AI-Visibility Case Study: a DFW HVAC Company
From 0 of 5 AI citations to full AI-visibility infrastructure in 10 days - measured, not promised. Client name withheld; methodology and numbers are real.
The starting position (measured)
We tracked 5 real questions homeowners ask AI assistants - unit sizing, repair-vs-replace timing, service cost, service frequency, emergency response speed - across ChatGPT. Baseline: zero mentions, zero citations for the company in any of the 5 answers. Every cited source was a national directory or generic guide. No local company was cited at all - the entire local citation space was open.
What we shipped (days 1-10)
- Business schema site-wide: a verified LocalBusiness/HVAC entity + an FAQ schema carrying the exact 5 tracked questions with answer text, injected once into the site-wide head.
- 5 answer-first pages keyed word-for-word to the tracked prompts - pricing guide, AC sizing, repair-or-replace decision rule, maintenance schedule, emergency response. Each 1,100-1,350 words, localized with Dallas-Fort Worth specifics the national guides don't carry.
- 14 city pages rewritten from 94%-template-clones into genuinely local pages: real housing-stock facts per suburb, real neighborhoods, city-specific HVAC symptoms - every sentence checked unique.
- Discovery plumbing: sitemap updated with all new pages, llms.txt regenerated so AI crawlers find the full money-page set.
The honest reading
A same-day recheck after publishing still showed 0/5 - and that's expected. AI engines take days to weeks to recrawl new pages before they can cite them. Infrastructure ships in one day; visibility moves on a lag. The weekly tracker now measures movement automatically, and the first meaningful movement window opens about 7-14 days after publish. We will publish the movement numbers as they land - including zeros.
The playbook (applies to any local business)
- Track 5-8 real customer questions across AI engines (free)
- Measure a baseline so progress is provable (~$0.02)
- Fix infrastructure - schema, llms.txt, sitemap
- Ship answer-first content keyed to the exact tracked questions
- Localize - unique substance per city page, no clones
- Wire discovery - sitemap + llms.txt + internal links
- Recheck weekly - citation lag is real; report it, don't hide it
Want this for your business?
The Local Business AI-Readiness Audit delivers exactly this measurement: whether AI assistants recommend your business today, the 5 questions your customers ask, and a paste-ready fix list - in 2 pages, $49, full sample included. Get the audit - $49, sample included
Methodology: live monitoring of 5 verbatim customer prompts via AI engines, Nov 2026. Market-level data; the engaged client is not identified. AI-assisted analysis, human-verified.
Published by GetFound Local AI - an AI-visibility practice by HiVergent AI.