Industries · How HVAC companies get recommended by ChatGPT and AI search
When the AC dies in July, who does ChatGPT tell them to call?
Heating and cooling jobs are seasonal, urgent and expensive. Homeowners ask assistants for a company, a price range and whether to repair or replace. Here's how to show up in those answers.
Free, no account. We only read public files.
What people ask AI assistants
- “AC repair same day in [city]”
- “Best HVAC company in [city] for heat pump installation”
- “Is it worth repairing a 15-year-old furnace?”
- “HVAC companies near me with financing”
Why does AI search matter for HVAC companies?
HVAC questions are often research questions first (repair or replace, heat pump or furnace) and booking questions second. Assistants answer the first part from articles and the second by naming local companies, sometimes in the same reply.
A company with clear pages on the systems it installs, the brands it services, its rebates and its service area gives an assistant both halves of the answer.
Seasonal peaks mean the cost of being invisible is concentrated in a few weeks a year.
What we found on 34 home-service sites
Full report and method →1 / 34
3%
block any AI crawler in robots.txt
robots.txt is rarely the problem
21 / 34
62%
have no llms.txt at all
11 / 32
34%
homepages with no Organization or LocalBusiness schema
of homepages we could read
2 / 34
6%
returned a firewall 403 to our automated request
From GeoLumen's own scan on 2026-10-19 of public files only (robots.txt, llms.txt, homepage). 13 of 32 readable homepages used an industry-specific schema type, and 2 of the 13 sites serving something at /llms.txt served a broken, empty or HTML file. Our home-services sample is 34 plumbing, heating & cooling, roofing, electrical and landscaping companies scanned together, so these numbers describe local trades as a group, not this trade alone. Small samples: treat these as a snapshot, not a census.
The heating and cooling company checklist
Things to do this week, roughly in order.
- Write a page per system you install or service: heat pumps, furnaces, central AC, ductless mini-splits.
- List the equipment brands you install and service, as text rather than a row of logos.
- Explain repair-or-replace in your own words, with the factors you actually use to advise customers.
- Put financing terms, maintenance plans and any local utility rebates on HTML pages.
- Add HVACBusiness schema with telephone, hours and areaServed.
- Before peak season, check that bot protection on your host isn't turning away search crawlers.
What are the common mistakes, and the fixes?
- 01
Services listed, systems not explained
"Heating & Cooling" isn't enough. Short pages on heat pumps, furnaces, ductless mini-splits and maintenance plans answer the questions people actually ask.
- 02
No HVACBusiness schema
About a third of the local-trade homepages we could read had no business schema at all. Use HVACBusiness with phone, hours and areaServed.
Free tool: Schema / JSON-LD Generator → - 03
Bot protection set too tight
Some trades sites in our scan returned a firewall 403 to our automated request. Check that your host's bot settings let verified search and AI crawlers through.
Free tool: AI Crawler Checker → - 04
Financing and rebates only in PDFs
Put financing terms and local utility rebates on a plain HTML page, so assistants can cite them.
Which schema should HVAC companies use?
HVACBusiness is the schema.org type for heating, ventilation and air conditioning contractors. Pair it with areaServed and your hours.
Generate it for your heating and cooling company →Recommended type
"@type": "HVACBusiness"
Start with the free check. If you'd rather hand it over, there's the Snapshot.
The free AI Crawler Checker shows in seconds whether AI crawlers can read your site. The $99 Snapshot audit goes further for one heating and cooling company: 10 customer questions × 4 AI engines, crawler, robots.txt & CDN review, llms.txt and schema written for you, prioritised fix list (PDF). Delivered in 5 working days.
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