If you're shopping for an agency, the audit is also the best interview you'll ever get. More on that at the end.
Layer 1: Can search engines and AI crawlers read your site?
This is the layer most audits skim and the one that quietly breaks everything else.
Start in Google Search Console. How many pages are indexed, how many are excluded and why? Are your service pages among the ones Google chose not to index? Then go a level deeper than most audits do: check what a crawler actually receives.
Google can process JavaScript as long as it isn't blocked, though Google itself notes that SEO on JavaScript-heavy sites is more complex (Google Search Central, July 10, 2026). AI crawlers are a different story. Vercel and MERJ's December 2024 analysis found none of the major AI crawlers rendered JavaScript at all (Vercel). If your site builds its text in the browser, ChatGPT's and Perplexity's crawlers may see an empty shell.
We know this one personally. When we audited our own site in 2026, we found that client-side rendering was hiding page content and metadata from AI crawlers, along with identical boilerplate meta descriptions across most pages. We had to move the text and metadata to the server before those crawlers could read anything. If it can happen to an agency that does this for a living, it can happen to your site.
The rest of this layer: robots.txt rules for Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot; canonical tags; duplicate and case-sensitive URLs; exposed admin pages; broken internal links; page speed and mobile usability.
Layer 2: Do your listings tell one consistent story?
Your business exists in dozens of places, and they need to agree.
- Google Business Profile: Name matches your real-world name with no added keywords, primary category is correct, address shown or hidden correctly for a service-area business, hours accurate, services complete. Google's guidelines say service-area businesses that don't serve customers at their address should hide it (Google Business Profile Help).
- Other platforms: Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp, BBB, Angi, Facebook and your trade association listings.
- Your website: Name, address and phone in crawlable text, matching the profile.
Whitespark's 2026 survey lists mismatched names, addresses and tracking phone numbers across the web as a negative ranking factor, and lists a website URL that forwards to a different domain as both a negative factor and a suspension risk (Whitespark, November 6, 2025). An audit should produce a table of every listing found, what it says, and what needs to change.
Layer 3: How do you rank across the whole service area?
Checking rankings from your office tells you almost nothing. Proximity of the business to the searcher ranked second among all map pack factors in the same survey, so your rankings near the shop will look far better than in the suburbs where you actually want work.
A deep audit should include grid-based rank scans for your money keywords ("water heater replacement," "AC repair," "panel upgrade") across the service area, compared against the two or three competitors who keep beating you. That's how you learn whether you have a distance problem, a relevance problem or a prominence problem. They need different fixes.
Layer 4: How do you show up in AI answers, in both lanes?
Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode run on Google's index and can draw on Business Profile data. ChatGPT and Perplexity use their own crawlers and third-party search partners. The audit should test both separately:
- Search Console's Generative AI performance report, available to all sites since August 31, 2026, for your baseline impressions.
- A logged set of buyer questions run in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode, recording who's named and which sources are cited.
- A list of the third-party sites those assistants cite for your trade and city, and whether you appear on them.
Layer 5: Does the site turn visits into booked calls?
Traffic that doesn't ring the phone is a cost. This layer covers click-to-call on mobile, form length and routing, call answer rates and recordings, how fast someone responds to a form, and whether reviews support the decision. BrightLocal's 2026 survey found 54% of consumers visit a business's website after reading positive reviews (BrightLocal, February 11, 2026). If the site makes them hunt for the phone number, you paid for the review and lost the call.
What changes for multi-location plumbing franchises?
Everything above, multiplied, plus four checks that single-location audits never need:
- Verification structure. Google offers bulk verification to businesses with 10 or more locations, but its help page says service-area businesses aren't eligible (Google Business Profile Help). Most plumbing franchises are service-area businesses, so each location usually verifies on its own. The audit should confirm who owns each profile, corporate or franchisee.
- Naming consistency. Google requires chain locations to use the same name unless the real-world brand varies by location.
- Overlapping service areas. Whitespark's experts flag overlapping service areas across a brand's own profiles as both a ranking negative and a suspension risk. Franchise territories drawn on a sales map often overlap on Google.
- Location page architecture. Each location needs a page with its own address or service area, staff, reviews and services, not a template with the city name swapped.
How long should a deep audit take?
For a single-location contractor, two weeks is realistic for a thorough job, which is why a Memphis business asking for a complete competitive audit inside 14 days isn't being unreasonable. Multi-location franchises need longer, depending on location count.
Kansas City owners asking for a deep technical audit before onboarding have the right instinct. Google's hiring guidance says an audit "should be about giving you realistic estimates of improvement" and advises granting only read access to Search Console at that stage (Google Search Central, June 5, 2026). Never hand over write access for an audit.
What a deep audit should not be
A raw export from a crawling tool with 400 "issues" and no priorities. A promise of first-place rankings. A sales deck with your logo on page one and generic advice on page two. Or a request for owner access to your Business Profile before you've agreed to anything.
What you should receive at the end
- A crawlability and indexing summary, including what AI crawlers actually see.
- A listing consistency table with every correction needed.
- Grid rank scans for your top keywords against named competitors.
- A two-lane AI visibility baseline with the prompts used.
- A conversion review covering calls, forms and reviews.
- A prioritized fix list with effort and expected impact for each item.
You can see how we check many of these items on our technical SEO audit checklist, and franchise owners should also read our breakdown of franchise vs. independent local search. For a quick automated read first, our free Search Authority Audit scores the basics.
If you want the full version, request a LeadValets deep audit at leadvalets.com/deep-audit-request and we'll run the five layers above against your business and your real competitors.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check what technical problems are hurting my home services site?
Start with Google Search Console's indexing and page experience reports, then view the page source of a service page to confirm the text is there. Check robots.txt for anything blocking Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot, and test your site on a phone.
How can I tell what's wrong with my local online presence?
Search your exact business name, then search your main service plus your city from a few different neighborhoods. If you don't appear for your own name, suspect a profile or eligibility problem. If you appear for your name but not the service, the issue is relevance, distance or prominence.
Should I give an agency access to my Search Console for an audit?
Read-only access is fine and is what Google recommends at the audit stage. Don't grant write or owner access until you've hired the agency and know exactly what they'll change.
Do multi-location franchises need a different kind of audit?
Yes. On top of the standard layers, a franchise audit has to check profile ownership and verification for each location, chain naming rules, overlapping service areas and the quality of each location page.
How much does a deep audit cost?
It varies with the number of locations, the size of the site and how many competitors get analyzed. Ask for a scope in writing before you agree to any price, and make sure the deliverables match the list above.
About the author
Jonathan Floyd is the Founder and President of LeadValets and the creator of the Search Authority Flywheel, the framework his team uses to build local visibility across Google Business Profile, Google Maps, and AI search.
His team audits plumbing, HVAC and electrical contractors' sites, profiles and AI answers before recommending any work, and it ran the same audit on LeadValets' own website in 2026, which is where the rendering lesson in this article came from.
He will also tell you when local search isn't going to move your numbers. That's a shorter conversation than most agencies are willing to have.
Connect on LinkedIn | jfloyd@leadvalets.com | 314-561-7101 | leadvalets.com
Written with AI as the framework: written, edited, developed and fact-checked by Jonathan Floyd.