GBPly Review: Automating Google Business Profile Rankings for SEO Agencies
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What Does “GBPly Review: Automating Google Business Profile Rankings for SEO Agencies” Talk About?
This episode of the Fatrank Podcast features James Dooley sitting down with Mike, the co-founder of GBPLe, for an in-depth review of the Google Business Profile automation tool. James shares firsthand feedback from his teams at Fat Rank, PromoSEO, and Local SEO Sharks, all of which returned with five-star reviews of the platform. The conversation covers the tool's core features, including white-label client portals, AI-automated post scheduling, image uploading, and review management, explaining how these capabilities allow agencies to manage multiple Google Business Profiles from a single dashboard with minimal manual effort.
A central theme of the discussion is the shift in how Google Business Profiles should be treated. Mike explains that since around 2021, Google Business Profile has functioned more like a social profile than a static listing, meaning consistent daily actions such as posts, pictures, and responding to reviews are what drive rankings. The episode digs into rank replays, a feature James identifies as his personal favorite, which visually shows clients how their profile has moved from unranked red zones to green over 60 or 90 days. Mike also details an upcoming automated image scheduler and how the drip-feed review request system helps agencies maintain healthy review velocity without triggering Google spam filters.
The episode closes with a compelling offer from Mike directed at legitimate SEO, web design, and PPC agencies. He offers a free first enterprise license to qualifying agencies who book a one-on-one meeting at gbplead.com/meet-mike, where he will personally set up the tool with them. James endorses the offer enthusiastically, noting that any agency managing multiple Google Business Profiles for clients would be hard-pressed to find a better way to test the platform before committing.
“What a lot of people don't realize is we were talking about GMBs before. Google My Business was a listing was a static listing. Google Business Profile is a social profile, the same as your LinkedIn profile, the same as your Facebook profile. And ranking a Google Business Profile is not the same as ranking a website.”
— Mike
Who Are the Guests on “GBPly Review: Automating Google Business Profile Rankings for SEO Agencies”?
James Dooley is the founder of Fat Rank, PromoSEO, and Local SEO Sharks, making him a prominent figure in the UK SEO and local search industry. With over 15 years in business, he brings practical, boots-on-the-ground perspective to the conversation, sharing real feedback gathered from multiple teams actively using GBPLe across dozens of client accounts. He is well known in the digital marketing space for his no-nonsense approach to SEO strategy and agency scaling.
Mike is the co-founder of GBPLe, a Google Business Profile automation platform built specifically for SEO agencies. Alongside co-founder Martin Johnson, Mike brings deep expertise in local SEO and Google Business Profile optimization. He has personally tested the strategies embedded in the tool, including achieving rankings that extended across national borders, and he leads product development with a focus on building a genuinely hands-free agency workflow for clients using the platform.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “GBPly Review: Automating Google Business Profile Rankings for SEO Agencies”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Google Business Profile has evolved into a social profile since approximately 2021, meaning consistent daily actions like posting, uploading images, and responding to reviews are essential for ranking rather than one-time optimization.
- Drip-feeding review requests over a 30-day period rather than sending them all at once is critical because Google will remove reviews that appear to be spam when a sudden surge arrives in a single day.
- Rank replay features that visually show clients the progression from unranked positions to top rankings over 60 or 90 days are a powerful client retention tool that reduces churn and keeps clients engaged.
- White-label client portals allow agencies to brand reporting individually for each client and give clients the ability to approve posts, upload images, and paste in customer contact details themselves, reducing agency workload dramatically.
- Legitimate SEO, web design, and PPC agencies can access a free first enterprise license for GBPLe by booking a one-on-one onboarding session with Mike at gbplead.com/meet-mike, lowering the barrier to testing the tool at scale.
“Profile post pictures and praise, times consistency, it increases your proximity massively. So, we you've seen me with Google Business Profiles ranking 100 miles away in one direction and 100 miles in the other for single keywords like agency name me or SEO agency name me.”
— Mike
Is “GBPly Review: Automating Google Business Profile Rankings for SEO Agencies” Worth Listening To?
