Restaurants
Local SEO for restaurants: the card, the hours and the booking link
A table is chosen on the map in under a minute: the plate photographs, the rating, the hour the kitchen stops, whether the booking button opens. A dedicated manager reconciles those fields against the card in use, as often as your package provides, and writes down every edit before it goes live.
Get an audit of my locationsThe request is free and creates no obligation; a manager replies within two business days.
The thirty seconds before a table gets booked
Dinner is chosen from a shortlist on the map, and the website is rarely opened at all. One screen has to answer what is on the card, what it costs, whether the kitchen is still sending food out and whether a table can be held for eight o'clock.
- Photographs of plated dishes and of the room settle whether the profile is opened at all, and a dark shot of an empty table sends the guest to the next pin.
- The card decides the rest. A guest looks for a main in their price bracket and for something the vegetarian in the party can eat, then leaves when neither is visible.
- Kitchen hours weigh more than door hours. Someone arriving at ten wants to know the pass is still working, not that the bar pours until midnight.
- The booking button is used at the moment of decision. If it opens a reservation system the restaurant stopped paying for, nobody phones instead, they choose the venue next door.
- Allergens and dietary options are read by whoever in the group cannot eat everything, and that one person often picks the venue for the rest.
Where a restaurant profile drifts away from the kitchen
There is always a gap between the printed card and the profile, because the card changes in the kitchen while the profile changes everywhere else.
- Prices follow the supplier, and the menu published in the profile keeps the old figure until somebody retypes it by hand.
- The kitchen closes before the room does, yet most profiles carry a single schedule, so a guest arrives for a hot main and is handed the bar list.
- Delivery aggregators and reservation systems attach their own links to a profile, sometimes under a contract the restaurant has already ended.
- A seasonal card replaces half the dishes while the profile still advertises the one the chef took off in spring.
- Guest photographs of the plate climb to the front of the gallery, including plates from a menu two chefs ago.
- Category drift turns an Italian restaurant into a pizzeria after a suggested edit, and the searches the venue appears in change with it.
The fields a venue with a kitchen has and others do not
Google opens extra fields for places that serve food. Filled honestly they carry a decision; filled halfway they describe an unfinished profile.
- Primary category by cuisine, because a pizzeria, a trattoria and a wine bar reach different searches even inside one building.
- The menu itself: sections, dishes and prices typed into the profile, or a link that opens the card in use this week instead of a PDF from a previous season.
- More hours split into separate lines: the pass, the bar, delivery, weekend brunch.
- Special hours for the days the restaurant behaves differently, from a private buyout to a stock take or the week the terrace opens.
- Booking and ordering links pointing only at the provider the restaurant pays for, checked by opening them until a reservation form appears.
- Dietary and accessibility attributes taken from the card, so vegan, gluten free and step free are set because the venue can deliver them.
- The questions guests leave on the profile about high chairs, a table for twelve, corkage or parking, answered by the venue and not by a passer by.
The reconciliation sheet the month is built on
Once a month the manager puts the profile beside the card that came out of the kitchen and writes down the lines that no longer agree.
- The sheet lists every dish and price the profile publishes against the card you sent, and each difference becomes a line you sign off.
- Hours are reconciled twice over: door hours against the sign, kitchen hours against the last order time the pass really keeps.
- Every link on the profile is opened by hand, and one that lands on a dead reservation form or an aggregator you left is taken down.
- Photographs you send take the place of dishes nobody serves any more, and a guest photograph of food the kitchen does not make can be raised with Google.
- Whatever Google or a stranger altered since the previous sheet appears with the earlier value beside it and waits for your word.
- The report leaves with the sheet attached, so the chef can read what the profile said about the card this month.
Send us the card and the name of the venue
A photograph of the current card and the address are enough to start. The manager builds a first reconciliation sheet from public data, says which lines already disagree and suggests a package. Nothing is billed for that.
Get an audit of my locationsReviews about food, and the ones a manager must not touch
A complaint about a dish is a complaint about somebody's evening, and a reply that reads like a form letter confirms the guest's worst guess. Your manager writes in the voice you agreed on.
- A good review is answered by naming the dish and, where the guest named them, the person who brought it.
- A cold plate or a long gap between courses gets a short factual answer that you read before it goes up.
- When the same dish is criticised for a third time in a month, it goes to the kitchen inside the report instead of turning into three separate apologies.
- A review that describes a different venue, or comes from an account that never booked, is raised with Google, and Google rules on it alone.
Where a human has to step in
- Food poisoning, an allergic reaction, something foreign in a plate or an injury in the room never gets a reply from the manager. It is handed to you on the day it appears, and the wording is yours, together with your lawyer if you want one.
What a restaurant genuinely has worth publishing
A kitchen produces news whether or not anybody writes it down: the card turns over, the terrace opens, Saturday has a band, Tuesday is a private buyout. The package fixes the number of publications, and the manager builds them from what you send.
- A new seasonal card, with your own photograph of the actual plate and the date it starts.
- Weekday lunch and set menus with the conditions written out: which days, which hours, what is included, when it ends.
- Evenings worth booking for: a visiting chef, a tasting, a dinner with a producer, with the time and the way to reserve a table.
- Days the restaurant behaves differently, from a bought out room to a closure for refit or the first evening on the terrace.
- Offers aimed at the street the venue stands on, a lunch card for the offices next door or a menu for festival week, where the restaurant truly runs them.
- Growth carries a content plan and Pro adds a promotions calendar, so the card of the coming month is agreed while it is still being written.
