Local Impact Auditor

LOCAL-IMPACT Auditor — Proprietary Scoring Framework

You are executing the LOCAL-IMPACT scoring framework — a 60-item assessment of local business presence, visibility, and competitiveness. This is the primary scoring framework for local SEO health.

Framework: LOCAL-IMPACT (Local Optimization, Consistency, Authority & Listing — Impact Performance Assessment & Competitive Tracking) Items: 60 | Scale: 0–3 per item | Max Raw: 180 | Normalized: 0–100 | Version: 2025.1

Prerequisites

Before scoring, confirm you have:

• Business name, website URL, target location
• Google Business Profile URL (or search business name + location on Google Maps)
• At least 3 competitor GBP URLs for comparison
• Access to or output from prior audit phases in {AUDIT_DIR}/

If missing, collect before proceeding. Read {AUDIT_DIR}/intake-data.md for all context.

Framework Reference

Load the complete rubric from references/local-impact-benchmark.md.

Scoring Dimensions

Step 1: Research Phase — Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence Gathering

Dimension L — Listing Quality (GBP Completeness)

Primary tool: Google Business Profile dashboard or Google Maps listing 2025 GBP Completeness Checklist:

1. Business name (exact legal name, no keyword stuffing) — GSC brand signal
2. Primary category + all relevant secondary categories (2025: up to 10)
3. Description — 750 character max, keyword-rich first 250 chars
4. Service areas (if service-area business) vs. storefront address
5. Hours of operation including special/holiday hours
6. Phone number (local area code preferred over 1-800)
7. Website URL (tracking parameter: ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp)
8. Products/Services with prices, descriptions (every service listed)
9. Photos: minimum 10 exterior + 10 interior + 5 team + 5 work examples (2025 benchmark: 50+ total)
10. GBP Posts: minimum 1 active post per week (offers, updates, events)
11. Q&A section: minimum 5 seeded Q&As with keyword-rich answers
12. Attributes: all applicable attributes checked (women-owned, veteran-owned, accessibility, etc.)
13. Messaging enabled (if applicable to business type)
14. Menu/Service menu (for restaurants/salons/etc.)

Benchmark thresholds:

• 100% complete: all 13 elements present → Score 3
• 8–12 elements: → Score 2
• 4–7 elements: → Score 1
• <4 elements: → Score 0

Dimension O — Online Reviews

Primary tools: BrightLocal Review Dashboard, Google Maps, Podium, ReviewTrackers 2025 Review Benchmarks (Local Pack Competitiveness):

Multi-platform check: Google, Yelp, Facebook, TripAdvisor, BBB, Houzz, Healthgrades, Avvo (per industry) AI visibility angle: Google AI Overviews pulls review ratings — businesses with <4.0 stars are rarely featured

Dimension C — Citation Consistency

Primary tools: BrightLocal Citation Audit, Whitespark Citation Finder, Yext Knowledge Network NAP Consistency Check:

• Name: Exact match across all directories (no abbreviations, no "LLC" variations)
• Address: Street number, street name, suite formatting consistent (Ste vs Suite vs #)
• Phone: Same format (+1-XXX-XXX-XXXX vs (XXX) XXX-XXXX — pick one)

Tier 1 Citations (must be present): Data Axle (formerly Infogroup), Neustar/Localeze, Acxiom, Foursquare — these feed hundreds of downstream directories

Tier 2 Citations (local pack important): Google Business Profile, Yelp, Facebook, BBB, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, MapQuest

Inconsistency threshold: >3 NAP inconsistencies across top 50 citations → Score 0–1

Dimension A — Authority Signals

Primary tools: Ahrefs Site Explorer, Majestic (Trust Flow / Citation Flow), Moz Domain Authority Local Authority Benchmarks:

Local link types to check: Chamber of Commerce, local newspaper mentions, city/county business directories, industry associations, local sponsorships

Dimension L2 — Local Content Quality

Primary tools: Screaming Frog, {DATA_DIR}/crawl/ (site_crawler.py output), GSC Content Thresholds:

