Keeping facts current

Why upkeep decides results

Bay Area AEO's timeline cuts both ways. Listing and data fixes can start showing up in AI answers within a few weeks, because many assistants pull live information. So can errors. A holiday closure entered on Google but not on Apple Maps, a price raised on the website but not on the booking platform, a dentist who left but still has a Zocdoc profile: each one can produce a wrong answer within weeks.

The businesses that do well in AI answers over time are the ones whose facts stay consistent as they change. That takes a routine more than effort.

The change protocol

Every change follows the same path, in the same order, on the same day.

The monthly check

Once a month, the record owner spends under an hour comparing the main listings and profiles with the master record. Look at name, address, phone, website, hours, categories and attributes on each. Reverse any suggested edits that should not have been accepted. Read new reviews and reply where needed. Check that special hours are set for any holiday in the next two months. The monthly prompt test in chapter 47 runs on the same schedule, and its results show whether anything slipped.

A yearly calendar

Many changes are predictable. Put them in a calendar so they are made ahead of time, not after a customer finds a locked door.

The seasonal rows follow Bay Area AEO's niche signals. Its HVAC page lists seasonal readiness, meaning AC and heating content timed for heat waves and cold snaps when AI demand spikes. Its roofing page lists rainy-season and emergency leak content. Its bakery page lists holiday menus and pre-order deadlines published early, so AI has the information when people start asking.

Staff changes

People are the facts that change with least warning. When someone joins, add their bio and directory profiles and link them from the services they provide. When someone leaves, update or close their listings and profiles and remove or redirect their bio, in the same week. For practices where customers ask for people by name, this is as important as hours.

Bigger changes

A move, a rebrand, a new location, a merger or a new phone system needs more than the monthly routine. Treat each as a small project: update the master record, then follow the duplicate and stale-listing process in chapter 15, and run a fresh audit a month later to catch anything that still carries the old details.

Prices and offers

Prices deserve their own reminder. A price range on a service page, a starting price on Google's services list, a package on the booking platform and an offer in the structured data can all describe the same thing, and they drift apart quietly. Review every published price once a quarter, update them together, and remove expired offers from every place at once. An intro offer that ended in March but still appears on a booking profile in June is exactly the kind of conflict that makes an assistant cautious about the business, and it tends to produce an awkward conversation at the front desk.

Who owns the routine

One person owns it, with a named backup for holidays and absences. In a small business that might be the owner or the office manager; in a larger one, a marketing coordinator. If an agency manages it, the business still owns the master record and the platform logins, and the agency's monthly report should show which changes were made and when. Bay Area AEO's principle of plain English applies here: the business should always be able to see what is being changed and why.

Unplanned closures and emergencies

Not every change is planned. A burst pipe closes a restaurant for three days. A heat wave or a public safety power shutoff in the North Bay hills closes a shop with an hour's notice. A key employee is out sick and the clinic cuts its hours. These are the moments when a wrong “open now” answer does the most harm, because customers are already on their way.

Keep a short emergency version of the change protocol: set temporary hours or a temporary closure on Google and Apple Maps first, because they drive most “open now” answers, then the website banner, then Bing and Yelp. Post a short update on the Google profile with the expected reopening date. When the business reopens, reverse every change in the same order and check that none of the temporary settings were left behind.

Reviews as an early warning

Customers often report wrong facts before anyone else notices. A review saying “Google said they were open until nine but the door was locked at eight” points straight at a listing that has drifted. Read every new review with that in mind, and treat any mention of wrong hours, a wrong address or a missing service as a prompt to check the master record and the listing it names. Reply to thank the reviewer and say the information has been corrected; the reply itself adds the current fact to the page.

What the change log should hold

A useful log records, for each change, the date, the fact before and after, the reason, every place it was updated, and who made it. It takes a minute per change and pays for itself the first time an old fact reappears. When the monthly test shows an assistant repeating last season's hours, the log shows at a glance whether Yelp was updated, and when. Over a year, the log is also a record of how much the business's facts actually move, which helps decide how often each listing needs checking.

When the platforms change

The platforms themselves change too. Google adds and retires profile features, Apple adds new fields to Business Connect, Yelp changes its attribute lists, and AI crawlers are renamed. A quarterly look at each platform's dashboard catches new fields worth filling in, such as a new attribute that matches a condition customers ask about, and retired ones that no longer matter. The same quarterly review is a good moment to re-read the robots.txt file and the CDN's bot settings, as described in chapter 27.

Tools that help

A shared spreadsheet is enough to start: one tab for the master record, one for the profile list, one for the change log, one for the calendar. Listing-management services can push changes to many directories at once and are useful for businesses with several locations, though the four main platforms are still best checked by hand. Calendar reminders for holidays and renewals cost nothing and prevent most errors.

How to tell it is working

The monthly prompt test shows it. Ask the assistants the direct questions about the business: its hours, its address, whether it offers a particular service. When the answers are right month after month, including the month after a change, the routine is working. When an old fact reappears, the change log shows which places were updated and which were missed.

Related chapters8. The master business record · 15. Duplicates and stale listings · 47. Running the monthly test · 19. Prices, opening hours and policies