The short version
- I do the research and the work myself. Every number in a report has a date and a source, and your accounts stay in your name.
- The growth report is 14 to 20 pages: live Google and Maps checks, search demand, competitors, speed, AI search, and a roadmap in the order to do it.
- You can use it to fix your marketing plan on your own. Start at the first step where customers drop off, not with a new channel.
- The one fix: make every place that describes your business say the same true, complete thing, in a form machines can read.
- All seven businesses I audited in October 2026 had at least one basic fact that was wrong, missing or different from one place to the next.
Why work with me
Plenty of people will sell you SEO. Most will show you a price before they show you a single screenshot of your own business. I work the other way round, and you can check every claim below on my case studies page.
- Research comes before any quote. You see what is broken, with live screenshots from your own city, before you see a number. The report has no prices in it. The quote is a separate, fixed number for a defined piece of work.
- Every number has a date and a source. “18.2 seconds” in a report means Ezy India’s home page, on a phone, measured for the October 2026 audit. Anyone can repeat the check.
- I do the work myself. No account manager and no juniors. I have six-plus years in digital marketing, two of them doing hands-on technical SEO for enterprise hosting platforms: schema, Core Web Vitals and crawl problems.
- I audit my own work. On launch day of the 39-page Waffee House website, I ran a full SEO audit on my own build and gave the owner the results: 0 broken links, a Lighthouse SEO score of 100, and 13 fixes still to make, mistakes included.
- You own everything. Your Google profile, website and ad accounts stay in your name. I get added as a manager, never the other way round.
- I tell you where things stand. If Google hasn’t verified a profile yet, or a ranking hasn’t moved, I say so.
In October 2026 alone that meant 8 businesses in Mangaluru, Bengaluru, Kasaragod and Calgary (Canada), 116 pages of audit and work reports, and 54 website pages built and live.
What’s inside the growth report
The report is 14 to 20 A4 pages, written for the owner rather than for another marketer, and designed in your brand colours. Each page follows the same rules: a live screenshot taken on the day, numbered boxes that match the text, the search, place and date under the screenshot, a plain-English reading, and the one insight that changes the plan.
| Section | What it answers | From a real report |
|---|---|---|
| Summary | What works, what is broken and what to do first, on one page | Ezy India: 5.0 stars from 32 reviews, yet found in 0 of 6 customer searches |
| How people search | The words customers actually type, and when demand peaks | “car wash near me” is searched 15 times more than “car wash at home” (Ezy India) |
| Google and Maps checks | Where you show up for the searches that matter, checked live from your area | The Nest: in the top ten for 0 of 12 traveller searches, #24 on Maps for “homestay” around Kumbla |
| Google Business Profile | Name, pin, categories, hours, services, photos and reviews | The Nest: check-out and check-in were entered as opening hours, so Google said it closes at 11 every morning |
| Website, speed and tech | Speed on a phone, what Google and AI crawlers can read, buttons that break | Trevio Global: the page the server sends has 0 words on it. Hashtag Assistant: both home-page buttons open “No products found” |
| AI search | What Google’s AI and assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini say about you, and where they got it | Waffee House had no website, so Google and AI assistants described the cafe from Zomato and Justdial |
| Competitors | Who ranks above you, and what they have that you don’t | Stellar Living had 10 Google reviews. The three studios shown first had 136 to 197 |
| Social | Whether your channels agree with each other and speak to the right buyer | Trevio: 9 of the last 12 Instagram posts were festival greetings, and 0 showed a trip it had delivered |
| Roadmap and goals | What to fix first, in order, and the starting numbers you’ll be measured against | Trevio: quick fixes before the Christmas-week peak, which starts on 20 December |
How to use the report to fix your marketing plan
Most marketing plans go wrong in the same way. They start with a channel (“we need Instagram”, “let’s run ads”) instead of with the point where customers drop off. The report is built so you can turn it into a plan yourself, in this order.
1. Find your biggest number on the summary page
Each summary has four headline numbers. One of them is usually the gap that matters most. For Ezy India it was “0 of 6”: a 5-star business that customers couldn’t find. For Hashtag Assistant it was “1,684 km”: the distance between Calgary and the place where Google Maps had stored the business.
2. Find the first broken step
Every report maps the path a customer takes. This was Ezy India’s:
| Step | Status | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Search | Broken | Not shown for “car wash”, “doorstep car wash” or “bike wash” |
| Trust | Partial | 5.0 stars, but 9 photos, two phone numbers and no prices |
| Book | Broken | Every Book button opens an app store |
| Wash | Strong | Customers praise the team, the timing and the finish |
| Review and repeat | Weak | Copy-paste replies, nothing tracked |
Fix the earliest broken step first. Paying for ads that send people to a Book button that opens an app store only buys you more drop-offs. The service itself is the hard part, and Ezy already does it well. Everything broken here is marketing, which is why all of it can be fixed.