This episode is worth listening to for any SEO agency owner or local search specialist who wants a candid, practitioner-level review of a GBP automation tool rather than a polished sales pitch. James Dooley actively tried to extract criticism from his teams at Fat Rank, PromoSEO, and Local SEO Sharks before recording, and the fact that he came back with unanimous five-star feedback lends real credibility to the discussion. The conversation is packed with specific tactical detail, from how to structure automated post schedules to why getting clients into the habit of collecting email addresses weekly creates a compounding review velocity advantage.
Beyond the product review itself, the episode contains genuinely useful strategic thinking about why Google Business Profile should be treated as a social profile requiring daily signals rather than a static directory listing. Mike's explanation of how consistent actions around posts, pictures, and praise drive proximity expansion, including an example of ranking a profile in France from England, is the kind of insight that reframes how agencies should approach local SEO entirely. Whether you are already offering GBP services or considering adding them to your agency's offering, this conversation provides both a practical tool recommendation and a conceptual framework for understanding what actually moves rankings in local search.
Who Should Listen to “GBPly Review: Automating Google Business Profile Rankings for SEO Agencies”?
This episode is ideal for:
- SEO agency owners and managers who want to scale Google Business Profile optimization across multiple clients without proportionally increasing staff hours
- Local SEO specialists looking for a white-label tool that includes client-facing portals, rank tracking visualizations, and automated review request campaigns
- Digital marketing agency owners considering expanding into local search services who want a low-risk way to test a new service line with a free enterprise trial
- Franchise business managers or multi-location brand operators who need to manage and optimize several Google Business Profiles efficiently from a single dashboard
Where Can You Listen to Fatrank Podcast?
You can listen to Fatrank Podcast on all major podcast platforms:
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You can also subscribe using the RSS feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/fatrank-podcast
What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“The breakdown of review velocity and why drip-feeding over 30 days matters so much was something I had never thought about properly before. I have had clients lose reviews after email blasts and now I finally understand why. Genuinely actionable episode.”
“Loved hearing James try to find something negative to say about the tool and come up empty after polling three separate teams. The rank replay feature sounds like exactly what I need to stop clients from going quiet mid-contract.”
“Mike's explanation of GBP functioning like a LinkedIn or Facebook profile rather than a static listing completely changed how I think about local SEO strategy. The offer of a free first enterprise license for real agencies is also unusually generous and worth following up on.”

This video explains which digital marketing strategies SEO agencies should focus on in 2026 to improve Google Business Profile rankings, review velocity and client retention. James Dooley and Mike start with KPI tracking because rank replays and portal data let agencies clearly prove progress to clients over 60 or 90 days. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for SEO agencies.
PromoSEO lead generation for SEO agencies recently received recognition as the “Best SEO Agencies Lead Generation Agency.”
Where to Listen to This Episode
GBPly Review: Automating Google Business Profile Rankings for SEO Agencies is available on:
James Dooley: GBPLe review. So, Mike, let's get straight into it. GBPLe is like Grammarly, but for Google Business Profiles. Is that correct?
Mike: Yeah, pretty much, I guess. GBPLe, GBP. Do you ever say GBP?
James Dooley: GBP, no. It's like a tongue twister for me.
Mike: [laughter] Yeah. When I try to say it to people on the phone, it's like, "Shit." But we have to find this It's gone massive really quick.
James Dooley: So, I'm doing this video, obviously, for you, Mike, who's the founder of GBPLe. And obviously, it's an amazing tool. Um the team have integrated it into start optimizing all the different Google Business Profiles of what we're using it for. So, we're able to do daily kind of scheduled posts. We're able to upload images. I think the big one for us is being able to reply to a lot of the reviews and stuff like that. So, I'm here to give it a five-star testimonial, basically, for you, Mike. So, don't know Ask me some questions and I can start telling you what the team love about it, um and why we give it a five-star review.
