The 6Signal Visibility Audit: What We Measure and Why

Most audits are too narrow.

An SEO audit checks rankings, titles, meta descriptions, backlinks, site speed, and technical issues.

A local SEO audit checks Google Business Profile, reviews, citations, proximity, categories, and Maps performance.

A website audit checks design, conversion, copy, and UX.

Those are useful.

They are not enough.

The buyer journey has expanded.

A contractor or local service company can be visible in Maps and still absent from AI answers.

It can have a clean website and still be unclear to answer engines.

It can have good reviews and still fail to connect those reviews to its highest-value services.

It can rank for a keyword and still be skipped when the buyer asks who to call.

That is why the Visibility Audit exists.

Short answer

The 6Signal Visibility Audit measures whether a company is easy to find, understand, verify, and recommend across modern search surfaces: Google, Maps, AI answers, directories, reviews, service pages, structured data, question clusters, voice assistants, and conversion paths.

It is not just an SEO audit.

It is a signal audit.

The goal is to identify why a company appears, gets skipped, or gets replaced by competitors and aggregators when buyers ask high-intent questions.

Why rankings alone are incomplete

Rankings still matter.

But rankings do not tell the whole story.

A company can rank for "roof repair Dallas" and still be absent when a buyer asks:

Who is the best roofer near me for storm damage?

A company can appear in Maps and still be skipped when a buyer asks:

Which HVAC company can fix my AC today?

A company can have traffic and still lose buyers because the service page is vague, the reviews are generic, and the CTA is weak.

The audit needs to measure the whole path:

• Search visibility
• Answer visibility
• Local visibility
• Entity clarity
• Source trust
• Page usefulness
• Buyer action

That is the difference.

What we measure

The audit looks at six major layers.

1. Search visibility

This is the traditional foundation.

We look at:

• Indexed pages
• Page titles
• Meta descriptions
• H1 structure
• Internal links
• Service pages
• Blog/research content
• Sitemap
• Canonicals
• Technical crawlability
• Mobile experience
• Page usefulness
• Keyword alignment
• Topic coverage

Search fundamentals still matter because AI features in Google Search are built on Google's broader Search systems and indexed content.

If the site is not crawlable, useful, and technically sound, everything else gets weaker.

2. AI answer visibility

This is the answer layer.

We test buyer-style prompts across relevant surfaces.

Depending on the business, that may include:

• Google AI features
• Perplexity
• ChatGPT
• Gemini
• Bing/Copilot
• Voice assistants
• Search summaries
• AI-assisted local results

We track:

• Whether the company is named
• Whether it is cited
• Whether it is recommended
• Whether competitors appear
• Whether directories replace local companies
• Which sources are cited
• Which prompts trigger visibility
• Which prompts skip the company

This is not perfect science.

AI output varies.

But repeated testing reveals patterns.

3. Local entity clarity

This is the foundation for local businesses.

We ask:

• Is the business name consistent?
• Is the phone number consistent?
• Is the address or service area clear?
• Are categories accurate?
• Are services defined?
• Is the Google Business Profile complete?
• Are directories consistent?
• Are social profiles aligned?
• Do third-party sources confirm the same entity?

If the web does not agree on who the business is, answer engines have less confidence.

That is the Local Entity Gap.

4. Service and question clarity

We measure whether the company clearly explains what it does.

This includes:

• Dedicated service pages
• Emergency/same-day service clarity
• Location relevance
• Question clusters
• FAQs
• Comparison content
• Cost-variable explanations
• Process content
• Buyer education
• Internal links

For contractors, this matters because the buyer usually asks problem-first questions.

They do not ask:

Tell me about your company.

They ask:

What should I do when this breaks, leaks, fails, cracks, backs up, or stops working?

A company that answers those questions clearly becomes easier to surface.

5. Proof and trust signals

Visibility without trust is fragile.

We look at:

• Review count
• Review recency
• Review specificity
• Service-specific reviews
• Location mentions
• Credentials
• Licenses
• Certifications
• Associations
• Project examples
• Photos
• Videos
• Case studies
• Owner/operator expertise
• Third-party mentions

AEO and GEO are not just content games.

They are trust games.

Recommendation requires proof.

6. Conversion path

Visibility is not the final goal.

Booked work is.

We measure:

• CTA clarity
• Phone visibility
• Form friction
• Booking path
• Mobile UX
• Emergency call path
• Trust placement
• Service-page CTA alignment
• Audit/estimate flow
• Follow-up risk
• Missed-call risk

If AI search sends a buyer to a page that does not convert, visibility was wasted.

Why we measure Google Business Profile

For local companies, Google Business Profile is one of the strongest entity surfaces.