3. Do the quick fixes before your season
The demand chart tells you when. For “homestay” across Kerala, Christmas week was the busiest week in every full year of the last five, and Christmas week 2026 starts on 20 December. So The Nest’s plan puts the Google profile first, because it has to be ready before that week, not during it.
4. Write down the starting numbers before you change anything
The Maps and Google checks in the report are your “before”. Run the same searches from the same place at day 30, 60 and 90. Without a baseline you’ll never settle whether anything worked. There is more on that in how to track marketing so it shows up in revenue.
5. Split the work: what you can do and what needs a specialist
Replying to reviews, fixing opening hours and adding photos are jobs an owner can do in an afternoon. Server-side rendering, structured data and site speed usually need someone technical. The roadmap marks which is which, so you only pay for the part you can’t do yourself.
The one fix that moves SEO, AI SEO and GEO
Three terms first, in plain English:
- SEO is showing up in Google’s results and on Google Maps.
- AI SEO, also called answer engine optimisation (AEO), is being the answer when Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity reply to a question. My AI SEO guide covers it in depth.
- GEO is generative engine optimisation: getting named and cited inside AI-written answers. For a local business it also means “geo” in the literal sense: Google knowing exactly where you are and which areas you serve.
The one fix: make every place that describes your business say the same true, complete thing, in a form machines can read.
In practice that means one name, one address and map pin, one phone number, the right categories, your real services, your real hours and your city. They should be identical on your Google profile, on your website (as text in the page and in structured data), in your social bios and in the directories that list you.
One fix covers all three because all three read the same sources:
- Google’s local ranking rests on three things, by Google’s own account: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance comes from your categories, services and description. Distance comes from your pin. Prominence comes partly from what the rest of the web says about you. Get the facts wrong and all three suffer.
- AI assistants build answers from pages they can fetch and read. When your own site is missing, or sends a blank page to tools that don’t run JavaScript, they fall back on whatever else they can find: aggregators, directories and old listings.
- Generative engines are more confident naming a business when several sources agree on what it is and where it is. Contradictions make them hedge, or pick a competitor whose facts are clear.
This is entity SEO applied to a local business. Google and the AI tools rank things, and a thing with three phone numbers and two addresses is hard to rank.
What I found in seven audits
Every business below had at least one basic fact that was wrong, missing or different from one place to the next. All findings are from October 2026.
| Business | The facts problem | How it showed up |
|---|---|---|
| SZ Cars Accessories, Bengaluru | Name on Google didn’t match the shop board; pin off the shop; one category (“Car stereo store”); 0 services listed; no website | #2 on Maps for “car audio”, but not in the top 20 for PPF, ceramic coating, detailing and four other things it sells |
| Hashtag Assistant, Calgary | Google Maps stored the profile in Nunavut, 1,684 km away; “Calgary” appeared 0 times on the visible home page | 0 of 10 Calgary searches; not in the top 100 on Maps for “social media management” |
| Waffee House, Mangaluru | 3 different phone numbers on Google, Zomato and Instagram; no website | Missing from the map in 3 of 6 local searches; described by Google and AI assistants from Zomato and Justdial |
| The Nest, Kasaragod | Check-in and check-out entered as opening hours; listed as a villa, not a place to stay | 0 of 12 traveller searches; Google’s AI named a nearby retreat, set up properly as a stay, first for “nature stay kasaragod” |
| Trevio Global, Bengaluru | No phone number on Google or the website; the server sends a page with 0 words | Shows up in 1 of 11 searches; tools that don’t run JavaScript, including many AI crawlers, see a blank page |
| Stellar Living, Mangaluru | 3 details that disagree between Google and the website | Three other studios shown first for interior design searches |
| Ezy India, Mangaluru | Two phone numbers, no prices anywhere on the website | Found in 0 of 6 customer searches on Google and Maps |
The facts problem is never the only cause. Reviews, content, links and speed all play a part. But it was always the first thing to fix, because the rest builds on it. The clearest example is from Calgary: a competitor’s Instagram profile ranks #2 on Google for “social media management calgary” with 97 posts, against Hashtag Assistant’s 300. The difference in its name field is one word: Calgary.
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Want to know what your report would say?
Send me your website or Google listing. I’ll check how you show up on Google, Maps and AI search, and tell you the first thing I’d fix. The first look is free.
