Journal · Playbook
Before 350,000 people search near you get your Google profile ready
The Indy 500 brings 350,000 visitors to Indianapolis on May 24. Here is the 90-minute Google Business Profile checklist that gets your shop in front of them before race week.
On race day, roughly 350,000 people are in or around Indianapolis. About 76% of them will search for a nearby business and visit one within 24 hours. Most of them will find whoever has the best Google Business Profile, not whoever has the best food.
Your profile does not need to be perfect. It needs to be better than the shop next to you. That is a low bar in most neighborhoods, and you have about two weeks to clear it.
Why your Google profile, not your website
Your website matters. But for foot traffic, a complete Google Business Profile outperforms a mediocre website every single time.
The numbers that should concern you:
- Businesses in the Google local 3-pack get 126% more traffic and 93% more actions (calls, directions, site clicks) than businesses ranked 4 through 10.
- The average GBP listing gets 1,260 views per month. A well-optimized one gets multiples of that.
- Multiple local SEO audits in 2026 show meaningful ranking drops when a profile goes 30 or more days without new photos or updates.
Most shops in Indianapolis have a profile. Most of those profiles are half-finished and six months stale. That is your opening.
The checklist
Set a 90-minute block. Do these in order.
1. Confirm your hours are correct (10 minutes)
Pull up your Google Business Profile. Check every hour field: regular hours, holiday hours, and special hours for race weekend if you plan to stay open late or close early.
Wrong hours lose visitors who are standing outside your door. On race weekend, when people are making decisions fast and have no patience for a wasted trip, wrong hours mean a one-star review and a lost customer. Check that your hours on Google match your website exactly. If they don't, fix both.
2. Add photos taken in the last 60 days (15 minutes)
Google's 2026 freshness signals treat recent photos as active upkeep. Upload at least five: the exterior so people can find the door, the interior so they know what they're walking into, your best-selling product or service, your team, and one of the surrounding block so regulars recognize you on the map.
Phone photos are fine. You do not need a photographer. Take them tomorrow morning.
One thing worth knowing: Google's AI now scans uploaded menu photos and auto-fills your menu section from them. If you have a menu, upload it separately under "Menu" in your profile settings. Do not just drag a PDF into the photo section and call it done.
3. Post one Update (10 minutes)
Google Posts show up in the search results panel for your business. They expire after seven days. Most shops have either a post from last year's holiday hours or no post at all.
Write one now. A race week promotion, your hours during 500 week, a photo from last Tuesday. Anything that signals to Google that this business is open and paying attention. Aim for at least two Posts per week between now and May 24. That is one thing most of your competitors will not bother to do.
4. Check that your phone number actually calls (5 minutes)
Pull up your profile on your phone. Tap the phone number. Does it dial?
If it doesn't, your number is listed as display text only. A tap on plain text does nothing on most phones. Fix it in your profile settings, under "Contact." While you're there, confirm the number is current.
In a 2025 audit of small business listings across the Midwest, 43% of phone numbers either did not call when tapped or were outright wrong. On race day, a visitor who can't reach you calls somebody else.
5. Respond to your open reviews (20 minutes)
You do not need a large review count. You need your most recent reviews to have responses.
A business with 30 reviews and zero responses looks abandoned. A business with 30 reviews and replies to the last ten looks like someone is actually there.
Write replies that are one to three sentences: acknowledge what they said, add one specific detail, thank them or note the fix if it was a complaint. Do not copy-paste the same reply for everyone. Do not open every response with "Thank you for your wonderful review." Google now flags generic responses, and review engagement quality is tied to local rankings.
If you have an unresponded one-star or two-star review, write that reply first. Unresponded negative reviews are the first thing a new customer checks.
6. Fill in every empty field (30 minutes)
Open your profile and look for any field that says "Add" instead of showing data. The most commonly empty ones:
- Services or products (list what you actually sell, with short descriptions)
- Business description (200 to 300 words, plain language)
- Attributes (women-owned, veteran-owned, parking, accessibility, outdoor seating)
- "From the business" section (a short paragraph in your own voice)
Filling these costs nothing. They directly affect how Google matches your profile to search queries. A profile with all fields complete gets surfaced more often than an identical shop with half the fields blank. This is not an opinion. It is how the algorithm works.
What to skip
Do not buy Google review services. Fake reviews violate Google's terms, they are detectable, and they get your profile suspended. A suspended profile does not appear in search at all. I watched this happen to a shop in Fountain Square three weeks before last year's 500. They were reinstated three months later. Three months of search invisibility over something that cost them $80.
Do not purchase a "local SEO package" from anyone who cold-called or cold-emailed you. That package is usually citation submissions to directories nobody searches. It does not move the needle on anything you can measure.
Do not wait for your website to be redesigned before working on your profile. Your website and your profile are different channels. The profile affects foot traffic. Fix it now.
The math
350,000 visitors come to Indianapolis on race day. Conservatively, if 1% of them are looking for a business like yours in your neighborhood, that is 3,500 potential walk-ins across the week. If your profile is stale and the shop three blocks over updated theirs last Tuesday, you lose those visitors to a competitor who spent 90 minutes on a checklist.
90 minutes. Not a campaign. Not a retainer.
Most shops with bad Google profiles aren't bad shops. They just never spent 90 minutes fixing the thing.
Go fix the thing.
Sources
| Source | What it covers |
|---|---|
| BrightLocal: Local SEO Statistics 2026 | 76% of "near me" searchers visit within 24 hours; 3-pack traffic lift data |
| Digital Applied: Local SEO Statistics 2026 | GBP views and actions up 41% YoY; average monthly view count |
| OAK Interactive: GBP Updates 2026 | Profile freshness signals; visibility drop from inactivity |
| Explore Digital: GBP Changes 2026 | AI menu recognition; post scheduling features |
| FOX Sports: 2026 Indianapolis 500 | Race date: May 24, 2026 |
| Sports Tourist: 2026 Indy 500 | Attendance estimates; hotel occupancy data |
All stats used here are from publicly available local SEO research published in 2025 or 2026.