Client Case Study · Local SEO · 4-Month Update

Four months in, a 35-year-old HVAC company ranks higher on every money keyword, and ChatGPT names it #1 for "ac repair."

Bertie Heating & Air had served Gainesville since 1991, but none of that reputation showed up online. We published results at 30 days and again at 60. This is the four-month check: what held, what grew, and what a full summer on GrowthOS Local Lighthouse produced.

ClientBertie Heating & Air
IndustryResidential HVAC
MarketGainesville, FL
ProgramGrowthOS Local Lighthouse
WindowJune 3 to October 2
718
Calls and website clicks from Google
From the Business Profile alone, June through September
10/10
Map rankings above baseline
Average rank 7.7 → 6.1 across 10 revenue keywords
#1
On ChatGPT
For "ac repair" and "home ac repair" in Gainesville
47.9K
Google search impressions
New website, first 96 days live
The Client

Three generations of trade knowledge, invisible online.

Bertie Heating & Air Conditioning has served Gainesville and North Central Florida since 1991. Family-owned, three generations deep, with an owner who has 51 years in the trade and a real differentiator: a load calculation on every single job. None of that was reaching customers online.

The Problem

A shrinking website in a market full of leads.

Organic traffic had fallen every month for six straight months, down roughly 74% from January to June 2026, while the strongest local competitor held nearly steady. The problem was the site, not the market.

The website was an aging WordPress install on slow shared hosting, with 62 ranked keywords and shrinking. And there was zero Google map-pack visibility on money searches like "ac repair near me" in a market where the top rival holds a 4.8-star profile with more than 600 reviews.

The Work

A Google Business Profile takeover, then a full rebuild.

On June 3 we took over the Google Business Profile and launched the GrowthOS Local Lighthouse program. The first optimized post went live June 4. The rebuilt website followed on July 2. Four months in, both engines are running, and Google Ads joined them in late September.

1

Discovery & positioning

Walkthrough and onboarding calls surfaced the real story: three generations, 35 years, load-calc-on-every-job, an educator's approach. Every claim on the new site was owner-verified. No invented reviews, no fake badges, no promises the company doesn't make.

2

Market & competitor research

Page-level teardown of the top three competitors, real keyword volumes and difficulty, and a 15-topic content plan mapped to how Gainesville actually searches.

3

Keyword-mapped architecture

130 pages planned, each with an assigned target keyword, H1, and meta data written before a single line of code.

4

Full website rebuild

A modern static site on edge hosting replaced the slow shared-hosting WordPress. Mobile-first, three rounds of client edits folded in, lead form wired straight into the CRM, every template audited to WCAG 2.2 AA.

5

Zero-downtime launch (July 2)

DNS cutover with email untouched and old URLs 301-redirected, so nothing that was ranking got lost.

6

GrowthOS Local Lighthouse (ongoing)

Full profile optimization, monthly rank-grid scans across 10 revenue keywords, and a publishing engine that never stops: SEO posts multiple times per week, geotagged keyword-named photos, video, drafted owner replies to every review, review requests via QR and link, and citations synced across 51 directories.

The Results · Google Maps

Every tracked map ranking is still above where it started.

A 169-point rank grid across the Gainesville service area, June 3 baseline vs the October 2 scan. Average map rank moved from 7.7 to 6.1, a 21% improvement, and all 10 tracked keywords rank better than they did in June. The number of grid points where Bertie holds the #1 map spot grew from 105 to 145.

Keyword Rank before Rank at 60 days Rank at 4 months Top-3 before Top-3 at 4 months
air conditioner repair5.04.54.246%56%
air conditioning repair near me6.14.65.140%50%
hvac repair6.34.74.739%46%
air conditioning repair6.85.35.131%41%
ac repair6.85.15.932%36%
ac maintenance service7.35.46.427%27%
ac repair service8.76.56.624%29%
ac tune up9.57.18.58%4%
residential hvac repair9.97.17.64%5%
home ac repair10.48.37.11%10%

"Top-3 coverage" is the share of the service-area grid where Bertie appears in Google's map pack (positions 1–3). Eight of ten keywords cover more of the map than they did in June. "Home ac repair" went from 1% to 10% coverage, and "air conditioner repair" now holds the top three across more than half the service area. Some terms gave back a few tenths since the August scan; none has fallen back to its starting point.

"air conditioning repair"Jun 3 · Before
Map-pack heatmap for air conditioning repair, June 3 baseline
"air conditioning repair"Oct 2 · After
Map-pack heatmap for air conditioning repair, October 2 result
"hvac repair"Jun 3 · Before
Map-pack heatmap for hvac repair, June 3 baseline
"hvac repair"Oct 2 · After
Map-pack heatmap for hvac repair, October 2 result
The Results · Google Business Profile

More calls every month than before the takeover.

Phone calls and website clicks straight from the Google Business Profile, by calendar month. April and May are the last two full months before the June 3 takeover. For an HVAC company, calls are booked jobs.

MonthPhone calls from profileWebsite clicks from profileNote
April 20268436Before takeover
May 20267639Before takeover
June 202612463Profile takeover June 3
July 202612981New website live July 2
August 202612168
September 20268052Cooling season winds down
Monthly average80 → 114 (+42%)38 → 66 (+76%)Spring vs June–September

Summer is busy season for any Florida HVAC company, so we checked the same four months against last year too. June through September calls and website clicks combined are up 5% on 2025, and profile website clicks beat last year by 26% in August and 41% in September. Google reports profile activity on a delay of about a week.

The Results · The New Website

A site that was shrinking now shows up on page one.

The rebuilt 130-page site went live July 2. In its first 96 days Google served it 47,852 search impressions and 285 organic clicks. The company name ranks #1, and non-brand searches like "hvac gainesville fl" and "air conditioner repair gainesville fl" now land on page one.

47.9K
Search impressions
Jul 2 – Oct 5, Google Search Console
#1
Brand-name searches
"bertie heating and air" and variants
5.0
Avg position, "air conditioner repair gainesville fl"
Plus 6.0 for "hvac gainesville fl"
100
Lighthouse accessibility
Every audited template, WCAG 2.2 AA

The old site had no Search Console history to compare against, so these are absolute numbers, not growth claims.

The Results · In His Own Words

Don't take our word for it.

One month after launch, we asked the owner of Bertie Heating & Air what has actually changed. No script, no editing. Just his answer, recorded at the shop. We asked about:

What the phones have been doing since the new website and Google work
Whether customers are mentioning they found Bertie on Google
What it has meant for the business overall
Bertie Heating & Air · Gainesville, FL · July 2026
The Results · AI Search

ChatGPT now puts Bertie first.

Bertie now appears in AI assistant answers on 9 of the 10 tracked searches, and in the top three on 7 of them. Two months ago its best ChatGPT spot was #2.

#1
ChatGPT
"ac repair"
#1
ChatGPT
"home ac repair"
#3
Gemini
"ac repair service"
The Takeaway

Four months in, the gains held through the season.

All ten map rankings above their June starting point. 718 calls and website clicks from the profile in four months. A fast, owner-approved website at bertieair.com that Google has shown nearly 48,000 times. And the AI assistants homeowners are starting to ask now name Bertie first.

The first month proved the profile work. The second proved it sticks. The fourth proved it holds when the summer rush ends. This is what four months of local SEO looks like.

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