Can Customers Actually Find You? A 15-Minute Check

You've probably never searched for your own business the way a stranger would. Most owners haven't. It takes fifteen minutes, and it usually turns up something that's costing you calls.

Grab your phone. A customer would be on one, so you should be too.

Minutes 1 To 3: Search Your Name

Type your business name and your town. Look at the first page.

• Do you appear at all?
• Is the name spelled the way you spell it?
• Is the phone number right?
• Does the description say what you do?

Write down every mistake. Don't fix anything yet.

Minutes 4 To 6: Search The Job, Not The Name

Now search the way a customer would who doesn't know you: "water heater replacement" plus your town, or "plumber near me."

Where do you show up? Who's above you? Open the top two. What do they say that you don't? Don't copy them. Notice what a customer sees.

Minutes 7 To 9: Check Your Phone Number

Find the number everywhere it appears. Call it from another phone. Does it ring? Does someone answer, or does the voicemail name your business and promise a callback time?

This one check finds more lost calls than any other.

Minutes 10 To 12: Look At Your Website, If You Have One

Open it on your phone. Don't judge the design. Ask:

• Does it load quickly?
• Can you find your phone number without scrolling?
• Can you tell what you do and where within five seconds?
• Does it match your other listings?

If the answer to most of those is no, the website is where to spend your next effort. Write down what you'd fix first, ranked by how many calls it could cost you. If you'd rather have someone else do it, Fluush offers done-for-you services alongside the app, including websites, search visibility, and service-area pages. Sign up and tell us which ones you'd want.

Minutes 13 To 15: Fix The Fastest Wins

Pick the two fixes that take the least time and cost the most calls. For most shops, that's the phone number and the description. Fix those first. Then check the Fluush Directory once your business has a public profile, and note anything to correct.

What It Looks Like When You Do It

Here's a quick example. Dan searches his own business name and finds three versions of it: "Dan's Plumbing," "Dans Plumbing LLC," and "D&S Plumbing," which was the name he used years ago. Two have different phone numbers. One of the numbers is a land line he cancelled.

That's three listings sending calls to a dead line. Dan never knew. He'd been wondering why calls had dropped since spring.

He fixes the number everywhere he can, picks one name, and writes it down in a short note: "Dan's Plumbing, 555-0100, Springfield." That note is his master copy. Next time he updates anything, he copies from it.

It took him an afternoon. If you do the check and find one dead number, it's already worth the fifteen minutes.

What You Probably Found

Most owners find one or more of these:

• An old or wrong phone number
• A service area that doesn't match where they work
• A business name written three ways
• A description that says nothing specific

None are hard to fix. They're easy to miss, and that's why they cost so much.

Do It Again Every Few Months

Put it on your calendar. Search results change, listings change, and your business changes. Fifteen minutes every three months keeps the leak closed.

Where To Go From Here

The detailed version of fixing your profile is in How To Get Found By Local Customers. The details of what a profile needs are in How To Show Up When Someone Searches "Plumber Near Me".