How local search actually works for local businesses
No theory. What moves the map pack, what gets you named by AI assistants, and what is a waste of your money.
The Contractor Website Guide: Turning Visitors Into Calls
What a contractor's website has to do, in a sensible order: put the phone number and service area up front, work on a phone, give each service a page, show reviews honestly, and decide between repair and rebuild.
4 min read
Your Map Pack Ranking Dropped: What to Check, in Order
A checklist for a contractor whose Google Business Profile has slipped: confirm the profile is showing, review recent edits, look for duplicates, then reviews, location, competitors, and your site.
4 min read
How to Audit Your Name, Address, and Phone Number in an Afternoon
A step-by-step NAP audit for contractors, in the order the expert survey suggests: your website, Google, Bing and Apple Maps, key directories, then duplicates.
4 min read
Text, Email, or In Person: How to Test Which Review Ask Works for You
We haven't found public data comparing review request channels for contractors, so here is how to run a fair test on your own jobs without breaking Google's or the FTC's rules.
4 min read
Google Business Profile Categories for Contractors: Choosing the Primary and the Rest
What Google says about choosing categories, where experts rank them, and how to pick and change a contractor's primary and additional categories without causing problems.
4 min read
Should You Rebuild or Repair Your Contractor Website?
A decision framework: which problems are fixable on the site you have, when a rebuild makes sense, and what Google says a rebuild puts at risk.
3 min read
AI Overviews and the Map Pack: Where a Contractor Should Spend the First Hour
What each one needs according to Google, what consumers report doing, where the work overlaps, and an order to tackle it in.
3 min read
What Local SEO Experts Rank as the Top Map Pack Factors, and What Google Says
The top ten local pack factors from Whitespark's 2026 expert survey, set against Google's own three factors, and which ones a contractor can actually change.
4 min read
Service Area Pages That Help vs Doorway Pages Google Warns About
What Google's spam policy says about pages built for specific cities, what experts rank first for local organic results, and a test for whether a town page earns its place.
4 min read
Mobile Page Speed Checklist for Home Service Websites
The three Core Web Vitals and their thresholds, how to measure them with real-user data, and the fixes that address the most common causes of a slow phone experience.
4 min read
How to Respond to a Bad Google Review Without Making It Worse
When to report a review, how to reply publicly, what to avoid, and what the data says about why replies matter to the customer reading them.
4 min read
LocalBusiness Schema for Contractors: What to Add and Where
Which schema type to use, which properties to fill in, where the markup goes, and how to check it, based on Google's and schema.org's own documentation.
4 min read
How Many Reviews a Contractor Actually Needs
There is no single number, but there are two sources with real figures and a simple way to turn them into a target based on your own competitors.
4 min read
Click-to-Call on a Contractor Website: How to Set It Up Properly
How to turn every phone number on your site into a tappable link, size it so it's easy to hit, and check that it works on a real phone.
3 min read
Asking Customers for Reviews: What Google and the FTC Allow
You are allowed to ask. The rules cover how you ask: no incentives, no filtering who you ask, and no pressure on the rating or the wording.
4 min read
Service Area or Storefront: Setting Up Your Google Business Profile Correctly
The three setups Google recognizes, which one fits a contractor, the addresses Google won't accept, how service areas are defined, and what to expect from verification.
4 min read
The Contractor's Guide to Reviews That Actually Convert
What homeowners say they look for in reviews, where they read them, how to ask within Google's and the FTC's rules, how to show reviews on your site, and what to fix first.
8 min read
The Complete Google Business Profile Playbook for Contractors
The full picture behind the checklist: the three factors Google says drive local results, where category and service-area setup fit, and the mistakes that can hold a profile back before reviews ever come into it.
11 min read
The Home Service Business Guide to AI Search Visibility
What to fix first if you want ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews to name your business instead of your competitor's, in one place, with the two-minute version and the full breakdown.
10 min read
How to Get Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews
Getting cited by AI assistants starts with concrete, checkable practices on your own site. Here's what to check first, and what's still unproven.
5 min read
Why Your Contractor Website Gets No Leads (Even With Traffic)
Traffic isn't always the problem for contractor websites. Conversion often is. Here's the list of friction points that can quietly turn visitors away before they call.
5 min read
The Google Business Profile Checklist Every Contractor Should Run
A practical checklist for contractors to get their Google Business Profile in order: name, categories, service areas, photos, reviews, and the mistakes that can quietly hold back map pack visibility.
5 min read