Most marketing advice for contractors starts too fast.
"Run ads." "Post more." "Redo the website." "Get more reviews." "Start using AI." "Build city pages." "Do SEO."
Maybe.
But maybe not yet.
The problem is that most contractors are being sold tactics before anyone has diagnosed the actual bottleneck.
That is what the 6Signal Audit is designed to fix.
What is the 6Signal Audit?
The AI Visibility Audit is a six-signal diagnostic for contractors.
It measures how your company shows up across every system a buyer now checks before calling anyone — AI assistants, Google's AI answers, Maps, directories, voice assistants, and the search results underneath all of them.
It runs instantly, costs $27, and requires no call. You answer a few questions about your business, and the six-layer read generates in about sixty seconds.
The goal is simple:
Find the highest-leverage fixes before wasting money on random marketing.
Why we audit before recommending
A contractor may think they need more leads.
But the real problem may be:
- AI tools recommend three competitors and never mention them
- The Google Business Profile is underbuilt
- Reviews are generic, so machines can't tell what the company is actually good at
- Directories disagree about the phone number
- Service pages are too thin for any answer engine to cite
- The site is unreadable to the crawlers AI systems depend on
- Competitors have covered the buyer questions this company never answered
If you prescribe before you diagnose, you waste money.
That is why we audit first.
The six signals we check
The name 6Signal is not decoration.
Six distinct systems now decide whether a homeowner ever hears your company's name. The audit checks all six.
1. GEO — Generative Engine Optimization
When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity for a contractor in your trade and city, your name is either in the answer or it isn't.
We check:
- Whether AI assistants name your company in recommendation answers
- Which competitors appear in your place
- What the machines actually say about your company when asked directly
- Whether third-party mentions and review specificity support a recommendation
- Whether your entity signals are strong enough for AI to trust you by name
2. AEO — Answer Engine Optimization
Google now answers questions directly, above the results, before anyone scrolls.
We check:
- Whether your company is cited in AI-generated answers for your trade and market
- Whether your pages answer the questions buyers actually ask
- FAQ and comparison content — the formats answer engines cite most
- Which sources own the answers in your market right now, and whether a directory is filling the space a local company should occupy
3. LEO — Local Entity Optimization
Every listing, citation, and review feeds the trust signals machines check before recommending anyone.
We check:
- Google Business Profile completeness — categories, services, service area, photos, hours
- Name, address, and phone consistency across Maps, Yelp, BBB, and the directories AI systems read
- Review volume, recency, and specificity — a review that names the service and the city is worth more than "great work"
- Whether the web agrees about who your company is
4. VEO — Voice Engine Optimization
A homeowner standing next to a burst pipe asks Siri who to call. Voice queries return one or two names, not ten.
We check:
- What Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant return for your trade near your city
- Whether your Apple Maps presence is claimed and accurate — voice runs on the same local data
- Whether urgent, hands-free queries can resolve to your company
5. PEO — Prompt Engine Optimization
Buyers search with specific language: "emergency AC repair open now," "roofer for storm damage," "slab leak plumber near me."
We check:
- Whether your company surfaces inside the real query language your customers type and speak
- Which high-intent prompts trigger your name — and which skip you
- Whether the buyer's full question path is covered, from "what do I do when this breaks" to "who do I call"
6. IEO — Index Engine Optimization
Every AI and search system reads your site, schema, and business data to understand what you do and where you work.
We check:
- Whether AI crawlers can access and parse your site at all
- Schema markup — present, valid, and honest
- Site structure, headings, and service descriptions machines can actually extract
- Whether anything technical is quietly blocking the systems that would otherwise recommend you
The order that usually wins
Not all six signals deserve attention first. In most contractor audits, leverage follows this order:
- LEO first. Google Business Profile, reviews, and citation consistency move both Maps rankings and AI recommendations — the machines ground their local answers in exactly this data.
- IEO second. Schema and crawlability are cheap, one-time fixes that everything else depends on.
