AEO & The Future Of Local Search

They're ranking front page for "Phoenix Emergency Plumbing" and "Best Drain Cleaning Phoenix" and so on. When they search for keywords, they're showing up consistently. They're doing everything they're supposed to be doing. Right? Yet they're getting crushed by competitors who've been around half as long. Inbound leads are slower every season. More tire-kickers, more "I'm shopping around," and LSA is climbing. Site visits are all but gone. Here's why:

A service business earning $400K–$4M per year. Real revenue. Real employees. Real customers who need your services. You're too small to benefit from enterprise strategies. You're too local to benefit from generic SEO tactics. But you're being sold solutions designed for businesses that look nothing like yours. The result? You're not just wasting money. You're actively making your visibility worse. Let me explain.

People are still paying for window cleaning, landscaping, roofing, plumbing, or HVAC/R, and yet your leads are taking a nose dive and you've been on a rollercoaster that feels inconsistent, sometimes incredibly stressful, and seemingly impossible to predict. You're not struggling because you suddenly stopped providing value. And you're not losing revenue month over month because "It's another slow season." You're not alone. And you're not crazy.