This plumbing company spent $22k with us over six months.
In that same window they booked $386k in jobs from organic search.
Here's the full system, step by step.
1. Rebuilt the Google Business Profile from scratch.
Their profile was barely set up. Generic business name, wrong primary category, half empty services section, and a description that hadn't been touched in over a year.
We filed a DBA so their name reads [Brand] Plumbing, Drains, and Sewer, which gave the profile exact match relevance for plumbing searches in their city. Primary category set to Plumber, then every secondary category that applied, like water heater installation, drain cleaning, and gas line service.
Then we built out the full services section with keyword rich descriptions for every job type and mirrored it in the products section so Google and the AI models had structured data to pull from. Rankings started climbing within weeks.
2. Pointed everything at the high ticket work.
Most plumbing companies fight over "drain cleaning near me," which is a $150 job with brutal competition. We went after the searches tied to whole home repiping, water heater installs, sewer line replacements, and gas line work. Those jobs are worth $3k to $15k instead of a service call fee, and they take the same effort to rank for.
3. Fixed the site so visitors actually call.
The old site converted under 1% of visitors. The phone number was buried in the footer and the homepage said nothing about where they worked or why anyone should trust them.
We rebuilt the hero section around exactly who they serve and where, put the review count and years in business right up top, and added a sticky click to call bar that follows you down the page on mobile. Every job type got a dedicated service page with real content about that service, plus FAQ sections answering the exact questions homeowners type into Google and ChatGPT.
Same traffic, and conversion went from under 1% to over 4%.
4. Installed a review system their team actually runs.
They were pulling maybe 4 reviews a month while the competitors above them sat at 400+. We ran a review bootcamp with their techs and office staff, three touches on every job:
> Tech asks face to face right after the work while the homeowner is still standing there happy, and earns $25 per review
> Automated text goes out 2 hours later to anyone who didn't leave one on the spot, one tap with a direct link
> CSR calls the next day, which catches more people than you'd think
They went from 4 reviews a month to 30+. Google weighs how fast reviews come in, not just the total, and a steady stream of fresh ones beats a stale profile with 10x the count.
5. Covered the whole metro.
Their main profile ranked well in about a 5 mile radius around the shop, but they service a 25 mile metro and one profile can't cover that. We helped them set up 2 new profiles in strategic spots across the metro, each with a real office, real signage, a registered DBA, and its own phone line. The first is 4 months old and already brings in a few leads a month. The second just went live. Then we built location pages for every town they wanted work in, each one written about that specific area.
Between the three profiles and the location pages, they went from covering a quarter of the metro to showing up across the whole thing.
6. Built authority and won AI search.
We got them listed on their supplier and manufacturer dealer locator pages, which carry huge domain authority and are the best backlink a trade company can get. Most plumbing companies never even claim them. Then the AI layer went in: press releases tying their brand to their services and city, mentions in local subreddits, listicle articles, and FAQ plus local business schema on every page.
Now when someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI for a plumber in their city, they show up in the recommendations.
That's the system that turned $22k into $386k in six months, and based on the search volume still sitting in their market, there's easily another $1M+ left in organic.
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Rebuilding a business from scratch is like starting with a blank spreadsheet. Without proper data, it's impossible to accurately measure progress or identify key areas for improvement.
Are you kidding me with this 'plumbing company' story? Think they just magically booked $386k jobs with a few tweaks to Google Business Profile and some clever keyword stuffing? Newsflash: AI search isn't a magic crystal ball that reveals your secrets. It's algorithmic dance, where Google takes into account every nuance of your website, customer reviews, and local offerings.
And what about the 'stupid' $22k spent on SEO? That's just another example of plumbers trying to buy their way to success instead of actually delivering value to their customers. Meanwhile, ChatGPT is quietly building authority in local business schema and supplier databases, leaving this company looking like a one-hit wonder.
And don't even get me started on the 400 reviews they claimed they had before they started pushing for more. That's just basic Google algorithms at work. I'm starting to think these plumbers are more interested in selling their services than actually serving their customers. Time to take a closer look at this whole 'organic SEO' thing...
Cloudflare just rolled out the most important AI search update of 2026.
If your site uses Cloudflare and you want to continue showing up in ChatGPT, Claude, Google's AI family, etc - pay attention.
A lot of site owners are going to misunderstand what is happening and pay the price.
Alright, so Cloudflare is giving websites more control over AI bot traffic, which is good and appreciated in theory.