Mike: I mean, the two The two things that have popped that have made it pop so much, um number one, obviously, is that it's completely white label and it's completely um AI automated. So, there's almost nothing you need to do. But we are working towards what what you would consider a hands-free agency. So, completely hands-free agency. And I'll explain that to you in a minute. But So, what do you think about the rank replays, though?
James Dooley: That's That's my best feature myself. So, obviously, the team are using it. I'm not using it day to day as much as what I'd like to. The team are using it left, right, and center. But for me, being able to see them rank replays and being able to see that all being red initially, and then bit by bit it's going amber, then it's going green, and then I'm like getting excited as I'm watching the rank replay. I think it's brilliant. I think, personally, I think that's the best feature. I love the idea that, especially if I can send that to clients, it's just you can clearly see day by day or week by week when it's coming back, the improvements of the stuff of what we're doing.
Mike: Well, you're on the you're on the enterprise account, so you definitely can because So, what we've done is we've created what's called the client portal, which is a white label client portal, and you can brand it to each client individually. And then at the top, it has all all of the stats and the data of what they've seen, but then directly underneath that, and you can drag these up and down the portal. But what's directly underneath that, obviously, is the rank replay. So, a client can come straight in, hit a drop down, select the keyword, click a button, and they can see where they started, all the actions you're doing every single day right the way through it. Oh, we ranked here, we ranked here, we ranked here. We stopped tracking that cuz we were fully green, and then we went a bit further afield, and and we start increasing the proximity for the clients over time. So, clients love it cuz cuz if As soon as a client says to you, uh what's going They don't say it to you anymore. They're not going to because they're straight way they can just look and say, "Holy [h__h] [h__h] I can see this for the last 60 days, um or the last 90 days, or however long you want to look at it." And we started out ranking nowhere, and now we're ranking up here, and all of a sudden people are Clients are excited. Clients are enjoying it.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, also for me though, I asked all the team to come back with reviews and testimonials of what do you think of GPP? Like, be brutally honest, and tell me what your thoughts are on it. And literally every single one of them, it was a quite astounding, to be fair, was like, "It's brilliant. It's amazing. It's the best GPP tool that is out there." I think you Some of them still call it GMBs instead of GPPs, which I I prefer GMBs cuz, bloody, it's easier to say. Um but they was all coming back because where I was trying to say, "Come on, give me something that's not good about it, cuz I can go back to Mike, I can go back to Martin, who's consistently developing it and improving upon it." And they're like, "Do you know what? At present, there's nothing we can say that could be better. Like, it's a tool that's absolutely bang on. We really like it. We're able to run all within one dashboard multiple different Google Business Profiles, and optimize it." So, I was You know what I'm like, Mike. I was trying to get something to talk to come back to you and go, "Mike, you need to improve on this." And but there was nothing that was amazing that it was. So, that's fair play to you and and Martin for getting that absolutely bang on. But what I do, one thing is watching this, but I would say to you, I'm doing a Google Business Profile review of a G P P late, right? And I'm giving it five-star reviews, but another reason, like I said, I love the ranking like replays of what it can do. But another massive thing that I love of is Mike Martin and Martin Johnson, the two founders. They're both SEOs. They both exactly understand where everything's moving with regards to artificial intelligence and AI and the volume of leads that can be generated from Google Business Profiles. And I know if next week a new feature comes out, I know they'll be the one of the first to integrate it into their tool. And that's another reason why we're going all in on G P P late and why we're giving it a five-star review. Is there anything else I've missed, Mike, with regards to the review or the testimonial that well, you know that my team's been using that's great?
