How to Get Your Home Service Business Recommended by ChatGPT

Write down the 10 questions your customers ask

Start with the questions people actually ask before they call, in their words. Mix the three kinds that lead to work: who to hire, urgent problems, and cost.

For Summit Air, that list starts like this:

• “Who’s the best AC repair company in Plano?”
• “Emergency AC repair open now in Plano, TX”
• “How much does a new AC unit cost in Plano?”
• “Is it worth repairing a 15-year-old AC unit?”

Check where you stand

Ask ChatGPT each question in a new chat, with your location turned on. Ask each one three times, because answers change: in one large analysis of Google’s AI Overviews, the brands named shifted 46% of the time across repeat checks.¹

For each answer, write down whether you’re named, where you appear in the list, and which websites it cites. Your score is simple: the share of answers that name you. Our Town Score does this for you, free.

• Named or not named
• Your position in the answer
• Which competitors are named instead
• Which sites are cited

Fix your listings, starting with Yelp

Yelp appeared as a source in 80% of ChatGPT’s local answers in BrightLocal’s study of nearly 2 million citations, and Yelp now licenses its reviews and business details to OpenAI.²³ An incomplete Yelp profile is the most common gap we see.

Then do Google Business Profile, which is the top local source for Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.² After that, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and the Better Business Bureau. Our list of the best places to list your business ranks them all by evidence.

• The same business name, address and phone number everywhere
• The right main category, plus every service you offer
• Your service area, listed town by town
• Real photos of your team, vans and finished jobs
• A description that says what you do and where, in one plain sentence

Rewrite your service pages so AI can quote them

Give each main service its own page. Title it the way customers ask, because pages whose titles closely match the question get cited more often.⁴ Our guide to writing service pages AI will quote covers this step in detail.

Put the answer at the top. In one study of 1.2 million ChatGPT results, 44.3% of citations came from the first 30% of a page.⁵ Then cover the details: towns, response times, price ranges, licenses and warranty. Keep each section short and focused; pages with sections of 120 to 180 words were cited more than pages with very short ones.⁶

• One page per service, with the town in the title
• The answer in the first two sentences
• Price ranges, response times and what’s included
• License and insurance details
• A visible “last updated” date

Build a steady flow of recent reviews

Recent reviews matter to customers, and Google says they help local ranking. 74% of consumers only consider reviews from the last three months, 47% won’t use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, and 89% expect owners to respond to reviews.⁷ Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking.⁸

Ask for Google reviews after every good job. Yelp doesn’t allow businesses to ask for reviews, so let customers know you’re on Yelp instead, and reply to every review you get. Never buy reviews or offer anything in return for them. Our guide on reviews and AI has the full rules.

• A review request sent the same day as the job
• A reply to every review, good or bad, within a few days
• A Yelp link on your website and invoices

Get mentioned on the sites AI reads in your town

One academic study found AI search engines favor what other sites say about a brand over what the brand says about itself.⁹ Mentions across the web tracked visibility in Google’s AI Overviews more closely than backlinks in a study of 75,000 brands.¹⁰

Aim for a few genuine mentions a month on sites that cover your town and trade. Our answer on Reddit and AI recommendations explains how to show up there properly.

• Local news: offer a comment on storm season, heat waves or scams
• Your chamber of commerce and trade association directories
• Manufacturer and supplier dealer locators
• Local “best of” lists and community pages
• Reddit and local groups: answer questions honestly, in your own name

Re-check every month and fix what slipped

AI tools favor fresh information. In one study of 7,683 cited pages, 73% of the pages ChatGPT cited had been updated within the past year.¹¹ Run the same questions from Step 2 each month, compare your score, and update the pages and listings behind any question where you’ve slipped.