2026-05-06 · By AutoGrowth AI
I Searched ChatGPT for HVAC in Columbus. My Own Company Didn't Come Up.
A February polar vortex, a neighbor who called someone else, and what I figured out about why AI search engines don't know most HVAC businesses exist.
I Searched ChatGPT for HVAC in Columbus. My Own Company Didn't Come Up.
It was a Wednesday in February, middle of the polar vortex that rolled through Columbus and froze half the city. I was finishing up a furnace swap in Hilliard — homeowner had been running a cracked heat exchanger on a Carrier 96% two-stage for God knows how long — when my wife texted me that the neighbors three doors down were asking Facebook for an HVAC guy. No heat.
I've known those neighbors for eight years. Never called me once. She sent them my number.
They called somebody else.
I asked her to find out who. Turns out they typed into ChatGPT "best HVAC company near Hilliard Ohio" and called whoever came up first. Not me. 4.8 stars on Google, 212 reviews, in business since 2011. Didn't matter. I wasn't in the answer.
That was the moment I started paying attention to this AI search stuff.
Here's what I found after a few weeks of actually digging into it. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and now Google's AI Overviews don't pull from Google's ranking algorithm. They're not checking your Google Business Profile star rating or counting your backlinks. They're pulling from what's been written about your business across the whole web — whether you've actually answered specific questions somewhere a machine can read and cite.
The company that got my neighbors' job? I looked them up. Fewer reviews than me, smaller crew, probably half my service capacity. But they had blog posts. Real ones — not the garbage "What Is an HVAC System?" stuff that every SEO agency posts. Posts like "Why Does My Furnace Short Cycle in Ohio Winters?" and "How Much Does a Carrier Heat Pump Cost Installed in Columbus?" With actual numbers. Dollar figures. Real answers a homeowner can use.
That's what AI engines pull from. Not your five-page website from 2018 with the stock photo of a smiling tech on a rooftop.
Google isn't simpler than it used to be either. It's been penalizing templated contractor sites since late 2024. If you've got city pages that are basically the same content with the location name swapped — "HVAC Repair Columbus," "HVAC Repair Dublin," "HVAC Repair Westerville" with nothing else changed — Google's spam filters flag those now. I watched competitors who were sitting on page one for "AC installation Columbus" fall off the map after the March 2025 core update.
What they were missing: anything that proved a real person wrote it. No mention of Ohio's climate zone. Nothing about how a 3-ton Carrier split system is going to struggle in a 2,800-square-foot Hilliard Colonial with bad attic insulation — which is half your service calls in this market, if you're working Columbus suburbs. No permit specifics. No real pricing. Just words that look like HVAC content from a distance.
Google wants to see that whoever's writing about HVAC actually knows HVAC.
Here's the part that surprised me: fixing both problems isn't two separate projects. It's basically the same work.
You need content that answers real questions with real specificity. Not "call us for a free estimate" — actual answers. Something like: a 3-ton Lennox heat pump installed in a Columbus home runs $7,200–$9,400 depending on duct condition and whether you need a new air handler, and AEP Ohio rebates currently knock $400–$800 off that. That kind of answer.
AI engines cite it. Google ranks it. Homeowners trust it.
That's the whole game. The difference between showing up and not showing up is specificity. A Rheem or Goodman budget install at $5,800–$7,200 versus a Trane or Carrier at $9,000–$13,000 — and explaining why that gap exists and when it matters. That's the question in every homeowner's head when they're searching "heat pump installation Columbus," and almost nobody's answering it plainly.
I'm not a web developer. I don't like writing blog posts. But after the February situation I started publishing one a month — real stuff, from actual service calls. Swapped a Goodman GSZC18 in Dublin for a Carrier Infinity 20 and wrote about the SEER difference, what the rebate came to, and what the homeowner's electric bill actually looked like six months later. That post ranks on page one for "Carrier heat pump installation Columbus" now. ChatGPT cites it when someone in the Columbus area asks about heat pump brands.
Took about four months to get there.
Most contractors won't do this because writing feels like homework. Fine by me — the bar to clear is low, because your competitor isn't publishing anything useful either. The Columbus operation that shows up everywhere on AI search right now is probably smaller than you. They just figured this out a year ago.
Reviews matter too, and not just collecting them. Responding with real language helps. "We replaced your Trane XR15 in Westerville and added a whole-home dehumidifier" is more useful to a search engine than "Thanks so much for the kind words." Barely any contractors do this, and it's ten minutes a week.
Your Google Business Profile needs to say what you actually do. Not "HVAC Services" — AC installation, furnace replacement, heat pump service, emergency HVAC repair, duct sealing, indoor air quality, Columbus OH and surrounding areas, 24-hour emergency service. Every category you install and service should be listed explicitly.
None of this is complicated. It just has to be consistent, and most people aren't.
A couple months back I ran a free audit on my own business — the kind that checks Google visibility, AI citations, website issues, all of it at once. Saw exactly where I was coming up short. Fixed those specific things. Leads went up, and the next time someone in Hilliard asked an AI assistant who to call for heating, my name was in the answer.
If you want to see where you actually stand — not generic advice, real data on your specific business — the audit tool below takes about three minutes. It'll show you what the machines see when a homeowner in your city starts asking questions.