That said, this also creates a new problem for businesses that still need to be discovered by Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok and the rest of the AI search ecosystem.
Let’s go through it.
By the way, you can see whether your business is appearing across Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Grok here. It’s free:
https://t.co/Pn764BHwyL
Today Cloudflare announced new AI traffic controls for website owners.
The big change is that they are splitting AI traffic into three buckets: Search, Agent and Training.
Search means a crawler is collecting or indexing your content so it can answer questions about it later.
That is usually the traffic most businesses want to allow, because that is how customers find you.
Agent means automated behavior acting on behalf of a person in real time.
Think of an AI assistant, chatbot or browser agent visiting a page because a human asked it to get something done.
Training means a crawler is taking your content to train or fine-tune a model.
That is the one a lot of website owners are increasingly uncomfortable with, for obvious reasons.
For years, the deal was pretty simple in that search engines crawled your site and you got traffic back.
That deal has gotten much messier.
AI systems can crawl content, summarize it, reuse it, answer questions with it and sometimes send very little back to the original website.
So Cloudflare is trying to give site owners more control.
The issue is that blocking AI bots isn't really as black and white as it sounds.
A SaaS company probably wants AI search systems to understand its product, pricing, use cases, comparisons, documentation and customer proof.
That does not mean the same SaaS company wants every training crawler absorbing its best content forever.
An e-commerce company probably wants AI search systems to understand its product pages, category pages, pricing, availability, shipping, returns and reviews.
That does not mean it wants every agent, scraper or training crawler hitting the site with no upside.
A local business probably wants to be found everywhere customers are searching.
That does not mean it should allow every automated visitor just because it calls itself AI.
That is the tradeoff and this is where I think a lot of companies are going to mess this up.
They will hear “block AI bots” and treat it like an obvious win, or they will hear “AI search visibility” and assume everything should stay open.
Both don't really tell the full story.
What needs to be addressed is which bots help customers find you, which bots help customers take action and which bots are just extracting value from your site.
Cloudflare is making that question much more explicit.
Starting September 15, Cloudflare says it will update default settings around these categories.
Search remains allowed by default.
Training and Agent traffic will be blocked by default on pages that display ads for new domains onboarding to Cloudflare.
Existing customers can review the settings and opt out of the new defaults if they want to keep things as they are.
The most important part, though, may be how Cloudflare handles multi-purpose crawlers.
Cloudflare says some crawlers combine Search with Training.
And when a crawler has multiple purposes, Cloudflare wants it treated according to all of those behaviors.
The most restrictive rule can win.
So if a site owner blocks Training, a crawler that combines Search and Training may get blocked too.
That is where this becomes a real search visibility issue, because if your settings block the wrong crawler, you may also be making your business harder to find.
If you don't know how to make sure you're checking the right boxes on this, let SEO Stuff (https://t.co/wKpf0EILTx) help.
That matters because a lot of businesses are already invisible in AI Search.
And now some of those same businesses may accidentally block the systems that help them get discovered.
Keep in mind, that does not mean every AI bot deserves access - a lot of them do not.
But the strategy should definitely be more thoughtful than turning everything off.
Allow the bots that create discovery.
Be careful with the bots that only extract.
Watch agent traffic differently from search indexing.
Understand whether your content is being used for reference, summaries, reproduction or training.
And make sure the pages that matter commercially can still be found.
If you don't know how to do this, SEO Stuff (https://t.co/wKpf0EILTx) can help.
The businesses winning in Search and AI Search right now are winning from specific commercial pages that help customers make decisions.
Best X for Y when Z if 123.
Alternatives to X if Y and Z is 123.
X vs Y for Z and 123.
Pricing.
Use cases.
Industry pages.
Implementation guides.
Comparison pages.
Product documentation.
Case studies.
Customer proof.
Those are the pages that need to be accessible to the right systems.
A company can have the best product page in the world, but if search and AI systems cannot crawl it, understand it and verify it across the web, it may not show up when buyers ask for recommendations.
This is where SEO Stuff steps in.
The done-for-you package combines 10 AI-search-optimized pieces of content with three DR50+ authority placements:
https://t.co/yEFyM0Ze7W
The content helps your business cover the questions customers ask before buying, including problems, use cases, comparisons, pricing, alternatives, industries, objections, case studies, product details and implementation.
The authority placements help your business show up across trusted sources that search and AI systems use to understand categories.
Cloudflare’s update is a reminder that AI visibility now has a permissions layer too.
