Work your Tasks list

Use the prioritised Tasks list to always know the next best action for a location.

Tasks is the single, prioritised place to see the next best thing to do for every location, so you never have to hunt across tools to find what needs attention.

Where tasks come from

Every task names something specific to change, why, and roughly how long it takes. A task is only suggested when SearchOps can be sure it is worth doing:

Plans: select Plan with the agent. The agent reads the whole picture for a location, including the services you confirmed, your website, the businesses holding the Map Pack and what earlier work moved, and puts the work worth doing in order for the next 90 days. You add the steps you want. See Get help in the app.
Google profile: high priority fixes from a Google Business Profile audit, and changes to your live listing that need a decision.
Reviews: complaints that keep coming up, which is a different job from replying.
AI answers: when ChatGPT or Gemini ties your business to the wrong website, or names you without linking to you.

Open a task to see What to change: the exact category, page, site or profile field, the effort, and which part of your visibility it works on.

Why tools no longer suggest page, category and review tasks on their own

A single tool sees one slice of your data. A map scan cannot tell whether you offer a service, and a rank check cannot tell whether your website already has a page for it, so suggestions made that way could be wrong, such as a page for a service that already has one. Those findings now feed plans, where they are weighed against everything else, and suggestions made the old way that nobody had touched were cleared.

Changes are not tasks

A keyword dropping out of the map pack, a smaller share of the map, or fewer calls last week is worth knowing, but it is not something you can do. Those show under What changed on your dashboard instead, and each one says whether a task was added for it. If nothing in your tracked data points to a fix, it says that too.

You can also add your own tasks with New task, for the work no tool can see: a call to the client, a photo shoot, chasing a supplier. Or use Add to tasks on a keyword, a scan, a review or a competitor while you are looking at it.

Tip: New to the platform? What is SearchOps? explains how these tools fit together.

Repeating tasks

Some work is a habit rather than a job you finish. A plan turns review growth into a pace, such as Get 3 new Google reviews a week. The pace comes from how fast the businesses holding the Map Pack for your main services gain reviews, your own pace, and roughly how many customers you see, so it is one you can keep.

Open a repeating task to see this week or month against its target, and the weeks or months before it. When SearchOps tracks the location's Google reviews, it counts new ones for you. Otherwise, enter the number when you check in. Add a note on what worked, such as who asked and when. A repeating task stays on your board until you mark it done.

Kept to what matters

A board full of findings is an inventory, not a plan, so tools hold back:

Each tool files only its most important findings. The rest stay in the tool, and the card tells you how many.
Tasks need evidence that holds up: a page has to sit in the same range for two checks in a row, a category has to be used by more than one rival, and ChatGPT and Gemini findings wait for a second check.
At most 5 tasks from tools sit open for each location. Anything past that waits in the Inbox, most important first.
A tool does not add a task for a number someone on your team is already working on.

Choose how each tool adds its tasks with How tasks get added at the top of the Tasks page: Add (straight onto the board), Suggest (offered in the Inbox first), Agent (the agent decides) or Off.

Did it work?

Tasks from your tools name the number they should move: how much of the map grid you show in, keywords in the top 3 of Google's web results, clicks from Search Console, keywords where Google's AI answers cite you, how often ChatGPT or Gemini names you, how often a complaint comes up, or the calls, direction requests and website clicks your Google profile earns.

The number is read when the task is accepted, and again a set time after you mark it done. That wait runs from a week for review replies, to two weeks for rankings, to 90 days for review complaints, so there is enough new data to show a change. Open a finished task, or the Review view, to see whether the number moved the right way, did not change, or went the wrong way. Until enough time has passed it says Too early to tell.

It is a before and after, not proof the task caused the change. Rankings move for many reasons, and the result is there to inform the conversation, not to settle it.

The views

List groups everything by location, urgency or type. Best for working a backlog down.
Board puts each task in a column: To do, Doing, or Blocked. Drag a card between columns, or open it and pick. You can type straight into the To do column to add something.
Calendar shows what is due and when, and flags anything overdue.
Inbox shows things that need a person right now, such as an unhappy review waiting on a reply, and suggestions from your tools waiting for a yes. Select Add on one to turn it into a task somebody owns. Rank and coverage changes are not offered here: they are on your dashboard under What changed.
Review is what you finished, by month and by tool, with what happened to each task's number, ready for a client conversation.
Plays is where the guided playbooks live. Start one and its steps land on your board straight away.

Click any task to open it. That is where the full detail lives: what a rolled-up card covers, the number it should move, the owner, the due date, your own notes, and for a playbook step, why it matters and what usually goes wrong.

Plays

A play is an ordered set of tasks that checks itself against your data, for a job with a right order: recovering a suspended profile, launching a new site, building review volume.

Starting one loads its steps onto your board. Steps that cannot start yet sit in Blocked until the ones they depend on are done, and the step you should do next is marked high priority.

Some steps tick themselves. If a step is "run a baseline scan" and the platform can see the scan, it marks itself done and says so. Ticking a play's step on your board also ticks it in the play, so the two never disagree.

You will find Tasks under Workspace in the sidebar, with a count badge showing how many are waiting. Every task sits in one of these states:

Open: live and ready to action.
Snoozed: hidden for now and due to return on a set date.
Done: ticked off, or resolved automatically once the underlying issue clears.
Dismissed: set aside as not relevant.

Use the Status filters to switch between them, and the Source filters to focus on one type of work at a time.

Action, snooze or dismiss

Tick the circle to mark a task done. Tick it again to reopen it.
Select Snooze to clear it from your view and bring it back in a week.
Select Dismiss for something you do not plan to act on. Tasks you added yourself can be deleted outright instead.
Use the action button to jump straight to the tool that does the work.
When something you added from the Inbox recovers, for example you are back in the map pack, the card says so and offers Mark done. It never closes itself, because recovering and being fixed are not always the same thing.

Note: When the underlying issue is fixed, tasks can resolve on their own and move to Done, so the list stays accurate without extra tidying. That is why a task created by a tool is dismissed rather than deleted: dismissing it is remembered, and the next run will not raise it again.

Note: Older cards that only described a change, such as "Dropped out of the map pack for 3 keywords", were cleared automatically unless someone had assigned, dated, moved or written notes on them. You will find them under Dismissed.

Stay focused, not scattered

Because tools add only confirmed, important work and every location has a limit, you can work the board top to bottom and trust that you are tackling the most important things first. The count badge keeps the outstanding total in view from anywhere, and the Review view shows what that work did.

To choose what your dashboard shows alongside Tasks, see Customise your dashboard.