Free business audit: where you rank and what to fix first
Fox audits the whole business, well past the Google profile: your website and first screen, your Google Maps listing with the reviews, your prices, the competitors next to you. It is not an accounting or process audit. You get a score, three lists of findings and a source for every rating.
Want to talk your business over first? Ask FoxWhich business audit you need
People use “audit” for very different jobs. Pick the one that answers your question.
Financial or accounting audit
Checks your books and your taxes. An accounting firm does it from your own documents.
Process or compliance audit
Consultants look at how the work runs inside the company and where the legal risks sit. They need access to your people and your data.
Google Business Profile check
Scores your listing in Google Maps, the one once called Google My Business: its fields, hours, photos and reviews. It stops at the listing.
Online business audit
This one. Fox looks at the whole business from the outside, the way a customer does, and gives you a score and an order of work.
How the business audit runs
You give the address or the name. Fox collects the rest from public sources.
Give the address or the name
Your website, or your business name and city, the way customers search for you. No sign-up for the first checks.
Answer “Is this you?”
Fox finds the business and shows what it found: the name, the website, the city and the maps listing. You confirm it is your business.
Fox reads public data
It reads your site, the search results, your Google listing, your prices and the competitors who show up for the same searches. There is nothing to connect and no password to share.
Get the report
A score out of 100, a breakdown across 9 areas, your place among competitors and what to fix first.
Your business through a customer's eyes
9 areas, each made of named checks. A check ends as passed, partly passed or failed, and each one has a weight class, from error down to notice.
Offer and packaging
Whether the first screen says what you sell and to whom, names the main benefit and shows how you differ. Whether there is proof and one main call to action with a clear next step.
Website and first screen
Whether the site opens and is made for phones. How it does on Core Web Vitals for real visitors: load, response, layout shifts. Whether there is a button or a form to act on, and an analytics tag.
Competitors
Who shows up next to you in search, your share of search visibility against the leader and your place among them. Fox also checks whether you run ads where the competitors run theirs.
SEO
Whether you are in the top 10 for your buyers' searches and your site comes first for your own name. The home page's basics too: open to search engines, a title, a description and structured data.
Reviews and maps
Whether you have a Google Maps listing, and how its rating and review count compare with the median of similar businesses nearby. Fox also looks for mentions on review sites; what the reviews say is left to the deep audit.
Socials
Whether your social profiles are linked from the site, so a customer checking you out can find them.
Pricing
Whether prices are on the site, whether your price sits inside the niche's range and whether there is a free first step or a trial.
Market and demand
How much people search for your niche and whether that demand is growing.
Trust
The site's secure connection and privacy policy, the contacts it shows, and how long it has been around.
A report that tells you what to do
Three findings and an order of work instead of a hundred-item list.
Score and band
A total out of 100. A score of 75 or more is strong. From 50 there is room to improve, and below that the band is critical.
Where you rank
A table of the competitors your customer sees, with your own row first. With a website the order follows search visibility; without one it follows the maps rating. Every rating shows its source.
Three lists
What works, what does not, what to fix first: each item comes with its reason and its source. The fixes that give the most for the least work come first.
How the score is counted
The same rules for everyone, shown in the open.
Checks, not impressions
An area's score comes from its checks. An error costs more than a warning, a notice costs least, and a partial pass costs half.
Weights that fit your business
Reviews and the maps listing weigh more for a local business. An online business gets more weight on the offer and the website. The weight profile follows the business you confirmed.
Not measured is not a minus
When a source does not answer or there is no data, the check is marked not measured and lowers nothing, and the report says what was missing. With too little measured there is no total, and Fox says so.
What to fix first
Fox orders your own list by what each fix is worth against the work it takes. These fixes are cheap, and every customer sees them.
Category, hours and phone
Check the primary category on your listing. Then check the phone and the hours, holiday hours included. If any of them is wrong, a customer ends up at a closed door or at a competitor.
Prices on the site
Show your prices, or a starting price, where customers look. With no price and no clear next step, people put the decision off.
Replies to reviews
Answer every review that has no reply, starting with the negative ones. Keep it calm and offer a fix. Unanswered reviews make a business look inactive.
Contacts and the booking button
Show the phone and the address on the site, next to a working call or booking button. Keep them the same as on your listing.
Run the same check again
After each round of fixes, run the audit again and see which scores moved.
Check it yourself first
A phone and an evening are enough. More on the listing side: Local SEO.
Search like a customer
On your phone, in your own area, search for your category and city, like “coffee shop Austin”. See who sits above you in the map results.
Open your site on a phone
Find the phone number, the address, the prices and a working button within a few seconds. What you cannot find, a customer will not find either.
Compare your details
Your business name, address, phone and hours should match on the site and on every listing.
Read your latest reviews
Note when the last review came in and when you last replied. Write down the complaints that repeat, and reply to each review.
Test your own phone and booking link
Call the number on your listing and book through your own link. Then check the hours you show for the next holiday.
Which kind of audit fits
Each kind sees a different part of the business.
Free profile checkers
They score your Google listing and nothing else. Some stop at a score and ask you to sign up for a paid plan to see the full results.
Website checkers
They look at the site itself: speed, the phone layout, broken links, missing tags. Your reviews and listings stay out of view.
Paid local SEO suites
They track your rank across a map grid and your details across directories, week after week. They pay off once someone on your side does that work.
An agency audit
A person reviews the business by hand. It takes longer, and it often ends with a proposal for paid work.
This audit
The site, the listing, reviews, prices, competitors: all in one run, from public data, with no logins. It is free within the free checks; the deep audit comes with the paid plans.
See where your business loses customers
The deep audit adds what the free one leaves to it, such as what your reviews talk about, and turns the findings into a plan of work on your project map. It comes with the paid plans. If you would rather have a person do a one-off review, an agency fits better.
Questions
Is it really free, and do I need an account?
Yes. It is one of the free checks you get without an account or a card; once you sign in, one shared weekly limit applies. The deep audit runs within your plan's limits, see Pricing.
Does it work without a website, or for one location?
Yes. A name and city are enough: the website checks are then marked not measured and lower nothing. One run covers one location, so audit each branch of a chain on its own.
What does Fox read, and do I have to log in to Google?
Public data only: your site and your Google listing, the search results, the competitors' sites; our methodology shows how we use them. You do not log in to Google or connect anything. Fox only asks you to confirm that the business it found is yours, and the competitors appear on the report's board next to your own row.
Is this a financial or accounting audit?
No. It audits how customers see your business: the offer, the website, search, reviews, prices, competitors and trust. It does not check your books or taxes; for that you need an accounting firm.
How is it different from the website audit?
The business audit looks at everything at once: the offer, reviews, prices, socials, competitors, and the site by its home page. The website audit goes deeper into the site and reads up to 25 pages. The SEO audit looks at why search engines show you or leave you out.
How often should I run it?
Once a quarter for a baseline and after each round of fixes. Run it again before ads or a busy season, or when calls or the rating drop.
Who sees my report?
Only you. You can share a link to it and close the link at any time. Search engines do not index that page.