Local Search Case Study
$47,737 → $120,552
Revenue from one HVAC contractor's Google Business Profile, six months before optimization versus six months after. Same phone. No ad spend.
Get A Free Audit of Your Map4.91
Average rating
323
Reviews
450+
Optimization actions
$0
Media spend
HVAC contractor, suburban Texas market — name withheld. Local SEO and Google Business Profile management through Ferocious LEO, ongoing since July 2025. Attribution: GBP channel, matched to the client's FSM system via SearchLight.
The Situation
This contractor did not come to us broken. That is what makes it worth reading.
At engagement start the profile was already competitive — top-3 map position across roughly a third of the service area, ranking respectably on furnace and heat pump terms. Most contractors in that position conclude local search is handled and stop investing.
The geo-grid told a more specific story. The strength was concentrated in repair and heating — the lower-ticket, seasonal end of the business. On the terms that drive system replacement, the highest-margin work an HVAC company sells, the profile was effectively absent.
In the Texas heat belt, "air conditioner installation" is the five-figure search. Ranking well for furnace repair while ranking nowhere for AC installation is not a visibility problem. It is a revenue-mix problem wearing a decent-looking profile.
Baseline — the money terms
- air conditioner installation
- 10.64 avg. position · 0% top-3 coverage
- hvac contractor services
- 9.64 avg. position · 1.78% top-3 coverage
Meanwhile: heat pump services 2.31 average, 76.92% top-3. The profile was winning the cheap work and losing the expensive work.
The Geo-Grid — Air Conditioner Installation
169 measurement points. Every one of them moved.
A geo-grid audit ranks the profile from 169 separate points across the service area, so you see where you win and where you vanish. On the highest-ticket search in residential HVAC, the before map has no green on it at all.
Closed revenue — GBP channel
$47,737
Months 1–6
before optimization matured
$120,552
Months 8–13
same channel, same market
Launch quarter produced $31,944. The most recent three months produced $82,319.
The Business Result
Lead volume grew 44%. Revenue grew 153%. The gap is the entire point.
Average ticket rose 88% because the profile began ranking for replacement work instead of only repair work. Same phone, same crews, different customers on the other end of the line. Thirteen-month totals from this channel alone: 161 conversions, 111 unique leads, 64 paying customers, $168,963 in closed revenue.
- Average ticket$1,836 → $3,444+88%
- Revenue per lead$1,110 → $1,944+75%
- Unique leads43 → 62+44%
- Conversions66 → 86+30%
Rankings
Every keyword improved. All nine.
Average map position improved 47.6%. Not one keyword slipped. The keyword that moved most is the one that explains the revenue.
"Air conditioner installation" went from 0% top-3 coverage to 75.74% — from invisible to holding a map-pack position across three-quarters of the service area, on the highest-ticket search in residential HVAC.
- July 2025 → July 2026 leads
- 7 → 15 +114%
- Same-month conversions
- 12 → 21 +75%
Completed actions per month, by sampled window
38.7
LaunchJul–Sep 2025116 in 90 days
27.0
Mid-winterDec 2025–Feb 202681 in 90 days
32.3
CurrentMay–Aug 202697 in 90 days
What We Actually Did
33 actions every month, for over a year.
We sampled three separate ninety-day windows — the launch period, the dead of winter, and the most recent quarter — and counted every completed action in the platform log. Roughly 33 per month, sustained for more than a year: on the order of 450+ individual optimization actions on a single business profile.
Look at the winter window. December through February is the HVAC off-season — precisely when an agency coasting on a retainer goes quiet. Twenty-one posts published, nineteen review replies, eleven FAQs answered, three videos produced, in the quarter where nothing was urgent.
That is the whole method. There is no clever trick underneath it.
| Action | Cadence |
|---|---|
| Google Business Profile posts | 5–7 / month |
| Review replies | Every review |
| Review request campaigns | ~4 sends / month |
| Original images uploaded | 6–13 / month |
| Original video produced | ~1 / month |
| Video syndicated to YouTube | With each video |
| Posts syndicated to Facebook | With each post |
| Customer FAQs answered | ~Weekly |
| Google-detected changes reviewed | Ongoing |
| Performance report delivered | Monthly |
The Review Engine
320 out of 323 reviews answered.
Not most of them. Not just the negative ones. Effectively all of them. And 10-per-month review velocity is not luck — it is the output of roughly four review request campaigns sent to real customers every month, month after month.
Ask consistently, reply to every response, and a 4.91 rating on 323 reviews is what accumulates. That rating is now a conversion asset on every search where the profile appears.
99.1%
10.1 new reviews / month
Owner response rate — 320 of 323
4.91
Average rating out of 5.00
323
Total reviews
Why This Matters For Your Business
Most contractors judge local SEO by whether they show up. The better question is what they show up for.
If your map pack strength sits on tune-ups and repairs, Google is efficiently delivering you your lowest-margin work. You can more than double the revenue from that channel without doubling call volume — but only by changing what you rank for. That took no new website and no ad budget. It took roughly 33 deliberate actions every month for over a year, including through the off-season when nothing felt urgent.
Ask yourself honestly: did your profile get thirty-three things done to it last month? Did anyone reply to every review? Did anyone answer the questions customers left on it?
If your best rankings are on your cheapest services, you don't have a traffic problem. You have a mix problem — and it is fixed by showing up every week, not by a campaign.
We'll scan your service area and send it over. No call, no pitch — just the map.
Want to make your Google listing roar?
We'll run a free geo-grid audit of your service area and show you exactly what you rank for — and, more importantly, what you don't.
- Quick response
- Free consultation
- Tailored strategies
- Clear pricing