How to make the fix, step by step
1. Write a one-page fact sheet
Before you touch any profile, write down the version of the truth every channel will copy:
- Your name exactly as it appears on your board and your registration. Google had SZ Cars as “SZ Car Accessories”; the board says “SZ Cars Accessories”, and now Google does too.
- Your full address with door number and a landmark people actually use, and a map pin on your entrance.
- One main phone number. If customers reach you on WhatsApp, make it that one.
- Real opening hours. Not check-in times, and not “open 24 hours” unless you are.
- One main category and the secondary ones, and every service you sell, in your customers’ words.
- The areas you serve, your payment options and your city, written out in full.
2. Copy it into your Google Business Profile
Pick the main category you most want to be found for. Add every service with a short description. SZ Cars went from 1 category to 7 and from 0 services to 21. After any address change, check the pin again: in SZ’s case, changing the city field moved the pin onto the wrong road. Remove duplicate profiles too, keeping the one that has the reviews. My Google Business Profile guide goes through every field.
3. Put the same facts on your website, where machines can read them
Write your name, address, phone, hours and services as plain text in the page, not only inside images or behind JavaScript. Check what your server actually sends: if the page is empty until a script runs, you have the problem in my post on empty HTML. Then add LocalBusiness structured data with the same facts, and use sameAs to link your Google, Instagram and other profiles, so every source points at one business. Give each main service its own page aimed at a real search: SZ Cars has 7 pages, and The Nest has 8.
4. Make your social bios agree
Use the same name, the same phone number and your city on every profile. Put the city in the name field or the first line of the bio, and link to your website.
5. Clean up directories and marketplaces
Justdial, Zomato, Airbnb, IndiaMART and the rest are often what AI tools read when your own site says nothing. Update them to match the fact sheet, and merge or remove duplicates.
6. Check it the way a customer and an AI would
The 10-minute self-check
- Search your business name on Google. Is your own website in the top results, and are the name, phone and hours right?
- Open Google Maps on your phone near your shop and search for your main service. Where do you appear?
- Ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity: “What is [your business] in [your city], and what does it offer?” Note every wrong fact.
- For each wrong fact, find the source it came from, and fix that source first.
- Check your website without JavaScript, or run it through my free SEO page checker, to confirm the text is in the page.
What this fix won’t do
- It won’t replace reviews. Stellar Living’s 10 reviews against competitors’ 136 to 197 is a separate problem with its own plan.
- It won’t create demand. If nobody searches for what you sell, ranking first brings nobody. That’s why the report checks demand before anything else.
- It isn’t instant. Google shows profile edits only after it verifies the profile. SZ Cars’ video check was rejected, so verification is going through Google support with the shop’s documents. Rankings take weeks after that.
- It’s the foundation, not the whole house. Content, links, ads and follow-up come after, and they work better because of it.
You can see how each of these businesses is getting on, with before-and-after screenshots, in my local SEO case studies.
Frequently asked questions
What is in a Digital with Thejas growth report?
14 to 20 A4 pages: a one-page summary, how customers search and when demand peaks, live Google and Maps checks from your area, a review of your Google Business Profile, website speed and technical checks, what AI search says about you, competitors, social channels, and a roadmap with goals. Every number has a date and a source, and there are no prices in it.
What is the difference between SEO, AI SEO and GEO?
SEO is showing up in Google’s results and on Maps. AI SEO, or answer engine optimisation, is being the answer when AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity reply. GEO, generative engine optimisation, is getting named and cited inside AI-written answers. For a local business, GEO also means Google knowing exactly where you are.
What is the one fix that helps all three?
Making every place that describes your business say the same true, complete thing, in a form machines can read: one name, address, pin, phone number, set of categories, services and hours, on your Google profile, website, social bios and directories. Google’s local ranking, AI assistants and generative engines all read those same sources.
How long before I see results?
Google shows profile changes only after it verifies the profile, and rankings usually take weeks to move after that. I record the starting positions before any work begins, then check the same searches again at day 30, 60 and 90 and report what they show, good or bad.
Do you only work in Mangaluru?
No. I’m based in Mangaluru, and in October 2026 I also worked with businesses in Bengaluru, Kasaragod and Calgary, Canada. Most of the work happens online.
How do I get started?
Send me your website or Google listing on WhatsApp or by email. The first look is free: I’ll tell you the first thing I’d fix, and you can act on it yourself if you like.
Thejas Acharya
Digital strategy consultant behind Digital with Thejas, based in Mangaluru. Six-plus years in digital marketing and SEO, two of them in enterprise technical SEO. I research a business first, write the growth report, then do the work myself, and you own every account and document I touch.