Questions people actually ask.

Every current rate is on the pricing page, in Canadian dollars, and it comes from the same place our checkout does.

Yes: the Google Profile plan. We build your Google profile, or claim it if one exists, and keep it right; build and correct your listings on Bing Places, Apple Business, Facebook, YellowPages.ca and Yelp; get you onto the sites AI assistants cite; report spam competitors to Google; and re-measure your map every week. There is no website work in it. When you get a website you can move to the monthly plan. What it includes.

The first clients join at a discount off the standard rate, because they sign up when there is the least to see. Whatever rate you join at is yours for as long as you keep paying. We can never raise it; you can leave at any time.

It is credited in full to your first month if you start the plan. If you take the plan and do the work yourself, that is a fine outcome too.

No. The first charge is your first month, less the audit if you bought one.

Not at signup. Everyone is billed monthly at their rate. There is no contract to discount, so there is nothing to trade a discount for.

Both are optional. What each includes.

No. It is month to month from the first day, and cancelling is an email. It stops at the end of the month you are in, with no fee and no retention call.

Your Google profile was always yours: we are a manager, never the owner. The pages we wrote stay on your website. Directory listings are claimed with your details and stay yours.

No. The audit is an interactive report with a guided tour that explains each part, and the monthly update is recorded. A call is there if you ask for one; it is not the default.

No. Nobody controls Google's ranking, and anyone who promises a position is guessing. What we stand behind is the work: it is listed and dated in your dashboard, and the map is re-measured every week so you can see what it did.

In the terms of service. The pricing page has them in plain words.

Your Google profile rebuilt and kept current, pages for the zones where you are missing, directory listings corrected, AI answers measured monthly, your area measured weekly, and booked jobs reported from your own exports. It covers one business, one service area, one Google profile and one website; more locations or profiles are Market Leader. Every service, one page each.

No, on any plan. We keep your name, phone number and links consistent on your social profiles, the same as any directory listing, but we never post or manage social media.

Merkat's founder, Elena Devanadera, who has founded multiple six- and seven-figure businesses and works across search, Google Business Profile, paid ads, AI answer engines and measurement. Software measures; a person makes every change. About Elena.

Service businesses that customers find on a map: trades like HVAC, plumbing and roofing, and clinics like physiotherapy and dental. If your work comes from tenders and invitations rather than searches, the map matters less, and we will say so.

No. The plan is the map pack, your Google profile and your own pages: the results you do not pay for per click.

No. Your field-service or accounting software already does reviews, reminders and invoicing. We read its exports to tie rankings to booked jobs.

Surrey, BC. The work is done online, and we know the Fraser Valley and Metro Vancouver best.

The business name you type, the trade and town you choose, and technical details such as your IP address, used to limit repeat scans and as a record of consent. The scan itself never touches your website or Google account. The privacy notice has the detail.

We do not sell it, and nobody receives it for their own marketing. A short list of providers handles it for us, each for one job, such as hosting, email delivery and payments. They are named in the privacy notice.

We set one up with you, as part of the monthly plan. First we look for a listing Google may already have made for you and claim it, so you don't end up with a duplicate. Then we prepare every field: categories, services, service area, hours and photos. You own the profile and do Google's verification yourself, usually a short video. A new profile starts with no reviews and no history, so we can't say how long it will take to show up, only that the weekly map will show you when it does.

No. You add us as a manager on your Google profile from inside your own account. Card details go to our payment processor directly and never reach us.

Only the question: a kind of business and a town. Your name, your business's name and your email never go to the AI provider.

Email info@getmerkat.com. A person reads it, and we answer within 30 days, the limit BC's privacy law sets.

Not in your trade or practice, in your area. Only three businesses show in the map pack, so helping one win means helping it take spots from someone. We will not hand two companies a plan to beat each other. How we decide.

From the measurements, not a list of towns. We look at how much of your service area overlaps with an existing client's, and how tightly the local map is held there. Where one business holds most of the map, the tolerance is tighter.

Checkout tells you before you pay, with how much of your area overlaps, and we suggest a neighbouring area where we can help. If a conflict only comes to light after you pay, you get every dollar back. The full policy.

Anyone can run the free scan; it is public. What we will not do is sell an audit to a direct competitor of a client, because the audit ends in a plan to take their spots.

No. Different trades and practices in the same town do not compete for the same map, so there is no conflict.