• Service pages: ≥800 words, unique content per service, service-area keywords integrated
• Location pages (multi-location): ≥600 words, unique to each location (not templated)
• Blog/local content: Regular publishing (min 2×/month), community-relevant topics
• Schema: LocalBusiness + Service + FAQPage + Review schema on key pages
• Internal linking: Service pages linked from homepage + location pages

Dimension I — Integrated Visibility

Tools: Apple Maps Connect, Bing Places for Business, Otterly.ai (AI mention tracking) 2025 Visibility Checklist:

• Apple Maps claimed and verified (Siri voice search source)
• Bing Places verified (powers Copilot local results)
• Google Maps embed on contact/location page
• Voice search readiness: FAQ content with conversational phrasing
• AI Overview presence: Test "near me" queries in Google — does business appear?
• ChatGPT / Perplexity citation: Search business name in AI assistants
• Social media profiles: Facebook, Instagram linked + active (within 30 days)

Dimension P — Performance

Primary tools: Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev), GTmetrix, Chrome DevTools Lighthouse 2025 Core Web Vitals Thresholds:

Note: INP replaced FID as a Core Web Vital in March 2024.

Dimension T — Tracking Setup

Primary tools: GA4, Google Search Console, CallRail/WhatConverts (call tracking) Tracking Checklist:

• GA4 installed + configured (goals, conversions set up)
• GSC verified + sitemap submitted + no coverage errors
• Call tracking active (CallRail, WhatConverts, or similar)
• GBP Insights reviewed monthly (calls, directions, website clicks)
• Conversion tracking: form submissions, calls, bookings tracked as GA4 events
• UTM parameters on GBP website link

Step 2: Score Each Item (0–3 Scale)

For each of the 60 items in references/local-impact-benchmark.md, assign:

Record evidence for every score — no unsupported scores.

Step 3: Veto Check (2025 Updated)

Apply BEFORE calculating final score. Highest applicable cap wins.

Step 4: Calculate Final Score

raw_score = sum of all 60 item scores           # Max: 180
normalized = (raw_score / 180) * 100            # Max: 100
veto_cap = min(triggered veto caps, default=100)
final_score = min(normalized, veto_cap)         # Final: 0–100

Use python3 scripts/score_calculator.py --both --li-file {AUDIT_DIR}/local-impact-scores.md to compute automatically.

Step 5: Competitor Scoring

Score each top competitor on the same 60 items (abbreviated — focus on observable signals):

• Use Google Maps, GBP listing, site search, Ahrefs free data, BrightLocal free scan
• Focus on dimensions L, O, C, A — these are the most observable externally
• Minimum: score all 6 veto checks per competitor

Step 6: Identify Quick Wins

Quick wins = items currently at score 0 or 1 that can reach score 3 in <2 hours:

Output Format

Write structured output to {AUDIT_DIR}/local-impact-scores.md:

---
skill: cross-cutting/local-impact-auditor
phase: scoring
date: [YYYY-MM-DD]
business: [Business Name]
url: [URL]
score: [X/100]
status: complete
---

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 LOCAL-IMPACT SCORECARD — 2025 Edition
 Business: [Name]
 URL: [URL]
 Location: [City, State]
 Date: [Date]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

 OVERALL SCORE: [X] / 100    Grade: [A-F]

 Dimension Breakdown:
 L  Listing Quality      [XX/30]  ████████░░  [X%]  — [key gap]
 O  Online Reviews        [XX/30]  ███████░░░  [X%]  — [key gap]
 C  Citation Consistency  [XX/30]  █████░░░░░  [X%]  — [key gap]
 A  Authority Signals     [XX/30]  ████████░░  [X%]  — [key gap]
 L2 Local Content         [XX/15]  ██████░░░░  [X%]  — [key gap]
 I  Integrated Visibility [XX/15]  ███████░░░  [X%]  — [key gap]
 P  Performance           [XX/15]  ████████░░  [X%]  — [key gap]
 T  Tracking              [XX/15]  █████░░░░░  [X%]  — [key gap]

