Nothing hidden
Every check the free audit runs, what each one means and what to do about it. You do not need to run anything or sign up for anything to read this.
On the number
You will see "75+ checks" and "310+ checks" elsewhere. Counting that high means counting things like whether your Twitter card image is the right dimensions, which is real and is not why anybody rings you. These 38 are the ones that decide whether somebody on a phone finds you and then calls. Each one is listed below, so you can disagree with any of them.
7 checks
When somebody asks ChatGPT or Google's AI for a business like yours, it names two or three it can describe with confidence. These decide whether you are one of them.
What it costs you Your robots file tells the AI assistants to stay out. When somebody asks ChatGPT for a plumber in your town, it names businesses it can describe with confidence, and it cannot describe one it has never been allowed to read. Your competitor gets named instead.
What to do Two lines in one file. It takes about a minute and does not affect Google or anything else.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 10 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Your site is behind Cloudflare, which has blocked AI crawlers by default on new accounts since July 2025, with no notification and no drop in visitors to notice, because you cannot see people who never arrive. Your robots file says nothing either way, which is what the default looks like. We cannot prove it from outside, but it is worth thirty seconds to check.
What to do Cloudflare dashboard, Security, then Bots. Look for "Block AI bots" and see whether it is on. If it is, that is the whole answer.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 5 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you You have the markup but it leaves out things an assistant needs before it will name you, your number, your opening hours, or the areas you cover. It will pick the business whose details are complete over the one it has to guess about.
What to do Fill in the missing fields. It is the same information already on your contact page, written where machines read it.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 20 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Your site, your Google profile and your Facebook page look like three separate businesses to an assistant. It will not assume they are the same one, and a business it cannot pin down is a business it does not recommend.
What to do One line in your markup listing your other profiles. It is the cheapest fix on this list.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 10 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Assistants quote text that answers a question completely in one place. Your pages describe your services, which is right for a person reading them, but there is nothing an assistant can lift and attribute to you when somebody asks what a boiler service costs or how fast you can get there.
What to do A short questions section, in the words customers actually use. The ones you already answer on the phone ten times a week.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 90 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you The newest date anywhere on it is over a year old. A customer wonders whether you are still trading; an assistant simply will not risk recommending a business that may have shut.
What to do Anything dated and recent. A job you finished, a note about hours over Christmas. It does not need to be much, it needs to exist.
A symptom of the others rather than a thing of its own. Fixing the date and content findings fixes this.
What it costs you Nothing says whether this was written last month or in 2019, which makes it hard for anyone, human or machine, to know the information is still true.
What to do A date on anything that changes, prices, hours, areas covered.
Covered by putting a date on anything that changes. One line, and writing six steps for it would be padding.
3 checks
Not a website check, and the one customers react to hardest. A quote that lands in spam produces no bounce and no reply, so you never learn it happened.
What it costs you You own the domain but there is no mailbox on it, so you are quoting from a gmail or hotmail address. It works, and it quietly costs you: a quote from a free address reads as a smaller operation than the same quote from your own name.
What to do A mailbox on your own domain, usually a few pounds a month. Half an hour, mostly waiting.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 45 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Your domain has no SPF record, which is the thing that tells Gmail and Outlook which servers are allowed to send as you. Without it your quotes and invoices get filtered, and you never find out. There is no bounce, the customer simply does not reply.
What to do One line in your DNS. Your email provider gives you exactly what to paste.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 20 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you No DMARC record means nothing stops somebody using your business name on an email you did not send. It also makes your own mail more likely to be filtered, Gmail and Outlook have expected this from anyone sending in volume since 2024.
What to do One more DNS line. Start it in monitor mode so nothing of yours gets blocked while you watch what it catches.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 15 minutes to fix yourself.
3 checks
Measured by Google on a mobile connection rather than guessed at from the page.
What it costs you Measured by Google, on a mobile connection: your main content takes over four seconds to appear. Their own research puts a tenth of a second against 21% more people reaching an enquiry form, four seconds is a different order of problem. Most of the people who leave never knew they had arrived.
What to do Usually images that were never resized, or a page loading things it does not need. It is rarely a rebuild.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 60 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Your main content takes over two and a half seconds to appear on a phone, which is Google’s threshold for a good experience. Not a disaster, and it is costing you the people in a hurry, which in your trade is most of them.
