AI visibility for renovation contractors

The renovation inquiries you want most are getting shortlisted before anyone fills in your contact form. A couple in Kitsilano planning a six-figure kitchen asks ChatGPT for three renovators to call, gets three names, and you never hear that yours wasn't one of them.

A renovation company gets named by an AI assistant when the assistant can find clear facts about it, check them elsewhere, and repeat them with confidence. Those facts come from sources it can read. Your website is the biggest one. In a Yext study of 6.8 million AI citations (October 2025), business websites made up 44%, more than any other single source.

So we start with your site. It should show real projects with the neighbourhood, the scope and how long they took. It should say what kind of work you take on, where, and how a first consultation works. Then your reviews, association listings and directory profiles need to tell the same story.

That's the short version. The free audit shows where you stand today, on the questions homeowners in your area actually ask.

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It does for some, though no one has measured renovation buyers on their own. BrightLocal's is the closest figure: in its February 2026 survey, 45% of US consumers said they use ChatGPT or other AI tools for local recommendations. That covers every kind of local business, and it's American. We haven't found a Canadian figure yet.

Renovation fits the pattern better than most trades. People plan a kitchen or a basement suite for months. They have questions they'd rather not ask a contractor face to face, mostly about money. Is my budget silly? What does a bathroom actually cost in Vancouver now? Do I need a permit to move a wall?

A chat window doesn't judge the budget. And when we put questions like these to the assistants in an audit, the answer often comes with a few company names attached.

The assistants don't read Google's first page and report back. They draw on their own sources, and there's little overlap. Ahrefs found in August 2025 that only about 8% of the URLs ChatGPT cited ranked in Google's top 10 for the same prompt.

So a renovator can rank first for "kitchen renovation Vancouver" and still be absent when someone asks ChatGPT who to hire. The answer might come from a Houzz profile, HomeStars reviews or a design magazine's roundup of local projects. Thin or out-of-date details in any of those, and the name that comes up is someone else's.

Your SEO work still pulls its weight. It just isn't the full count any more. If you'd like to see where your company sits, book the audit; we'll have run the questions before we talk.

Nobody outside the AI companies knows the exact recipe, and you should be sceptical of anyone selling one. We can show you which sources the assistants tend to cite for renovation questions, and what agencies in this space say matters. We test those claims in your audit. The ones worth checking:

• Details that match everywhere: company name, address, phone and service area, identical on your site, Google, HomeStars, Houzz and every directory.
• Reviews on Google, HomeStars and Houzz that name the room, the neighbourhood and how the job went.
• CHBA BC or HAVAN membership and any Georgie Awards, if you have them. The Georgies are judged by an independent panel from outside BC and are open only to members of CHBA BC's eight local associations (CHBA BC). Third-party recognition like that is easy for an assistant to find and repeat.
• Project pages with the neighbourhood, the scope, the timeline and real photos.
• Plain answers about money and permits: what a kitchen or bathroom tends to cost with you, as ranges you're willing to publish, and how permits and timelines work in your city.

Be careful with licensing claims. BC Housing's licensing covers new homes and certain building envelope renovations above set thresholds. Most interior renovation work runs on municipal business licences and permits instead. "Licensed by BC Housing" only belongs on your site if it's true.

We call it the Found-to-Booked Method.

1. Audit. We put the questions homeowners in your area ask about renovating to the assistants, and record which companies get named, which sources get cited and where yours drops out.
2. Plan. A short list of fixes ranked by what each is worth to you, not by what's quickest to invoice. You say yes or no to each one.
3. Get found. Your site first: project pages, service pages for the work you want more of, cost and permit answers, consistent details, structured data. Then mentions elsewhere: Houzz, HomeStars and association listings where you qualify, and home and design press when a project deserves it.
4. Convert. Pages that make the consultation the obvious next step and, if you want one, an AI chat agent that screens the inquiry and books it.

Then we measure every month, on the same questions. The AI optimization page has the longer version.

We need about an hour of your time at the start, plus a folder of project photos if you have one. You'll deal directly with Nick Dudley-Jones (twenty years in search) and Terry Johnston (more than twenty in media and communications).

You've probably paid for at least one of these. The question is what each one leaves behind.

Yes. Done well, it puts off the people you'd rather not drive across town for and makes it easy for everyone else.

Our SYNTRA-powered chat agent says it's an AI in its first message. Then it asks what you'd ask on the phone: the scope (one bathroom or the whole main floor), a budget range, timing and the address. SYNTRA booking forms take custom fields per business, so you set the questions and which ones are required. Budget is asked as a range, politely, with no judgement in it. Then it books the consultation.

There are lines it doesn't cross. It never gives a firm price. It doesn't promise a timeline or a permit outcome. It never claims a licence, warranty or association membership you don't hold, because the script is filled from your real credentials. It gives no structural or building-code advice; those questions go to your team at the consultation. Energy-efficiency claims need care too: since the 2024 Competition Act amendments, environmental claims need adequate and proper testing behind them (Competition Bureau guidance, June 2025).

You approve the script before launch and every change after. Records are stored in Canada, in Montreal; the AI that writes the replies runs on US servers.

No single price. A five-person crew doing bathrooms in Victoria and a thirty-person design-build firm in Vancouver need different amounts of work. What moves the quote:

• how much of your site needs rebuilding rather than tidying
• how many project pages you have, or need
• how crowded your city is in the AI answers
• whether you want the chat agent

The audit is free, and the findings are yours whatever you decide. If you go ahead, you get a fixed quote and the work runs month to month, so you can stop if it isn't paying off. How our pricing works sets out the structure.

Nobody can promise a date, or that you'll be named at all. Anyone who does is guessing.

Your market decides a lot of it. A renovator in Nanaimo competes with fewer names than one on the West Side of Vancouver. For scale only: the Go Digital professional-services client above went from absent to named first in twelve weeks. One firm, another industry, and not a forecast for yours.

The part you can count on is the reporting. Each month we ask the same homeowner questions and show you:

• whether your company was named, and by which assistant
• which renovators were named instead
• which sources the assistants cited
• inquiries and booked consultations, if the chat agent is running