- Owner
- Office manager, approved by the owner
- Cadence
- Once, then after any change
- Time box
- Half a day
- Output
- Signed fact sheet
Why one sheet comes first
AI assistants describe a business by combining what different sources say about it. When Google says the shop closes at six, Yelp says five and the website says "call for hours," the assistant has to reconcile three claims. Some answers pick one at random; some leave the business out. Bay Area AEO's entity and listing cleanup service exists because AI pulls facts from Google, Bing, Apple Maps and Yelp, plus industry directories, and those facts need to agree.
The fact sheet is the document everyone copies from. It is also the thing the owner signs, which settles arguments later. When a listing editor asks whether the business name includes "Inc." or which phone number to use, the answer is on the sheet.
The fields
| Field | Rule for the canonical value | Who approves |
|---|---|---|
| Business name | The name on the storefront and the license, with no added keywords or city names | Owner |
| Address or service area | Exact suite format chosen once; service-area businesses list cities served instead of a street address | Owner |
| Primary phone | One number, local format, used everywhere; tracking numbers stay off listings | Owner |
| Hours | Regular hours per day, plus a holiday rule and a note for emergency or same-day service | Operations lead |
| Categories | One primary category per platform, chosen from the platform's own list | Project lead |
| Services | The services offered, in the words customers use, each with a one-line description | Owner |
| Credentials | License numbers, certifications and memberships that a customer could check | Owner |
| Languages and payment | Languages spoken by staff; insurance, plans or payment options accepted | Operations lead |
| Website and booking | The canonical URL and the booking or reservation link | Project lead |
Procedure
- Collect what exists
Copy the current value of every field from the website, the Google profile, Yelp, Bing, Apple Maps and any niche directory into one spreadsheet, one column per source.
- Mark disagreements
Highlight every cell that differs from the others. Small differences count: "St" against "Street," a missing suite number, a second phone number.
- Decide each field
For each highlighted row, choose the true value and write the reason in a comment, such as "suite number added after the 2025 move."
- Write the services in customer language
Pull wording from the prompt panel and from reviews. A customer asks for a "water heater replacement," so the sheet says that, with the trade term in brackets if needed.
- Get the signature
The owner reads the sheet and signs and dates it. A typed approval in email is fine; file it with the sheet.
- Publish the sheet internally
Put the signed copy where every person who edits a listing or a page will find it, and note the version date at the top.
Change control
The sheet changes only through a new version. Moving, adding a location, changing hours for the season or adding a service all start with an edit to the sheet, a new date and the owner's approval. The listings and page procedures then run against the new version. This order prevents the most common drift, where someone updates the Google profile on a Saturday and the website keeps the old hours for a year.
Keep each old version. When an assistant repeats an outdated fact in a later re-test, the dated versions show when the fact changed and which sources may still carry it, which tells the listings team where to look.
Done when
Where the sheet goes next
The listings SOPs check every platform against this sheet field by field. The structured data SOP copies the same values into JSON-LD, and the service page SOP uses the services column as its page list. If the business has several locations, make one sheet per location and one shared sheet for the brand facts that never vary.
Hard cases
A few situations come up often enough to settle in advance. A business that changed its name keeps the new name on the sheet and lists the old one in a separate "formerly" line, so listing editors know what to search for and close. A practice where several providers have their own directory profiles adds a provider table: name, credentials, languages and the profile URLs, so the dentist and law firm procedures have one source. A service-area business with no public address writes "service area" in the address field and lists the cities, which then appear identically on Google, Bing and the website. A business with seasonal hours writes both schedules and the dates they switch, so special hours can be set a year ahead.
Write each of these decisions in the comments column with a date. The sheet is short; the comments are what make it usable a year later.
A practical test of a finished sheet: hand it to a new employee and ask them to answer the phone for an hour. If they never need to ask anyone about hours, services or the address, the sheet is complete.
Review the sheet with the owner at every quarterly review, even when nothing has changed, and re-sign it with the new date.