Local Listings, Maps and the AI Answer.
Most people decide before they reach your website. We fix the profile, the listings and the markup a search engine or an AI assistant reads first. The audit week tells us which of them is actually broken.
What Local Search Actually Means.
Local Search, in One Paragraph
Local search is the work of making a business the one a search engine or an AI assistant names when somebody nearby asks for what it sells. It is four things: an accurate Google Business Profile, consistent listings across the places that carry your details, a site a machine can read, and current reviews.
Local SEO is the common name for the search half. Answer engine optimisation describes the other half: being the business an assistant names when it answers instead of listing links.
What an Assistant Says When Someone Asks.
ChatGPT“Yoga studio near Ubud?”
Who This Work Is For.
You Are Missing From Lists Others Are On
Mersa’s July 2026 audit of KYND Dental Care in Bali found two local guides featuring eleven competing clinics between them, and naming KYND in neither.
Your Details Disagree Across the Internet
The number on Google is not the one on Facebook, and the hours on the booking site are last season’s. Every copy is a vote.
An Assistant Names Somebody Else
You asked ChatGPT or Gemini for a business like yours in your area. It answered with confidence, at length, and never mentioned you.
Nobody Has Touched the Profile in a Year
It was set up once, by somebody who has since left, and nothing has been posted, answered or corrected on it since.
What You Actually Receive.
The Profile and the Listings
The records a search engine reads before it reads your website. Most of the damage here is a detail that was true two years ago.
- Google Business Profile categories, services, hours, photos, posts
- Name, address and phone corrected wherever the copies disagree
- Directory listings the ones that actually feed the map
The Site and the Answer Layer
What a machine can read once it arrives. A page that looks fine to you can return almost nothing to a crawler.
- Structured data so a machine knows what you are
- Location and service pages one real page per thing you sell
- Assistant checks what ChatGPT and Gemini say today
One Published Number, One Quoted.
The Audit Week
$350 USD, once. Flat, whatever the business, and nothing renews afterwards.
One week across local search, AI visibility, social and reviews, ending in a written fix list ranked by impact, with an effort estimate and an owner on every line.
- Your listings checked against every copy of them
- What the assistants say about you today, recorded
- Roughly half the fix list marked as yours to do
The Local Search Work
Priced after your audit. Quoted against the named items on your own fix list.
A five listing business and a fifty listing chain are not the same job. Quoting before we have looked means padding the smaller one to cover the bigger one.
- Named work, not a retainer with no scope
- You keep every login, throughout and after
- No promised positions, ever
Prices are in US dollars, which is how every client is billed. Advertising spend is not included and is not something we mark up.
Found in the Audit.
Fixed Here.
| What the audit week tells you | What this work does about it |
|---|---|
| Which copies of your details disagree, and where each one lives | Corrects them at the source and keeps the whole set saying one thing |
| Whether your Google Business Profile is complete, current and categorised | Fills it, posts to it, and answers the questions sitting on it |
| Whether a machine can read your site at all | Adds the structured data and the pages that make it readable |
| Which assistants name you today, and which name somebody else | Rechecks after the work, and says so in the months nothing moved |
The audit is the diagnosis and this is the treatment. Buying the second without the first means paying for work nobody has proved you need.
Read what the audit week deliversThree Businesses We Would Turn Away.
You Serve Nowhere in Particular
Local search ranks on proximity to whoever is searching. A business with no service area and no address has very little for it to work with.
You Want a Map Position Promised
Nobody can hold one. The audit says what is broken and what fixing it would take, never where you will land once it is fixed.
Your Details Are Not Yours to Change
A franchise profile controlled by a head office cannot be corrected by us. We will say so before you pay rather than after.
The fix list is yours either way. Take it anywhere.
What Happens After You Message.
You Send Your Business Name
The button opens WhatsApp with the message already written. We reply within one working day from Bali, two to three hours behind the Australian east coast, and confirm your week.
The Audit Week Runs
Day one we take read access. Day five you get a draft, day six your revisions, day seven the final fix list and a walkthrough call.
You Get a Quote for the Local Items
Only the lines on your own fix list that sit under local search, priced as named work. You are free to hand the rest to anyone.
The Work Ships, and It Is Written Down
Every change is logged with the date it was made, so the record can be handed to anybody, including whoever comes after us.
Two people. One studio.
We are Mersa, a two-person studio in Bali. We handle brand, web and content ourselves, and keep it small on purpose, so you always talk to the people doing the work.
Questions People Ask Before They Book.
Have more questions? Reach out to us.
Ask Us DirectlyHow much does local search and AI visibility work cost, and what is quoted?
Two numbers apply. Mersa’s $350 USD marketing audit is flat and charged once, and it is what produces the scope. The local search work itself is quoted against the items on that fix list, so the figure depends on how many listings, pages and profile gaps were found. Nothing renews, and no retainer is attached to either. Where the fix list is short enough to action alone, that is said plainly.
What do you actually change on my Google Business Profile and my listings?
Six things are changed on live surfaces: the categories and services on the Google Business Profile, the name, address and phone details wherever they disagree across directories, the opening hours and holiday hours, the photos and posts, the structured data on the site, and the answers to questions left sitting on the profile. Every change is listed before it is made. Access stays with the client throughout.
Can you get my business named by ChatGPT or Google’s AI answers?
No, and nobody can promise it. An assistant decides what to name from sources it does not publish, and those sources change without notice. What Mersa does is make the business readable and consistent enough to be a candidate: structured data, a maintained profile, and details that agree wherever a machine looks. Whether an assistant names the business is then measured and reported, including the months it does not.
Do I need the marketing audit before you start the local search work?
Yes, in almost every case. The $350 USD audit week is what produces the scope, and quoting local search work without it means padding the small job to cover the large one. Where a fix list already exists from somebody else, that is read instead and the audit is skipped. What is never done is a monthly figure quoted before anybody has looked at the profile.
How long does local search work take before anything visibly changes?
Profile and listing corrections appear within days, because they are edits to live records rather than to a ranking. Everything downstream of them is slower and is not Mersa’s to schedule: search engines and assistants re-read on their own timetable. No date is given for a position, because none can be held. What is given is a written record of every change made and the date it was made.
Who keeps the Google Business Profile logins, and what happens if we stop?
The client keeps them. Mersa is added as a manager on the profile and removed on request, and no account is ever created under a Mersa address so that it cannot be handed back. Everything built during the work stays with the business, including the structured data on the site and the corrected directory entries. Nothing reverts when the arrangement ends, and there is no minimum term to end.