5 Fixes a Home Service Business Can Make This Week to Get Recommended by AI

When we asked ChatGPT and Claude to recommend a roofer and an AC company in Katy, each answer named five or six companies with a one-line reason. Those reasons were not marketing slogans. They were plain facts the assistants found written down: a warranty, emergency hours, a license, a rating.

That is good news for a small business, because writing facts down does not need a big budget. Here are five fixes, in the order we would do them. The first four need no developer.

1. Put your key facts on your homepage in plain sentences

Time: about an hour.

Make a list of the things a customer asks before they hire you, then answer each one in a full sentence on your homepage. For example:

• "We are licensed and insured in Texas, license number ..."
• "We offer a 10-year workmanship warranty on every roof repair."
• "We answer emergency calls 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
• "Family owned and serving Katy since 2009."
• "Free same-day estimates."

Short, specific sentences like these are exactly what showed up in the AI answers, sometimes almost word for word. A vague line like "quality you can trust" gives an assistant nothing to repeat.

2. Give each town you serve its own page

Time: an afternoon for your main towns.

When someone asks for "roof repair in Katy", a page about roof repair in Katy is the easiest thing for an assistant to quote. In our test, two of the pages Claude cited were roofers' own Katy pages.

Start with the two or three towns where you want the most work. On each page, say which services you offer there, how fast you can usually get out, and mention a few neighborhoods or landmarks you work near. Do not copy the same page and swap the town name. Write each one so it would be useful to someone who lives there.

3. One page per service, not one page for everything

Time: an hour or two per service.

A "Services" page with eight bullet points tells a machine a little about eight things and a lot about nothing. Split it up. A roofer needs a page for repair, one for replacement and one for inspections. An HVAC company needs AC repair, heating repair, installation and maintenance plans.

On each page answer the questions customers really ask: what it costs or what drives the cost, how long it takes, what signs mean you need it, and what happens on the day. Those answers are what an assistant can quote back to someone asking the same question.

4. Complete your listings on the sites AI reads

Time: an hour.

In our test the assistants pulled ratings and details from Yelp, Angi and HomeAdvisor, mentioned BBB accreditation as a reason to choose a company, and ChatGPT used a utility company's list of participating contractors. Fill in every field on each profile: services, service area, hours, license, photos. Make sure your business name, phone number and address are written exactly the same way everywhere.

Then ask happy customers for reviews on more than one platform. A rating with a review count was one of the most common reasons an assistant gave for naming a company.

5. Add structured data (this one needs your web person)

Time: an hour for whoever manages your site.

Structured data is a small block of code that tells machines, in their own format, what kind of business you are, where you are, what areas you serve, your phone number and your hours. Many contractor sites have none. Ask whoever manages your website to add LocalBusiness markup, or the more specific type for your trade such as RoofingContractor, HVACBusiness or Plumber. Our structured data guide shows what it looks like.

Two things not to do

• Do not publish a "best roofers in [your town]" list that ranks yourself first. In our test one assistant noticed exactly this and treated the list as promotional.
• Do not post fake reviews or forum comments. Communities remove them, and they can make every other mention of your business look less trustworthy.

Check before and after

Run a scan before you start so you have a baseline, then again two to four weeks after your changes. A DidItIndex scan asks ChatGPT and Claude the question your customers ask, shows who they name, and checks the technical items above, including whether AI crawlers can reach your site at all. If they cannot, that is the first thing to fix, and our guide to robots.txt and AI crawlers explains how.