Field notes

hellojade field notes

Practical writing on structured data, AI search, and local visibility for home-services businesses.

Aug 7, 2026 · 6 min read

How AI search engines actually recommend contractors

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews do not rank links — they name a business they can verify. Here is what they read, why a fragmented digital identity makes you invisible to them, and the split between what your marketing partner does and what you do.

Read →
Aug 7, 2026 · 6 min read

Why your Google Business Profile is now your most critical digital asset

Your profile stopped being a listing and became the source of truth feeding Maps, your pay-per-lead ads, and AI answers at the same time — which makes an unverified or edited profile a single point of failure for the whole lead pipeline.

Read →
Aug 7, 2026 · 6 min read

The hidden leak in contractor marketing: reactivating past customers with automated SMS and email

A new lead costs $150 to $350 in a competitive market; the customers who already trust you cost a fraction of that and are sitting untouched in your CRM. How behavior-triggered SMS and email sequences close the leak — and what carrier compliance actually requires.

Read →
Aug 7, 2026 · 6 min read

The local authority playbook: winning rankings without burning budget on pay-per-click

Paid ads rent space on Google; local authority owns it. How geographic verification, neighborhood-level entity mapping, and schema-defined service boundaries replace duplicate city pages — and how to get off the ad treadmill.

Read →
Aug 7, 2026 · 6 min read

Structured data and schema for home services: what AI crawlers look for on your website

AI crawlers do not read your gallery — they read JSON-LD. What subtype precision, sameAs entity linking, areaServed boundaries, and llms.txt actually do, and what an unreadable website costs you in an AI answer.

Read →
Jul 24, 2026 · 6 min read

Google is retiring the LSA dashboard: what the move into Google Ads means for home services

Google is sunsetting the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard and moving LSA accounts into Google Ads as a Performance Max pay-per-lead campaign type — with home services in Phase 1. What stays the same, what changes, the one real risk, and the action plan.

Read →
Jul 16, 2026 · 5 min read

Featured snippets vs. rich results vs. AI Overviews: what's the difference?

Three different ways to win space at the top of Google — and they work in completely different ways. Here's what each is, and what actually earns it.

Read →
Jul 10, 2026 · 5 min read

What is structured data, and why home-services businesses need it

Structured data is the machine-readable code that tells Google and AI assistants who your business is and what you do. Here's what it is, why it matters for contractors, and how to get it right.

Read →
Jul 13, 2026 · 6 min read

How to show up in AI search: getting cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews

AI assistants now answer the questions your customers used to type into Google. Here's how to become a source they cite — through entity clarity, structured data, and answer-shaped content.

Read →
Jul 16, 2026 · 4 min read

NAP consistency: why your name, address, and phone must match everywhere

A single mismatched listing can quietly suppress your local rankings. Here's what NAP consistency is, why it matters so much for local search, and how to fix drift across dozens of platforms.

Read →
Ready when you are

Want the score, not just the theory?

Run a free AI-visibility audit to see exactly where your business stands — or join our weekly live demo.

CallFree AI-visibility audit