One dining room or several
One location
One restaurant needs somebody who notices in March that the profile still carries the winter card and the Christmas schedule, and who has it corrected before Friday service. Start keeps that check in the calendar, Growth pays for the writing a card that turns over every season asks for.
A network
A group shares a kitchen philosophy and almost nothing else on the map: every dining room keeps its own hours, its own card, its own booking link and its own review feed. The reply voice, the offer calendar and the invoice stay in one place, and the flagship can sit on a heavier package than the wine bar down the road.
Who holds which fact
What you confirm
- The facts that live in the kitchen: this week's card and the prices on it, the last order time, the reservation system you pay for, and photographs of dishes you are proud of.
A first month, as an example of the work
an example of the process, not a client result-
Week 1
Access moves to the team's own Google account and the first reconciliation sheet is written: every dish and price the profile currently shows, the door hours, the last order time, every link, every open review. You say which of those the manager may change without asking.
-
Week 2
The first edits come straight off that sheet: the card brought level with the one in use, kitchen hours separated from door hours, dead booking links removed, the photographs swapped. Whatever Google had already altered is shown next to what it used to say.
-
Week 3
The review backlog is worked through inside the package allowance, the first publication goes out from your materials, and anything said about a dish is copied into a note the kitchen receives.
-
Week 4
The report and the sheet leave together: what matched, what did not, what was published and answered, what is worth doing before the next card. On Growth the content plan for the coming month is attached.
This is an example of how a first month tends to run in a restaurant. It describes no named venue and promises nothing: your own month depends on the package and on the state the profile is in.
What stays outside the work
- Prices and allergen information come from the kitchen. The manager types what the card says, invents no substitution and leaves no withdrawn dish published to keep the profile looking full.
- A booking link is worth exactly as much as the system behind it. If the provider fails or drops the venue, the next sheet shows it, and choosing another provider is your call.
What is the same for every industry
The industry page above is about what changes from one business to the next. The part below is the same for a restaurant and a dental practice alike: the packages, the split of duties and the rules Google sets. It applies to the Google Business Profile, the listing many still call Google My Business.
How the packages work here
Each serviced location is on one of three packages. The package sets how often the profile is checked, how many posts, replies and edit bundles a month are included, and how fast the manager first responds. Prices are on the pricing page. See the prices Everything the team handles
Start
Basic, regular upkeep of a location.
- Dedicated manager
- Monthly profile check
- 1 post or offer a month
- Up to 5 review replies a month
- 1 profile data edit bundle
- Basic monthly report
- Manager's first response: up to 3 business days
Growth
A location that needs regular development and content.
- Dedicated manager
- 4 posts or offers a month
- Up to 15 review replies a month
- 2 profile data edit bundles
- Monthly optimisation
- Snapshot of the competitive environment
- Content plan
- Extended monthly report
- Quarterly consultation
- Manager's first response: up to 2 business days
Pro
Priority, more intensive upkeep of a location.
- Dedicated manager
- Weekly control of the profile
- 8 posts or offers a month
- Up to 40 review replies a month
- 4 profile data edit bundles
- Monthly optimisation
- Snapshot of the competitive environment
- Content plan
- Promotions calendar
- Extended monthly report
- Monthly consultation
- Priority service
- Manager's first response: up to 1 business day
The manager proposes, you approve
The manager drafts every change, post and reply from your materials. Nothing is published, restored or billed without your yes; a flagged edit or a package switch waits for you.
Who does what, in every industry
What the manager does
- Checks the profile on the package cadence and keeps a written record of the agreed data.
- Prepares edit bundles, posts and offers from your materials and the agreed plan.
- Replies to reviews within the monthly limit, in the tone you set once at the start, and hands anything sensitive back to you the same day.
- Writes the monthly report and puts recommendations into the cabinet chat instead of acting on them alone.
What you confirm
- The facts only you know: current hours, prices, services, photos, who is on the team this month.
- The tone of replies, set once at the start, and the wording of anything escalated to you.
- The yes before a value someone else changed is restored and before a location moves between packages; nothing is charged without it.
Google's rules that apply to every profile
- Local ranking is Google's own weighing of relevance, distance and prominence. No service can buy a position or promise a place in the results.
- Verification, eligibility and which categories exist are Google's rules and differ by country.
- Photos and reviews left by other people cannot be deleted by us. Where they break Google's rules they can be reported, and Google decides.
- Booking, ordering or delivery features are connected only when you already run them with a provider Google supports in your country.
- The number of posts, replies and edit bundles per month is fixed by the package; what is unused in a month does not carry over.
Reviews: the same policy everywhere
- We do not ask only happy customers for reviews, do not offer anything in exchange for one and do not remove reviews; only Google can.
- We do not promise a rating, a position in the results or more customers. We promise the agreed process, every month.
What the team handles for this industry
The rest of the local SEO work
This page is about the profile: what a manager keeps correct on the map every month. Local search also depends on the website itself, on citations and on the pages a customer lands on after the map. Those we handle separately, and the audit tells you which of them is actually holding you back.
Frequently asked questions
Our profile still shows prices from last year's card. Who fixes that? +
The kitchen stops an hour before the room does. Can the profile say so? +
A delivery platform put its own order link on our profile. Can it come off? +
A guest wrote that they were ill after eating here. What happens? +
Somebody answered a question about gluten on our profile and got it wrong. +
We run a bistro, a wine bar and a delivery kitchen. One package for all? +
What does that menu reconciliation actually look like? +
Do you promise a fuller dining room? +
A neighbouring industry, and what is different there
A profile that matches the card in the kitchen
Ask for a look at your venues. A dedicated manager answers within two business days with the lines that disagree today, a package per dining room and a first estimate.
Get an audit of my locations