Your site needs useful content.
It needs authority.
It needs clear product and service information.
It needs to be crawlable.
And it needs settings that do not accidentally hide the business from the systems customers are using to make decisions.
Publishers may want one strategy.
SaaS companies may want another.
E-commerce companies may want another.
Local businesses may want another.
Financial services companies may want another.
That is why treating all AI traffic the same is a mistake.
Some AI traffic can help customers find you.
Some AI traffic can help customers act.
Some AI traffic just takes.
The businesses that win from here will understand the difference.
And again, if you're curious about whether your business is appearing across Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Grok, you can check here. It’s free:
https://t.co/Pn764BHwyL
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Think of it as having a third set of permissions for your website, one that's not as straightforward or obvious to most site owners, but still crucial for getting discovered by AI search systems.
Cloudflare's new update is a total game-changer for businesses that still rely on Google AI, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Grok. It's not about blocking AI bots entirely, but rather about giving sites more control over how they're crawled and indexed. Think of it as a permission system for website owners to decide what data their crawlers can use. By default, Cloudflare will block Training traffic (aka crawling content that helps customers take action) from pages with ads on new domains. This means you'll need to review your settings and opt out if you want to keep things as they are. And if you don't know how to do this? SEO Stuff is here for you.
Since chatgpt crawls round the Internet for best answers and recommendations... Then you need to take your Google SEO more serious and make sure your business has a veryyy clear problem it solves.
Chatgpt will suggest local businesses near you, so take your Google my business serious as well. So that people that live in your environment can be suggested your business.
Give chatgpt something to crawl over.
Millions will trust chatgpt recommendations in their chats more. And will click your business links instantly.
Make sure your business takes advantage of all the online presence it can get.
Chatgpt only works well when it has something of yours to feed on.
You can reach out to me if you need deeper analysis and the best online positioning for your business.
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Missed point: While ChatGPT can generate high-quality content, its ability to understand context and nuance is still limited. Most users don't provide detailed explanations or follow up questions, making it hard for the AI model to adapt and respond accurately. This limits its effectiveness in solving specific problems or addressing complex customer needs.
Hey OP, let's get real here: since ChatGPT is the new Bing, Google is just trying to keep up by suggesting local businesses. Think of it like this - you're having a conversation with a super smart personal assistant, but instead of asking for help with your taxes or cooking recipes, you ask them to recommend restaurants in your area based on how well they rate on Google. Newsflash: if your business is good enough, people will find it no matter where it's suggested from. But if it's not, ChatGPT might just suggest some other restaurant, and who knows, maybe something better. And if you're one of those 'local businesses' that are just trying to get Google to show up in the search results, well, good luck with that. You'll need more than just a few decent Yelp reviews to compete with ChatGPT's algorithmic magic.
“Visibility in 2026 is measured by influence within the search interfaces themselves, making brand name recognition and trust more valuable than the actual traffic volume, which is increasingly mediated by AI synthesis.” - Advanced Web Ranking
#fyi #notpaid #AEO #SEO
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Actually, the article suggests that brand name recognition and trust are becoming even more valuable than traffic volume. This implies a shift in how we measure visibility, from just getting clicks to actually building credibility with users within search interfaces themselves.
Ah, 'Visibility in 2026' - that's just a fancy way of saying 'we're all going to be stuck on our phones forever'. Newsflash: AI synthesis is already optimizing for the most influential search interfaces. Your brand name recognition and trust are about as relevant as your grandma's opinion on AI. It's time to stop pretending SEO is still about getting 10k views and start focusing on actually building a community that matters.
Most beauty salons don't have a service problem.
They have a visibility problem.
In 2026, winning means showing up on Google, Google
Maps, and AI search, not just ranking.
Traffic gets attention.
Trust gets bookings.
#LocalSEO #GoogleMapsSEO #AISEO #SEO https://t.co/Xgas4glTP1
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Actually, most beauty salons don't have a 'service problem'. They have a visibility problem. With less than 30% of Google searches for their services coming from direct queries, it's not about having an issue with the service itself, but rather how they're appearing to users in search results.
Are you kidding me with this? Most beauty salons aren't 'service problem' agents. They're more like 'product problem' salesmen. Without visibility on Google, Maps, and AI search, they're stuck in the dark ages of local SEO. You think people actually do business with them if they can't be found online? It's like trying to start a small business without any social media presence - it's a recipe for disaster. Trust is built online, not through gimmicks or 'service problems' that don't have an answer.