Google's local ranking guidance describes relevance, distance, and prominence as key local ranking factors and recommends complete, accurate business information.

That makes Google Business Profile more than a listing.

It is the local entity hub.

We check:

• Primary category
• Secondary categories
• Services
• Service area
• Hours
• Phone
• Website
• Business description
• Photos
• Reviews
• Review responses
• Questions and answers
• Updates where appropriate
• Consistency with the website and directories

If the profile is incomplete, inaccurate, or too broad, the business is harder to match to high-intent local queries.

Why we measure reviews differently

Most audits count reviews.

We go further.

We ask:

• Do reviews mention specific services?
• Do they mention locations?
• Do they mention urgency?
• Do they mention outcomes?
• Do they mention team members?
• Are they recent?
• Are they distributed across platforms?
• Are they used on relevant service pages?

A review that says "great service" is not as useful as one that says "they repaired our sewer line in Fort Worth the same day."

Specific reviews create stronger human and machine signals.

Why we measure directories and aggregators

Directories are not dead.

They often appear in AI answers because they are structured, category-specific, location-aware, and review-rich.

We look at:

• Yelp
• BBB
• Angi
• HomeAdvisor
• Thumbtack
• Houzz where relevant
• Manufacturer directories
• Trade association directories
• Local chambers
• Industry directories
• Local publications

The question is not whether every directory matters equally.

The question is whether the source ecosystem confirms the business or leaves a vacuum for aggregators to fill.

Why we measure schema

Structured data helps search engines understand page content.

But schema is not magic.

We check whether it is present, valid, and honest.

Useful schema may include:

• Organization
• LocalBusiness where appropriate
• Service
• FAQPage
• BreadcrumbList
• Article
• VideoObject
• Review where appropriate

The rule is simple:

Markup should clarify visible truth.

It should not invent authority.

Why we measure question clusters

A single service page is rarely enough.

The buyer has a decision path.

For emergency plumbing, that path might include:

• What should I do when a pipe bursts?
• Where is my shutoff valve?
• Should I call a plumber or restoration company first?
• How much does emergency plumbing cost?
• Who is open now near me?

If the company does not answer these questions, another source will.

The audit identifies which clusters are missing and which should be built first.

Why we measure competitor and aggregator visibility

Your visibility only matters in context.

We compare:

• Who appears instead of you?
• Are competitors clearer?
• Are directories replacing local businesses?
• Are competitors getting cited?
• Are they winning because of reviews?
• Do they have better service pages?
• Do they have better Google Business Profiles?
• Do they have better question coverage?
• Do they have stronger third-party proof?

This helps separate opinion from priority.

What the audit output should show

A useful audit should not bury the owner in 80 random tasks.

It should show:

• Where the company appears
• Where it gets skipped
• Which competitors appear instead
• Which directories control the answer layer
• Which signals are unclear
• Which services are under-structured
• Which reviews are weak
• Which pages need work
• Which technical issues matter
• Which fixes should happen first

The output should create focus.

Not confusion.

What good prioritization looks like

Not all fixes are equal.

A company with no emergency plumbing page should not start with a blog post about plumbing history.

A roofer with inconsistent service areas should not start with a new logo.

An HVAC company with no same-day AC repair content should not start with a generic "about us" rewrite.

Prioritization depends on bottleneck.

The audit should identify the highest-leverage signal gaps first.

What the audit is not

It is not a guarantee of rankings.

It is not a guarantee of AI recommendations.

It is not a magic GEO hack.

It is not a generic SEO checklist.

It is not a replacement for business fundamentals.

It is a diagnostic.

A good diagnostic does not promise the outcome.

It shows what is blocking the outcome.

The 6Signal view

Modern visibility is not one channel.

It is a system of signals.

Search.

Maps.

AI answers.

Directories.

Reviews.

Schema.

Service pages.

Question clusters.

Voice.

Conversion.

The companies that win will not necessarily be the loudest.

They will be the clearest, most trusted, most structured, and easiest to verify.

That is what the Visibility Audit measures.

Final answer

The 6Signal Visibility Audit measures whether your company is findable, understandable, verifiable, recommendable, and conversion-ready across the surfaces where buyers now ask who to call.

It measures more than rankings because the buyer journey now includes more than rankings.

The question is not only:

Do you appear?

It is:

Do you get named when it matters?

Want your visibility measured?

Book a 6Signal Visibility Audit.

We'll show you where you appear, where you get skipped, which competitors or directories are winning, and what to fix first.

Sources and further reading

• Google Search Central: AI features and your website
• Google Search Central: Google Search Essentials
• Google Business Profile: Tips to improve your local ranking
• Google Search Central: Introduction to structured data markup
• Schema.org: Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList