Case study — Local SEO & AI Search
The situation
Halstead & Kerr Plumbing had been in business for eleven years on a strong local reputation, but almost none of that reputation showed up online. A search for "plumber near me" or "emergency plumber Sacramento" put three competitors in the map pack before Halstead & Kerr appeared at all, and the website ranked on page three or worse for nearly every service and city page it needed.
Newer competitors with weaker reputations but better-optimized profiles were consistently winning the calls Halstead & Kerr should have been getting. And when customers started asking ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews for plumber recommendations, Halstead & Kerr wasn't mentioned once — the business was invisible in the exact place more of its future customers were starting to look.
The owner had relied on truck wraps and word-of-mouth for over a decade. That was no longer enough to keep the schedule full.
"We were the best-reviewed plumber in three of our service cities and you'd never have known it from Google."
The approach
The timeline
Technical fixes, directory cleanup, and a rebuilt site structure around real service-area demand.
Google Business Profile overhaul, new service pages published, review system rolled out to field techs.
Review volume compounding, GEO-focused FAQ content and citations published across key sources.
Rankings holding in the map pack, AI mentions appearing consistently, call volume steady month over month.
The results
Map pack rankings brought the steadiest volume, but the AI Overview and ChatGPT mentions closed jobs at a noticeably higher rate — those customers arrived already having been told Halstead & Kerr was the trusted option, with far less price-shopping than a standard search click.
"Within four months our phone started ringing with people who'd never heard of us before. By month eight, our office manager said new customers were mentioning that 'the AI thing' recommended us. We didn't even know that was possible."
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