The questions owners actually ask, answered plainly.
Every one of these is a question I get asked on calls, answered the way I would answer it on the phone rather than the way a marketing page would. Several of them end with a reason not to hire me, which is the point - if the answer only works when it sells something, it is not an answer.
Why does my competitor show up above me on Google Maps?
Almost always because of one setting rather than a hundred small things, and the setting is usually the primary category. A business listed in a broad category cannot rank for the specific thing it sells, so a smaller competitor in the correct category beats a bigger business in the wrong one. The next two most common causes are a service area that was never drawn, which leaves a profile competing only in the postal code its address sits in, and review recency, because a profile whose last review is fourteen months old reads as dormant. Proximity to the searcher also matters and you cannot change it, which is exactly why the settings you can change are worth getting right.
Why does my shop not show up for collision repair?
Because collision repair and mechanical repair are two different categories on Google, and most shops that do both are listed as only one. A shop sitting in a general auto repair category is effectively invisible for auto body and collision searches, which is usually the higher-ticket half of its work. It is one setting, it was almost certainly chosen when the listing was first claimed, and nothing about it ever announces itself - the work simply goes to whoever is listed correctly. Open your profile, look at the primary category, then look at what the three shops ranking above you for collision are listed as.
What is an AI receptionist, and does it actually work?
An AI receptionist answers your phone line and your website in your own business’s words, at the hours you cannot. A properly built one answers the routine question from your own documents, qualifies the enquiry against criteria you set, books what should be booked, logs the contact, and hands anything real to a person on your escalation order. It works on the overflow and the after-hours - the calls that currently become nothing. It does not work, and should not be used, for anything requiring judgement: a price, a diagnosis, whether something is covered by insurance, or any function a licence is reserved for. A good one is built to hand those over rather than to have an opinion.
Why do I not show up in the next town over?
Because a Google Business Profile competes from where its address sits, not from where the work actually goes. If the service area was never drawn, or was drawn as a radius rather than named towns, the profile is effectively a local business in one postal code. Proximity is a real ranking factor and distance genuinely works against you, so the next town is not simply a weaker version of your own - it is a separate contest, with different competitors, that has to be entered deliberately. Naming the towns is the first step; having something on your website that is genuinely about that town is what makes the claim hold.
Not the question you came with?
Ask me on a call. Nine minutes, and if the honest answer is that you do not need me yet, that is the answer you will get.