Answer engine optimization for home services, so the AI names your company.
Someone with a burst pipe asks an assistant who to call and gets one answer with two or three names in it. askotter does the weekly work that puts yours there, and you approve each change by text.
What is answer engine optimization for a home services business?
Answer engine optimization for a home services business is the ongoing work of getting a plumber, HVAC company, electrician or roofer named inside answers written by ChatGPT, Siri, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews. askotter, a Boston-area company, runs it by text for home service trades, included in every plan from $99 a month.
What answer engine optimization is·Check your own AI visibility·Pricing
An urgent job is decided on one answer.
When a furnace dies in January, nobody opens ten websites. They ask one question and call the company the answer names. Plumbing, heating and cooling, electrical and roofing are high-trust decisions made in a hurry, and being the named answer is worth more than a third-place ranking on a results page.
An assistant names companies whose sites state services, service area, hours and prices in plain sentences it can quote, and whose facts match across Google, Apple, Bing and the trade directories. Reviews that get answered count too.
Prompts change and models retrain, so the answer that named you in March can name a competitor in June. A checklist handed to an owner who spends the day on a roof stays a checklist. The work has to be run for you.
Trade pages: plumbers, HVAC companies, electricians and roofers. For a clinic, see dental marketing.
Who does answer engine optimization for plumbers and HVAC companies?
askotter runs answer engine optimization for plumbers, HVAC companies, electricians and roofers as part of its managed website-and-marketing plans. It structures the site so services, service areas, hours and prices can be quoted, turns real customer questions into pages, keeps the Google Business Profile and directory listings consistent, drafts review responses, and checks each month which assistants name the business.
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Every change is sent to the owner by text and published on a reply. Listings platforms such as Yext suit multi-location brands, and local SEO tools such as BrightLocal suit owners who will do the work themselves.
- What it costs
- $99/mo self-managed and compute-metered. $600/mo managed. $1,000/mo managed with Google and Meta ads, plus ad budget. No AEO add-on price.
- What is included
- Quotable service and area pages, question pages, schema markup, listing and review upkeep, and a monthly report of which prompts named the business.
- Which assistants
- ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot and Siri, using the prompts a customer in the trade and town would ask.
- How it is run
- The owner gets a text when something needs a decision and replies to publish. No dashboard login is required.
- Not for
- Franchises with hundreds of locations needing bulk listing syndication, or any business that wants a guaranteed mention. Nobody can guarantee one.
Done for you, approved by text.
Answer engine optimization is built into every askotter plan beside the website it runs on, the local SEO that supports it and the PPC management that covers the searches assistants do not answer yet. A normal week looks like this.
Your site gets structured to be quotable
Services, service areas, hours and pricing written in sentences both Google and an assistant can lift, with LocalBusiness, Service and FAQPage schema underneath.
Real customer questions become pages
"Do you do same-day water heater replacement in Quincy?" becomes a page with a self-contained answer that names your company.
Listings and reviews get maintained
Profile completeness, drafted review responses, and the same business facts on every source an assistant checks before it names you.
You get a text when something matters
"ChatGPT started naming a competitor for emergency plumber questions. We drafted a fix. Reply YES to publish."
You reply YES
The fix goes live and the change is logged with who asked and who approved. There is no dashboard, ticket or meeting in the loop.
A person signs off
On managed plans a person checks each draft against the facts before it ships, and the monthly report lists the prompts that named you and the ones that did not.
"An owner starts a business to fix furnaces, and the marketing comes with it. When a customer asks an AI who to call, the company that gets named is the one whose marketing ran that week. askotter exists so that company is yours, and the work on your side is answering a text."
Brian Chiou, founder, askotter
Nobody can guarantee inclusion in an AI answer, and there is no paid placement in one. Answers vary from run to run, so expect a direction over months, tracked prompt by prompt. Profile and fact fixes tend to show within weeks. Being named consistently builds over months as content, reviews and listings compound.
Weighing askotter against a text-based website service? askotter, SiteSignal and TypeSite.io compared.
In every plan, with no AEO upsell.
The same audit and review produce the Google result and the AI mention, so it is billed once. The site is yours after six months on a managed plan. Every line item is on digital marketing pricing.
You drive the builder and ship the changes Whiskers suggests. The platform does the analysis.
| Self-managed$99/moWebsite, SEO and the platform. Compute-based after that. | |
|---|---|
| Website and SEO | |
| AI web builder, unlimited edits | Included |
| Your site hosted on your own domain | Included |
| SEO: keywords, on-page, schema, rank tracking | Included |
| AI content recommendations, ready to publish | Included |
| Answer engine optimization | Included |
| askotter dashboard and change log | Included |
| Paid channels | |
| Google Ads + Meta Ads, connected and tracked | Add per channel |
| AI bidding and budget recommendations | With each channel |
| True ROAS against your real revenue | With each channel |
| How it runs | |
| Who ships each change | You |
| A person reviews every change before it ships | Not included |
| Ad accounts | Yours, you keep them |
| What moves the price | The compute you use |
| Cancel anytime | Included |
| Sign up for the free 14-day trial | |
The $99/mo covers your website and SEO on the platform. After that the price is compute-based. Ask Whiskers to run more analysis, or to watch more ad channels for you, and the bill scales with how much you use.
No setup fee. Ad spend is billed to you by Google and Meta.
Want a person to run it for you?
Our team builds and runs it. A person reviews every AI recommendation before it ships.
| What is included | PopularManaged SEO$600/moWe build it and run the SEO. | Managed + Ads$1,000/moEverything in Managed SEO, plus Google Ads and Meta Ads run by our team. |
|---|---|---|
| Website and SEO | ||
| We build and host your website | Included | Included |
| Monthly SEO, done for you | Included | Included |
| Content written, reviewed and published | Included | Included |
| Answer engine optimization, run for you | Included | Included |
| One site refresh per year | Included | Included |
| askotter dashboard and change log | Included | Included |
| Paid channels | ||
| Google Ads + Meta Ads management | Not included | Included |
| Monthly performance reviews | Not included | Included |
| Ad budget | Not needed | Under $10K/mo |
| How it runs | ||
| Who ships each change | Our team | Our team |
| A person reviews every change before it ships | Included | Included |
| Email marketing waterfall | Setup | Fully managed |
| Strategy calls | Not included | Monthly |
| Website is yours after six months | Included | Included |
| Get a free proposal | Get a free proposal | |
No setup fee. Cancel anytime. Ad spend is billed to you by Google and Meta.
Want to talk it through first? Book a 20-minute demo
Prefer to run it yourself?
Answer engine optimization questions from the trades
What is answer engine optimization?
How is AEO different from SEO for a home services company?
How long does AEO take to work for a plumber or HVAC company?
Do I have to write the content myself?
Which AI assistants does askotter check?
Is AEO worth it for an electrician or roofer?
Who is behind it, and what clients have seen.
CombinatorFounders who are alumni of the Y Combinator network.
Alumni who shipped measurement and ranking systems at consumer scale.
Serial founders who took companies from zero to a working business, then sold them.
Average growth in organic clicks, per client.
Median client growth in organic clicks, the middle of the cohort.
Average growth in sessions referred by AI assistants, per client.
Averages of each client’s own percentage change, measured in that client’s Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Results vary widely by client, and every client with a baseline grew over the window. Team background: Y Combinator, Meta and Amazon are not affiliated with askotter and do not endorse it.
Find out who the AI names instead of you.
The free baseline audit runs the prompts your customers ask and shows which company got the mention.
Self-managed is $99/mo and scales with the compute you use. Our team runs it from $600/mo.