What to do Image sizes and hosting, usually. Worth doing, not worth panicking about.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 40 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Things load late and shove the rest of the page down. Somebody going to tap your number taps an advert instead, and on a phone that is the difference between a call and a closed tab.
What to do Reserving space for images and banners before they arrive. A small job with a disproportionate effect.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 30 minutes to fix yourself.
8 checks
Fresha, Booksy, Just Eat and Checkatrade rank themselves rather than you, and take a cut on the way past. This is the commonest thing we find.
What it costs you Fresha and Booksy rank themselves in Google, not you, so the searches that should find your name find their directory, and they keep the customer relationship along with a cut of the booking.
What to do Your own site, ranking for your own name and your own area, with the booking system embedded rather than replacing it.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 60 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo take somewhere between 14% and 30% of each order, and the listing they rank is theirs. A regular customer who could have ordered direct is costing you a slice of every meal.
What to do Your own ordering page. It does not replace the aggregators. It gives the people who already know you somewhere cheaper to go.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 60 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Checkatrade and the rest rank for your trade and your town, then sell that position to whoever pays. Your reputation is doing the work and their domain is collecting it.
What to do The same reviews on a page you own, where they build your ranking rather than theirs.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 60 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Instagram and Facebook do not rank for "plumber in Barking", they are not there when the platform is down, and anyone who looks you up while deciding sees a feed rather than an answer to what you do and where.
What to do A small site that answers those questions, with the social feed linked from it rather than standing in for it.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 60 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you UENI sites are built and hosted for you, which is convenient until you want to move, change something substantial, or stop paying.
What to do The same content on a site in your own name, on your own hosting, that you can take anywhere.
An observation, not a fault. It says what the site was built with, so the subscription can be judged at renewal.
What it costs you It works, but you are renting the builder as well as the hosting, and what you can change is limited to what the builder allows.
What to do Not urgent. Worth knowing when you next look at the bill.
An observation, not a fault.
What it costs you A generated template on a subscription. It is a site, but it is not an asset you own.
What to do Worth reviewing when the subscription comes up.
An observation, not a fault.
What it costs you A managed template site. Fine while you are paying; not something you can take with you.
What to do Worth reviewing at renewal.
An observation, not a fault.
7 checks
The faults nothing else checks for, and the only ones where the customer had already decided to ring you and could not.
What it costs you Somebody standing in a flooded kitchen is not filling in a form. They are looking for a number, and when there is not one they press back and ring whoever is second in the results. This is the most expensive thing on the list and the one nothing else checks for.
What to do The number in the header, on every page, and again near the top of the home page. It is not clutter. It is the whole point of the site.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 20 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you It is printed on the page but it is not a link, so on a phone nobody can press it. They have to memorise it or copy it by hand, and a fair number will not bother. Most people looking for a trade are on a phone.
What to do Wrap the number in a tel: link. It is a one-line change and it is the single highest-return thing on this report.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 10 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Your contact form takes names, numbers and email addresses. UK law says you have to tell people what happens to them. It is rarely enforced against a small business, and it is the kind of thing that only matters on the day it matters.
What to do A short privacy page saying what you collect, why, how long you keep it and who to contact. Half an hour, once.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 30 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Nothing is measuring visits, so there is no way to tell whether the site brings you work, which pages people read, or whether anything you change makes a difference. You are guessing, and so is anybody you pay to improve it.
What to do Any of the free ones will do. It is fifteen minutes and it turns every future decision from a guess into a number.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 20 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you A recommendation in a WhatsApp group is your address pasted into a chat. Without share tags it appears as a bare link with no name and no picture, at the exact moment somebody has vouched for you to six people at once.
What to do Two lines of markup: a title and an image. Then test it by sending the link to yourself.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 15 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Somebody who finds you on Maps rings one number and somebody who finds the website rings another. Search engines treat the mismatch as two businesses and trust neither, and one of the two numbers is probably not being answered.
What to do Pick the number you actually answer and put it in both places, plus anywhere else you are listed.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 15 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Somebody arriving from Maps already has your number. Somebody arriving from a search does not, and there is nothing on the page to give them. It also breaks the match between your listing and your site, which is one of the signals deciding whether you appear in the map results at all.
What to do Put the same number in the header of the site, as a tappable link.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 10 minutes to fix yourself.
17 checks
Security, mobile layout, how you look in search, and your details in the format machines read.