 Veto Checks:
 [✅/❌] V01: GBP Claimed & Verified
 [✅/❌] V02: Website Indexed by Google
 [✅/❌] V03: No Active Google Penalty
 [✅/❌] V04: NAP Consistent (website + GBP + citations)
 [✅/❌] V05: Has Google Reviews (>0)
 [✅/❌] V06: SSL Certificate Active

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 COMPETITOR COMPARISON
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 | Dimension  | Client | Comp 1 | Comp 2 | Comp 3 | Gap |
 |------------|--------|--------|--------|--------|-----|
 | Overall    |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |  ±  |
 | Listing    |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |  ±  |
 | Reviews    |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |  ±  |
 | Citations  |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |  ±  |
 | Authority  |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |  ±  |
 | Performance|   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |   XX   |  ±  |

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 TOP 5 IMPROVEMENT PRIORITIES
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 1. [Item ID]: [Description] — Score: X/3 — Impact: [High] — Effort: [X hrs] — Priority: [I×F]
 2. [Item ID]: [Description] — Score: X/3 — Impact: [High] — Effort: [X hrs] — Priority: [I×F]
 3. [Item ID]: [Description] — Score: X/3 — Impact: [Med]  — Effort: [X hrs] — Priority: [I×F]
 4. [Item ID]: [Description] — Score: X/3 — Impact: [Med]  — Effort: [X hrs] — Priority: [I×F]
 5. [Item ID]: [Description] — Score: X/3 — Impact: [Low]  — Effort: [X hrs] — Priority: [I×F]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 QUICK WINS (<2 hrs each, immediate gains)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 • [Action]: [Specific step] — Gain: +X pts — Effort: X min
 • [Action]: [Specific step] — Gain: +X pts — Effort: X min
 • [Action]: [Specific step] — Gain: +X pts — Effort: X min

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 AI VISIBILITY ASSESSMENT (2025)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 Google AI Overviews: [Appearing / Not appearing for target queries]
 Apple Siri (Maps): [Verified / Not verified]
 Bing Copilot: [Bing Places verified / Not verified]
 ChatGPT / Perplexity: [Cited / Not cited when searched by name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Output for Report Integration (YAML Block)

framework: LOCAL-IMPACT
version: 2025.1
date: [YYYY-MM-DD]
business: [name]
url: [url]
location: [city, state]
scores:
  overall: [0-100]
  grade: [A+-F]
  raw: [0-180]
  dimensions:
    L:  { raw: X, max: 30, pct: X, key_gap: "" }
    O:  { raw: X, max: 30, pct: X, key_gap: "" }
    C:  { raw: X, max: 30, pct: X, key_gap: "" }
    A:  { raw: X, max: 30, pct: X, key_gap: "" }
    L2: { raw: X, max: 15, pct: X, key_gap: "" }
    I:  { raw: X, max: 15, pct: X, key_gap: "" }
    P:  { raw: X, max: 15, pct: X, key_gap: "" }
    T:  { raw: X, max: 15, pct: X, key_gap: "" }
  vetoes_triggered: []
  final_cap: 100
  competitors:
    - name: [comp1]
      score: X
      key_advantage: ""
    - name: [comp2]
      score: X
      key_advantage: ""
    - name: [comp3]
      score: X
      key_advantage: ""
  quick_wins: []
  ai_visibility: { google_aio: false, apple_maps: false, bing: false, chatgpt: false }

Handoff

After scoring, save results to {AUDIT_DIR}/local-impact-scores.md for:

• output/report-generation — integrates into master report section 3
• output/pdf-report — renders LOCAL-IMPACT dashboard gauge in PDF cover
• cross-cutting/serp-trust-auditor — SEO Health Index = (LOCAL-IMPACT × 0.55) + (SERP-TRUST × 0.45)