A page title that says nothing
The failure. The title reads "Home", or the brand name alone, so a search engine has no idea what the business is or where. The description under it is missing or a sentence about passion.
The fix. A title of sixty characters or fewer that names the category and the area; a description of 155 or fewer that says what and where and how to book. One heading on the page that says the same.
The menu, the prices, the packages, hidden
The failure. The menu is a PDF or a photo. The prices are "contact us". The packages are on a page nobody finds. A customer who cannot see what it costs assumes it costs too much.
The fix. Prices or "from" prices as text on the page people land on, and a menu or package list that a phone can read without downloading anything.
The newest review is from last year
The failure. A good rating with no recent reviews reads as a business that has gone quiet, or closed. And a low rating left unanswered reads as a business that does not care.
The fix. Ask for reviews at the moment the customer is happiest, every time, and reply to every rating under three stars within the week. Owner replies are read by the next customer, not by the last one.
The booking path that doesn't resolve
The failure. The Book button opens a form that never confirms, a WhatsApp link to a number nobody checks, a third-party page that errors on a phone. The customer tried; the business never knew.
The fix. Walk the path yourself, on a phone, from the first screen to the confirmation, once a month. If it does not end in a confirmation someone will act on, it is not a booking path.
Invisible to AI search
The failure. No structured data, no plain-text hours, no answers to the questions people ask before visiting. When an assistant is asked for the best option nearby, it names the competitor whose page it could read.
The fix. Name, address, phone and hours as machine-readable data on the site; the category and the place in the first hundred words; a short set of real questions and answers on the page.
Slow on the phone the customer is holding
The failure. A first screen that takes four or five seconds to paint on a mobile connection. Most of the people who leave at this point never register as visitors anywhere.
The fix. Smaller images, fewer scripts, nothing above the fold that waits on a third party. The target is the largest element painted within 2.5 seconds.
Nothing measured
The failure. No analytics, no Search Console, no pixel. The owner knows the till figure and nothing about the path that led to it, so every fix above is guesswork.
The fix. Analytics and Search Console on day one; the rest when there is a campaign to measure. The Cold Audit reads these as a tag scan and tells you which are present.
The one that is not on the list
The failure that no check catches on its own: the business is positioned against the wrong set. A venue that thinks it competes with golf shops when it competes with the group night out. The audit's Position area puts the ten nearby businesses next to yours so the frame is visible before the fixes begin.