance is that replying shows customers you value their feedback, and HBR research found that businesses that start replying to reviews tend to see their average rating rise over time, partly because unhappy customers pile on less once they see someone is listening.
  • Recency. If new reviews have slowed to a trickle, plan one small ask this month — a handful of recent, happy customers, the neutral way.

    • Sweep your social profiles

    Social is the quiet drift zone, because you post from the feed and rarely look at the profile itself. Once a month, open each platform you actually use and check the parts that go stale:

    • The basics. Profile photo, cover image, handle, and bio — do they match your current branding, and is the bio still accurate? Retire any cover image advertising an expired promotion.
    • The link and contact details. Your name, address, phone, and the link in your bio should match your Google profile and website. Inconsistency across surfaces confuses both customers and search engines.
    • Engagement. Reply to any comments or messages you missed, and skim your mentions. Recurring questions are a gift — they are next month's posts.

    Keep review-asking honest

    If your audit turns up a plan to gather more reviews, do it the safe way, because the rules have teeth now. Since the FTC's rule on fake reviews took effect in October 2024, you cannot buy positive reviews, write your own, have AI fabricate them, or send only happy customers to Google while steering unhappy ones elsewhere. The compliant version is also the simplest: ask every customer the same neutral way — "tell us how we did" — not "leave us five stars."

    Make it a 20-minute routine

    The reason a monthly audit stays short is preparation. Keep one "brand facts" note — your exact name, address, phone, hours, categories, and a short description — and copy from it whenever a surface needs an update. That single habit kills most inconsistency before it starts. Practitioner guidance on setting up and maintaining a Google profile lands in the same place: accuracy and completeness are what make the profile work.

    Put the audit on the calendar as a recurring 20 minutes: Google profile, reviews, social — same order every month. When it is a rhythm instead of a scramble, your presence stops drifting and starts compounding.

    Where Altyaa fits

    Altyaa pulls your Google profile, reviews, and social presence into one place, so the monthly audit is a single pass instead of five browser tabs. It flags what has drifted, drafts human-sounding review replies for you to approve, and turns customer language into your next posts.

    The owner stays in control the whole way — Altyaa handles the watching and the drafting, and you decide what goes live. Twenty minutes a month, and your presence keeps working while you run the business.

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