- AEO third. Question-answering service pages are what earn citations in AI answers.
- GEO and PEO compound. Third-party presence and prompt coverage build over months, on top of the first three.
- VEO mostly inherits. Clean local data is most of the voice battle.
Your audit ranks these for your specific situation — that ordering is the deliverable, not a generic checklist.
Beyond the six signals: what visibility is worth
Visibility fills the top of the funnel. It does not cash the check.
A company can win every signal and still lose jobs to missed calls, slow follow-up, a weak form, or a homepage that says nothing specific. That is not a visibility problem — it is a conversion problem, and it multiplies (or divides) everything visibility delivers.
The audit's roadmap flags conversion gaps when they are the real bottleneck, because sometimes the fastest win is not more visibility.
Sometimes it is capturing what you already have.
What we do not do
We do not recommend random tactics just because they are trendy.
We do not assume every contractor needs the same system.
We do not pretend AI fixes bad positioning.
We do not sell ads to companies whose website cannot convert.
We do not build content plans before the core pages are fixed.
That is backwards.
What you get from the audit
A strong audit should give you clarity.
Not confusion.
The AI Visibility Audit delivers:
- All six signals scored, with the finding and the gap for each
- A buyer journey map — where your customer researches, and where you disappear from consideration
- The citation landscape — which platforms own the answers in your market
- Content gap analysis — what's missing, mapped to buyer stages
- A ranked priority roadmap — what to fix first, and why
The value is prioritization.
Because a contractor does not need 100 marketing ideas.
A contractor needs the next right move.
Example findings
Here are common findings from contractor audits:
Finding 1: AI recommends three competitors by name
The company does good work, but when a buyer asks ChatGPT or Gemini who to call, three other names come back — sometimes including a national aggregator instead of any local company.
Fix:
Strengthen the entity and review signals AI grounds on, and build the answer-ready content that earns citations.
Finding 2: The service pages are too thin to cite
The company offers valuable services, but the pages have almost no useful content — nothing an answer engine can quote.
Fix:
Build deeper service pages with FAQs, process, proof, location relevance, and the specific questions buyers ask before calling.
Finding 3: Reviews are strong but say nothing specific
The company has great reviews, but they read "great service" — no trade, no city, no outcome. Machines can't use them.
Fix:
A review strategy that produces specific language, plus surfacing the best reviews on the pages that need them.
Finding 4: The directories disagree
Three different phone numbers across Yelp, HomeAdvisor, and Google. Every system that cross-references them loses confidence.
Fix:
Full entity cleanup — one name, one number, one story, everywhere.
Finding 5: The site is invisible to machines
No schema, vague headings, service descriptions that never name the service area. AI systems describe the company in generic terms — or not at all.
Fix:
Structured data, machine-readable service pages, and clean business data across the site.
Who the audit is for
The AI Visibility Audit is for contractors who want more clarity before spending more money.
It is especially useful for:
- Roofers
- Plumbers
- HVAC companies
- Remodelers
- Masonry contractors
- Concrete contractors
- Excavation companies
- Utility contractors
- Commercial service contractors
- Home service companies
If your company depends on local trust and booked jobs, the audit can help.
The best time to get audited
The best time to get audited is before you spend heavily on marketing.
Especially before:
- Rebuilding your website
- Hiring an SEO agency
- Running Google Ads
- Running Meta Ads
- Launching AI tools
- Expanding into new cities
- Building new service pages
- Paying for lead generation
Diagnosis first.
Execution second.
Final answer
The 6Signal Audit checks the six signals that decide whether a contractor gets found, trusted, and recommended: GEO, AEO, LEO, VEO, PEO, and IEO.
It measures what AI assistants, answer engines, Maps, voice systems, buyer prompts, and crawlers actually understand about your company — before recommending anything.
Because the goal is not more marketing activity.
The goal is more booked opportunities from the right fixes.
Want your company audited?
Get the AI Visibility Audit — $27. It generates instantly — all six signals scored, competitors mapped, and a ranked priority list that is yours to keep.