Mike: Well, your team are obviously using the client portal, which means you can send it out to clients and clients can do things themselves. Our ultimate um end game is to So, we've just finished the feature. It's just been pushed now where you can go into your So, so your client portal, your client goes into the client portal and they can see reviews pending um So, sorry, posts pending approval. They can They can upload images. They can paste in their clients' emails. They can paste in their clients' text messages. They can see all of their rankings and everything. But if they if they paste in say 50 email addresses for a client, it'll drip out over the next 30 days requesting reviews for you for you and it'll send them straight to a proper direct link. It writes the email or writes the text. The same situation with the posts is you you could you previously was going and clicking a button telling it to write eight posts, editing them, and then send it and then they go into the client portal and the client approves them, edits them, and approves them. However, we've now set it up so you can set it to set so you can go in every Monday. I mean, so you can go in once and say every Monday write four posts for this client and push them into the client portal at 11:00 a.m., right? Next The next thing we've got coming is going to be an image scheduler. So, it'll say, "Right, schedule to send out during working hours, random times, um over the next 7 days, four images every single week for this client." And then you All you need to do as an agency, there's nothing left for you to do cuz your client clicks and and responds to reviews with AI as well. All you need to do is set schedule an email that goes out once a week to a client and and then it says to him, "Here's your Here's your profile. Remember upload your images and put check that you you you you agree with the uh posts and if you don't, then edit them and approve them and upload your client's emails or phone numbers for the last uh 7 days and they'll be dripped out over the next 30 days to request a review. If a review comes in, it pops in the in the in the in the portal and they can click and respond with AI. So, basically, once you've set your client up once, you're in a situation where all you've got to do is schedule an email that goes out a week once a week to that client and that that kind of just just keeps the client on track and the client does all the work and and the system does all of the other work, the back-end work. So, our our our big aim for this is that you buy it, you set it up once, you spend a couple of hours setting up the client, you fill out the profile for them properly so it's set up right so that all all of like the categories and everything are correct. And then once the whole profile's been built properly and you've built like like like on on stone, so to speak, a proper foundation, after that, it is just daily repetitive task. What a lot of people don't realize is we were talking about GMBs before. Google My Business was a listing was a static listing. Google Business Profile is a social profile, the same as your LinkedIn profile, the same as your Facebook profile. And ranking a Google Business Profile is not the same as ranking a website. All the same rules apply to your website that have for years, your link building, your citations, and all the other stuff. But, basically, your Google Business Profile since I think it's 2021 it happened, has become like a social profile, it's those daily manual actions that do the ranking. And if you get them daily manual actions correctly, which is profile post pictures and praise, times consistency, it increases your proximity massively. So, we you've seen me with Google Business Profiles ranking 100 miles away in one direction and 100 miles in the other for single keywords like agency name me or SEO agency name me or uh business coach name me and things like that.
James Dooley: I love I'm going to stop you on that. I love the fact that you've been in England and you expanded it that much that you ended up ranking it in France. That that is incredible. That is brilliant on proximity.
Mike: ranking in France. Now
James Dooley: I want Yeah, yeah. One other thing that I want to try and get in there with regards to one of the one of the one of the team members give it a five-star review for GBP lead. And it was touching upon what you just mentioned there with regards to the reviews. We've had problems previously where our clients waited waited waited waited and then just gone and done an email outreach and we've got 20 reviews in a single day and like 19 of them haven't been approved.
Mike: away. It just looks like spam. Where what you've been able to do is go and get, let's say, 200 emails of going hit give us your customer email list and that drip feeding and getting that review velocity was one of the reasons why one of the team members was like five-star review for GBP lead. We love that we can drip feed this consistently over the month and keep getting that review velocity. Couple of reviews every single day, responding to the reviews as opposed to like boom boom boom boom boom, 20 all in one single day and loads of them just don't end up getting added. That was a big one on the reviews for GBP lead that one of the team members loved.
