First, the basics

Local search rewards a short list of unglamorous jobs done properly. Whitespark's Local Search Ranking Factors survey, the industry's long-running expert poll, puts Google Business Profile signals first and review signals second for map rankings, with reviews climbing year on year and directory citations continuing to fade. Caleb Ulku, who runs a large US local SEO agency, puts the foundation below at enough for 70 to 80 per cent of his clients, before any advanced work starts.

Claim and complete your Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the listing that appears in Google Maps and the "local pack": the three businesses shown at the top of search results before the regular links. The visible three take almost all the clicks, and position four might as well be page two.

If you haven't claimed your profile, do that first at business.google.com. Then complete every field, and treat each one as source data rather than decoration. Google's AI results now quote profile fields back to searchers, so an empty field is a question you can't be the answer to. Work through the list below and fill in every one.

  • Primary category: the strongest signal on the profile. Choose it for what customers actually search, not what the industry calls the work: "Heat pump supplier" beats "HVAC contractor" in New Zealand because that's the language people type. One caution: if you already rank well, leave it alone. It's a sensitive field and changes can move rankings in both directions.
  • Secondary categories: add every category that genuinely fits, up to Google's limit. Practitioner testing shows extra secondary categories do not dilute the primary; they only widen what you can match.
  • Services, with descriptions: most profiles list services with no descriptions at all, which Whitespark's Darren Shaw calls the biggest miss he sees, because Google's AI reads those descriptions when deciding which business to return. Write a sentence or two per service, and if you're the only business in town doing something specific, the service description is the place to say so. Don't stuff variants of the same thing ("burst pipe repair", "burst pipe fixing"); Google understands these are one service.
  • Service area vs address: trade and mobile businesses (plumbers, electricians, house washers) should set a service area and hide their address if they don't see clients at their premises. Office-based businesses (lawyers, accountants) should show their address.
  • Hours: keep these accurate, including holiday hours. Google only lets you set the next few public holidays, so this needs a check every couple of months. It is the most commonly neglected field, and wrong hours generate bad reviews.
  • Photos: add real photos of your work, team, and premises, and keep adding them. A steady drip of genuine job photos does more than a one-off upload of twenty. Photos customers upload count for more than photos you upload, for the same reason reviews outweigh your replies to them: they are independent evidence.
  • Posts: a short update every week or two. Posts don't move classic rankings, but Google's AI results reference them, and so do customers deciding whether to call you. Write them like answers: a service explained, a finished job, a strong review.

"You can't be returned for something unless Google knows that you're relevant for it."

Darren Shaw, Whitespark, on how AI reads your profile

Use one exact form of your business name

Google cross-references your business information across the web, and the place inconsistency hurts most is your own website, not third-party directories. If your site header says "AUCKLAND ELECTRICAL", your footer says "Auckland Electrical Ltd", and your GBP says "Auckland Electrical", Google and AI tools can fail to connect them. Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky has described a case she is still testing, where an all-caps mismatch was enough for Google to generate a "ghost" listing: the business's name shown with no reviews and no website attached. Pick one exact form of your name, address, and phone number (the "NAP") and use it everywhere, especially after a rebrand.

A short list of directory listings, kept accurate

Quality beats volume. A handful of core NZ listings kept accurate (Yellow, Finda, Neighbourly, Localist, plus the directories in your industry that actually rank in Google) is worth more than a hundred obscure ones, and a wrong phone number on a directory nobody visits is not worth chasing. AccessNZ keeps a hand-curated index of 90-plus NZ directories, citation sites, and review platforms if you want to go wider, and a free LocalGofer signup pushes your details out to about two dozen NZ directories in one pass. Add Bing Places to the core set: ChatGPT draws on Bing's index when it looks up businesses, so a correct Bing listing is now a visibility asset well beyond Bing itself.

Build a steady stream of reviews

Reviews are the heaviest signal you can directly influence, and they work as a gate as much as a dial: Hawkins has watched businesses with otherwise excellent SEO fail to rank on thin review volume alone. Rating, volume, recency, and responses all count, and recency counts more than most businesses realise: a smaller run of recent reviews can beat a larger pile that stopped arriving a year ago. Our data on what it takes to rank shows the review bar by category, and our guide on getting more Google reviews covers how to build the stream.

Answer your phone

Ulku's reading of Google's local signals is that it can observe what happens after someone finds you: whether they called, whether the call connected, and whether they immediately rang the next business on the list. A missed call that sends the searcher to a competitor is the local equivalent of bouncing straight back to the search results. His agency has watched a tradesperson's rankings sag after two unanswered weeks of holiday, and now writes a minimum pickup rate into its client contracts. The practical rules:

  • Answer during your stated hours. If the profile says you're open, someone is expected to pick up.
  • Return missed calls the same day. Anyone who left a voicemail has usually rung someone else too.
  • If you can't answer on the tools, a good answering service beats voicemail, and voicemail beats ringing out.

It is also just how the job gets won. The first business to answer usually gets the work.

Then the advanced layer: showing up in AI answers

A growing share of "who should I call" questions now goes to ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's own AI results rather than a classic search. The reassuring news from practitioners testing these surfaces is that ranking well in traditional local search gets you most of the way there, about 80 per cent by Shaw's estimate, because Google's AI features are grounded in the same core ranking systems. The work below is the remaining margin.

