At 7pm, someone types « restaurant » and the name of your town. Google shows them three places. If you’re not there, or if your listing looks less appealing than the one next door, that customer’s evening happens elsewhere. Here are the 7 settings that make the difference, in the order to do them.
1. Hours, including public holidays
The number one reason for unfair 1-star reviews: « closed when Google said open ». Every mishandled public holiday sends customers to a shuttered door, and some of them say so. Check your special hours before every holiday: it’s 2 minutes that protect your rating.
What Markus would do The Developer keeps a calendar of public holidays and updates your special hours a week ahead, automatically. You never think about it again.
2. The menu, readable on a phone
A menu shown as a blurry photo taken vertically loses one customer in two. Google lets you add the menu as text, dish by dish, with prices. It’s tedious to enter once, and decisive every night: the customer torn between two places picks the one where they know what they’ll eat and what they’ll pay.
3. Photos less than 3 months old
Listings with recent photos get noticeably more direction requests. No need for a photographer: three photos a month is enough (a dish, the room, the team). The light of the lunch service is your best ally.
4. Reply to every review, even the good ones
A reply to a review isn’t written for its author: it’s written for the 50 people who will read it afterwards. A personal thank-you on a 5-star shows you’re present. A calm, factual reply to a 2-star shows you’re professional. Silence shows nothing, and that’s precisely the problem.
What Markus would do The Copywriter drafts a reply in your voice within hours of each review. You approve it with a thumb from your phone, between two services.
5. The booking button
Every step between « I fancy it » and « it’s booked » loses customers. If you use a booking tool, connect it to your listing so the « Book » button shows up right inside Google. Otherwise, at the very least make sure your number dials in one tap.
6. The attributes Google loves
Terrace, wheelchair access, vegetarian options, pets welcome, air conditioning: these tick-boxes look trivial. They’re search filters. The customer searching « restaurant with a terrace » will never see your terrace if the box isn’t ticked.
7. Google posts, the forgotten tool
You can post on your Google listing like on a social network: dish of the day, seasonal menu, exceptional closure. Almost no restaurant does it, so those who do stand out. One post a week is enough to signal to Google (and to customers) that the place is alive.
Where to start
If you do just one thing this week: hours and review replies. They are the two settings that cost the least and pay off the fastest. The rest can follow, one setting a week.
And if you’d rather all this happened while you sleep, that’s literally what the marketing team for restaurateurs does: it works at night, you read the proof in the morning.
