From Digital Presence to Search Visibility: A Descriptive Audit of 40 Businesses

This study presents a descriptive audit of the digital presence of 40 selected businesses using four dimensions: website experience, social-media activity, Google Business Profile (called Google My Business, or GMB, in the original audit), and a basic organic-search visibility check. The data come from business profiles prepared during an industry internship between 18 May and 20 August 2026 and use publicly observable digital touchpoints; no survey or internal analytics data were collected. The recorded ratings show that 32 of 40 businesses (80.0%) received a Good website rating, while 27 (67.5%) received a Poor rating on the basic SEO check. Social media and GMB ratings were more mixed. These results indicate that, within this purposive sample, basic search visibility was the most frequently recorded weakness. They should not be generalised to all SMEs or sectors because the sample is small, the ratings are qualitative, the search protocol was limited, and category labels are not fully consistent across the audit profiles. The paper proposes a provisional presence-to-visibility framework for practical diagnosis and future testing. Keywords: digital presence, search visibility, website audit, social media, Google Business Profile, descriptive business audit