Make your website mirror your profile

Google continuously cross-checks your profile against the website it links to, and gaps cost trust. The common mismatch is a profile carrying four categories and thirty services that links to a five-page website; the count is the audit. Give each main service its own page, put your primary category and city in the page title and main heading ("Electrician in Christchurch | Volt Electrical"), keep the NAP in the footer exactly matching your GBP, and make the first paragraph speak to someone who just searched "electrician christchurch": what you do, where, and why you, not your founding story.

For businesses serving multiple suburbs or cities, a dedicated page per location works when done properly. Thin pages with identical content swapping only the suburb name are worse than nothing, and Google's spam systems have become aggressive about mass-produced filler. Each location page should contain things only someone who works that area would know: the suburbs and landmarks you cover, real local jobs, local testimonials.

Publish your prices, as ranges

People ask AI assistants what things cost constantly, usually straight after describing the problem. A site that says nothing about price is absent at the exact moment intent peaks, and the assistant sources its answer from whoever did publish. You don't need to expose your price book: give each service page a realistic range, what pushes a job to the top of it, and what the suspiciously cheap ads leave out. Shaw's version of the advice is blunt: without pricing content, you are effectively excluded from every cost-related question in your trade.

Treat your best listings like a second profile

Keeping directory details consistent, covered above, is now about a fifth of the citation job. The rest is optimisation: the handful of sites AI tools actually reference deserve the same treatment as your Google profile, with a full description, photos, and video where the site accepts it. Most businesses set these listings up a decade ago and never looked again. When you rewrite your GBP description, push the same copy out to every listing that matters.

Collect third-party proof, then show it

Joy Hawkins and Caleb Ulku, asked in August 2026 for the one action most likely to produce a measurable result within 30 days, gave the same answer independently: win an award or a ranking, then promote it everywhere. AI assistants quote badges and best-of lists constantly, and a business that wins one and buries it gets no credit for it. Industry awards, association memberships with a public register, and independent rankings all count, and the promotion is the SEO: put the badge on your site, mention it on your socials, make it findable where the models read.

This is where Top5.nz fits. Our rankings are built from public review signals alone, so a ranked business has earned an independent, checkable mention. If you rank, claiming your listing is free, and verified Top 5 businesses can embed the badge on their own site.

Know what the AI does differently

Chatbots like ChatGPT don't hold a tidy database of NZ businesses. Asked for a recommendation, they search the web live and assemble an answer from whatever they find: your website, your reviews, directory listings, forum threads. They also have little sense of time, so an angry forum thread from 2019 can carry the same weight as last week's five-star review. It is worth asking ChatGPT and Gemini what they say about your business name and your category in your city, and addressing anything stale or wrong that surfaces. Independent write-ups give them better material: if you rank on Top5.nz, your listing already carries a review-derived editorial summary the assistants can read.

Google's own AI local results work differently again. They draw directly on Business Profiles and review text, they weight proximity less than the classic map pack does (a stronger business further away can win on reputation and specificity), and they are personalised, so two people asking the same question can get different answers. On these surfaces there is no #1 position to hold. What you can influence is how often you come back, and that is set by the substance of your profile, your reviews, and your site.

Use the AI as a free research tool

The same assistants will tell you what to fix, at no cost beyond the asking.

Try this

Run each of these prompts a few times and keep what recurs:

  • "What do people complain about in reviews of [your business]?" A recurring complaint is a business problem surfaced for free.
  • "What do customers complain about in reviews of [your trade] in [your city]?" Every common gripe is a line for your service pages, because "we turn up when we said we would" now matches a real search.
  • "Which websites do you reference when recommending [your trade] in [your city]?" Treat the answer as a strong lead to check rather than gospel, since the model is reporting on itself, but it is the fastest way to find the listings worth your time.

What doesn't work

  • Keyword stuffing in your GBP name: adding "Plumber Auckland" to your business name is against Google's guidelines and invites a listing suspension. It has kept working in the classic map pack for years, which is why people risk it, but Hawkins notes that the businesses surfacing in AI local results are not the keyword-stuffed ones, on her own observation rather than hard data yet.
  • Buying links and citation blasts: paid links from directories or link farms don't move local rankings the way they once did and can cause manual penalties, and paying to be submitted to 300 directories adds noise, not authority. If you want links, mirror your real-world relationships instead: suppliers, non-competing trades you refer work to, the local club you sponsor.
  • Schema markup as a ranking play: Google states structured data is not required for its AI features, and it has never lifted local rankings. The practical risk runs the other way: markup a developer added years ago that still carries an old address or phone number, quietly contradicting the visible site.
  • Fake reviews: Google's detection has improved considerably, and fake reviews breach the Fair Trading Act; the Commerce Commission has taken action over them. Clusters of reviews from new accounts or the same device are filtered or can trigger listing suspension.
  • Ignoring reviews: not responding to reviews, especially negative ones, is a missed signal. Google, AI tools, and potential customers all read your responses.

Where to focus first

The order of this guide is the priority order:

  1. Claim and complete your profile, every service described, photos flowing.
  2. Fix your name to one exact form across your site and listings.
  3. Build a steady stream of detailed reviews, and respond to all of them.
  4. Answer the phone.
  5. Then the advanced layer: mirror the profile on your website, publish your price ranges, upgrade the listings that matter, and put your third-party proof where the models can read it.
The short version

Nothing in the advanced layer rescues weak basics. Most businesses that are invisible in local search have a reviews problem, not a technical one, and everything the AI reads about you is the same profile, reviews, and website Google has always ranked: one job, counted twice.

Sources