The client
A Klang Valley service business — category details withheld for client confidentiality, but in a competitive home-services vertical with strong Map Pack intent. Their core commercial queries drive 60–70% of monthly phone enquiries. Ranking on page 2 of the Map Pack meant roughly 12 phone calls per month from Google.
When they came to us in May 2025, their Google Business Profile was essentially dormant:
- Ranking position: 8–12 for most core Map Pack queries
- Phone calls / month: 12 (baseline over previous 6 months)
- Reviews: 28 total, last one 5 months old
- Photos: 4 (from initial setup years prior)
- Primary category: incorrect — too generic for their actual service
- NAP consistency: 22 inconsistent citations across Malaysian directories
Month 1–2: GBP rewrite, category correction, photo upload, NAP cleanup
First two months were pure baseline hygiene.
Category correction. Their primary category was too broad, causing them to miss the more specific buyer-intent queries. We changed to the correct narrow category and added 4 secondary categories covering their actual service scope.
Full profile rewrite. Business description, services, attributes, and opening hours all updated. Added structured services with descriptions and pricing ranges where appropriate.
Photo upload. 40+ new photos across exterior, interior, team, and actual work-in-progress. Photos remain one of the most underrated Map Pack signals.
NAP citation cleanup. Full audit of Malaysian directories — Yellow Pages MY, StreetDirectory, Foursquare, Bing Places, plus category-specific directories. Fixed 18 of the 22 inconsistencies. Four old directory listings were unreachable and left in place but noted for monitoring.
Review response. We set up response templates for the existing review inventory — late but worth it — and trained the client team on response cadence for future reviews.
By end of Month 2, Map Pack position had improved to 5–8 on core queries, and phone calls had risen to 28 / month. Small but real movement.
Month 2–6: Review velocity campaign + local citations
The harder, longer-compounding work started in Month 2 in parallel.
Review velocity campaign. Target: 12 new reviews / month. We built a WhatsApp-based review request template the client’s field team could trigger at the end of every service job. The template was one tap away with the GBP review link pre-loaded. Simple mechanism, big impact.
Actual velocity achieved:
- Month 2: 6 new reviews
- Month 3: 11 new reviews
- Month 4: 14 new reviews
- Month 5: 13 new reviews
- Month 6: 15 new reviews
Total: 59 new reviews in 5 months, bringing the cumulative review count from 28 to 87. Average rating stayed at 4.9.
Local citations on 15 Malaysian directories. We added listings on 15 relevant Malaysian directories where the client had no presence — a mix of general (StreetDirectory, Foursquare) and industry-specific.
GBP posts weekly. One post per week — a mix of offers, news, completed work, and educational content. This matters for the freshness signal to Google.
Month 6 result
By the end of Month 6 (November 2025):
| Metric | Month 0 | Month 6 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Map Pack position (avg) | 8–12 | 1–3 | Top 3 |
| Phone calls / month | 12 | 96 | +700% |
| Direction requests / month | 8 | 47 | +487% |
| Website clicks / month | 22 | 138 | +527% |
| Total reviews | 28 | 87 | +210% |
| Average rating | 4.6 | 4.9 | +0.3 |
The headline number — 8x GBP phone calls in 6 months — was driven by the combination of category correction (unlocked new query intent), review velocity (raised prominence score), and NAP cleanup (removed ranking friction). No single fix produced this; the compound effect did.
What to replicate for your own business
If you’re running a Klang Valley service business and your Map Pack position is stuck:
- Audit your primary category first. This is the single biggest lever most businesses miss.
- Upload 30+ photos. Mix exterior, interior, team, and actual work. Photos are underrated.
- Launch a review velocity campaign. Target 10–12 / month minimum. Use WhatsApp or SMS to make it frictionless.
- Fix NAP across at least 15 Malaysian directories. Inconsistency kills Map Pack rankings quietly.
- Post weekly on GBP. Offers, news, educational — mix is fine. Frequency is the signal.
For more detailed tactics, see our guides on Google Business Profile optimisation and Map Pack ranking for KL.
If you want us to do this for you
Our Local SEO service programme handles this end-to-end. Or request a free discovery audit and we’ll tell you honestly whether your Map Pack is underperforming and what the likely lift would be.