What it costs you Anyone who hears your name and looks you up finds nothing, so a recommendation that should have been a booked job turns into a hesitation.
What to do A five-page site with your reviews, your photos and a tap-to-call button, live in three weeks.
There is nothing to fix. The whole finding is that there is no site, and the answer is to get one, whether from us or anybody else.
What it costs you If it is genuinely down, every person searching for you today is finding a blank page, and Google stops showing pages it cannot load.
What to do First we check whether it is actually down or just blocking automated checks, then sort out whichever it turns out to be.
The site is down or blocking us. Ring whoever hosts it. There is no sequence of steps for somebody else's outage.
What it costs you Browsers show a "Not secure" warning next to your address, which is the first thing a customer sees before they have read a word about you.
What to do A certificate installed and the whole site moved across. Usually an hour's work.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 30 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you It renders at desktop width on a mobile, so text is tiny and buttons are hard to hit, and most people looking for a trade are on a phone.
What to do Rebuilt mobile-first, with a phone number big enough to tap with a thumb.
Step-by-step instructions available.
What it costs you Your address, hours and phone number are on the page for people but not in the format Google reads, so you are less likely to appear in the local map results.
What to do Structured business details added so search engines and AI assistants can quote you correctly.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 30 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you The title is the blue line someone clicks in Google. Without one they see your web address instead, which tells them nothing.
What to do A written title for every page, naming the trade and the area.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 20 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Google truncates it, so whatever you put at the end (often the town you cover) never gets seen.
What to do Rewritten to fit, with the important words first.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 15 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Google picks a sentence off your page at random to show beneath the link. Sometimes it picks a cookie notice.
What to do A written description per page, so you control what people read before they click.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 20 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Neither a visitor skimming nor a search engine can tell what the page is about within the first second.
What to do A clear heading on every page saying what you do and where.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 25 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Slow to load on mobile data, and people leave rather than wait, particularly the ones with an emergency who will just ring the next result.
What to do Images compressed and unused code stripped out.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 45 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Pictures straight off a phone are three or four megabytes each. On your own wifi the site feels fine, which is why this goes unnoticed for years. On mobile data outside somebody’s house it is the difference between a call and a closed tab.
What to do Resize them to about 1600 pixels wide and save as WebP. Most of the weight goes and nobody can see the difference.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 45 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you A sitemap is the list you hand search engines so they know every page exists. Without one they find what they stumble across, which on a small site usually means the pages nobody links to never get found at all.
What to do Any SEO plugin generates one automatically. If you are on WordPress you may already have it and just not be pointing at it.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 15 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Not a spelling quibble. Google matches a business across the web by name, address and phone together, so a different trading name on the site weakens the connection between the two and both rank lower for it.
What to do Use one name everywhere, exactly. If you trade under a shorter version, make that the one on both.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 15 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you An unclaimed listing can be edited by the public and by Google itself, and it shows a "claim this business" link to anybody looking at it, which reads as closed or abandoned. You also cannot reply to reviews or post updates until it is yours.
What to do Search your business on Google, press Claim this business, and go through the verification. It is free and it takes about a week for the postcard to arrive.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 25 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Nearly half of people will not consider a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and a third will only use one rated 4.5 or better. Before anybody reads a word on your website they have already seen the number next to your name in the search results, and for most of them that is where the decision happens.
What to do Open your Google profile, press Share, and text that link to the customer on the day the job finishes while they are still pleased with it. A printed card with a QR code catches the ones you forget. Two a month puts you past twenty inside a year, and the ones you get this month count for more than the ones you got in 2022.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 20 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you Somebody comparing three businesses in the results is looking at three numbers, and yours is the small one. It costs you the click before anybody has seen your work, your prices or your website. This is the figure we can see from outside and you probably cannot.
What to do Nothing else on this list moves the needle as fast for as little money. Ask every satisfied customer, on the day, by text, with the link. You do not have to catch up, only stop being the obvious outlier.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 20 minutes to fix yourself.
What it costs you A lot of people set the filter at four stars and never see anything below it. One bad job from years ago can still be doing this, because a low count means every old review carries more weight than it should.
What to do You cannot remove an honest bad review and should not try. You can bury it: a steady trickle of new ones moves the average faster than anything else, and the more you have the less any single one matters.
Step-by-step instructions available. About 30 minutes to fix yourself.