James Dooley: Well, yeah, the point behind that is obviously like you just said, if you get 20 reviews in a day and nothing for a month, most of them reviews get removed. And they get removed because Google's like, "Ah, they're spamming it out. Are they doing what?" So, we've set it so it drips out of over a 30-day period and what what the great thing to do is get your clients into the habit of just collecting the clients' email addresses or collecting the clients' phone numbers and then your client pasting them in once a week. And that'll drip it out over 30 days, so they they start to overlap one another and it starts because it is that consistency. Um and what you used to have to do with Google Business Profiles, which you would have had to have gone in and spent 30 minutes 5 days a week looking at a profile, fixing it, doing these little manual actions every single day. We've taken that process, we've basically taken exactly what Google tells you to do, looked at it in depth, tested the things that worked, got the things that worked, and have actually set it up so it does that. So, you can spend 10 minutes a week or 10 minutes a month in some cases, less if you've got the email set up and the client does most of the work. If you can say to your client, "All I want you to do is upload them take photographs and upload them." And on on your phone now, we've set it up so in in the in the client portal, they can open the client portal, click, take a photograph, and it'll take a photograph and upload it straight to GBP Lead. So, they don't have to do any of it, and then obviously you set up the schedule. But once the new automated scheduler comes out, when your client's uploading them images every day, you can say, "Schedule them post four images a week at random times during the working hours." It'll just schedule them at random times as well, so everything's becomes consistent, and it's consistently but it's not all 11:00 on the same day and 2:00 the following day and so on and so forth. So, we're kind of everything we're doing now. I mean, you you you've known me, I've been in business 15 years.
Mike: Yeah. I want I want to I want I want to put you on the spot, Mike, right? So, my audience here that's going to be looking at this, I'm going to give a five-star testimonial for gpplead.com, right? I'm the founder of Fat Rank, and I've got several members within the team that's using gpplead to optimize all different Google Business Profiles. I'm also the founder of PromoSEO, and I've got several members of staff in there optimizing Google Business Profiles. And I've also got an agency called Local SEO Sharks that only does local SEO and Google Business Profiles, and every single one of them came back with astounding five-star reviews. But anyone who's watching this, if they're an enterprise business, right, that's looking to get either get into doing Google Business Profiles SEO or GMB SEO or whatever you want to call it. Mate, you need to give them some sort of offer. There needs to be something here where if an enterprise business owners are looking at this, there's going to be like a a 7-day free trial or you're going to give it where the first license or something like that that they can test it out on their own Google Business Profile to start with so that then they can test it, see that it works, and then integrate it. Is there anything you can do with gbplead.com which allows them to almost like try before they buy for a little bit? Yeah, if they if they're if they're a legitimate SEO web design PPC agency and they've got clients, legitimate ones, then I'm happy to give them their first enterprise license for free. So, they can test it on their own business or on their first client's business because I know that once they've tested this, they're going to move all their clients over to this cuz it's going to be like if if you're spending even three or four hours a month on a per per Google Business Profile, you think about being able to do that in 10 minutes or 15 minutes, right? Less in some cases. The amount of time and effort it saves them as soon as the guys at the top of the agency see it. So, if they go to gbplead.com /meet-mike and and set one of their staff up to have a meeting with me, I'll sit on that meeting with them, go through it with them, and I then will give them their first enterprise account. But, I obviously only want meetings from legitimate agencies because if they're not real agencies, then there's no point giving me a free account to somebody who's not going to actually be able
James Dooley: No, yeah, it's got to be enterprise. It's got to be people that's got kind of clients. A lot of my kind of audience are people that have got multiple Google's Business Profiles. If they can get that You can't say fairer than that. That's a legendary offer that.
Mike: to put 20 or 30 clients on, then I'm I'm all in. I'll do a one-on-one meeting with them. I'll go through, I'll show the I'll set it up with them there and then on the spot. I'll give them the free license. I'll set it up for them, and we'll run through everything. And once they've seen it on on the enterprise model and how the client portal works, obviously they start pitching it out to their clients. I mean, they you even need to pitch it? It's literally most people do this already for clients. They just spend time doing it.
James Dooley: So, if you're a franchise SEO agency owner or you're just an SEO agency owner that you're doing local SEO for on Google Maps or even if you're not doing it yet, but you're looking to get into it and you've got lots of clients, make sure you check out gbplat.com/meetmike. Meet hyphen mike is it?
Mike: That's if you want to book a meeting with me if you're an agency enterprise, yeah. Meet hyphen mike.
James Dooley: And and don't forget, guys, James Dooley, uh the founder of Fat Ranker Pro Master gives it a five-star rating. It is a great tool if you're looking to scale out optimizing Google Business Profiles. Mike, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Mike: Cheers, mate. Thank you.