An honest take from someone who's spent 32 years in the electrical industry and 18+ years building websites for tradespeople.
The Short Version
Agencies are emailing trade businesses promising to get them "recommended by ChatGPT" with money-back guarantees. I've been in SEO long enough to recognise this as the same old con in a new wrapper. The bigger story is that search itself is changing fast, and most trade business owners haven't been told the full truth about it. Here's what's actually happening, what works, and what to focus on.
The Email That Landed In My Inbox This Morning
I got an email from an agency offering to get my business "recommended by ChatGPT and AI assistants when customers ask which businesses they should use." Affordable monthly payment. Guarantee on delivery. Money back if they don't deliver. UK phone support. The full package.
It triggered every alarm bell I've developed since I started doing SEO back in 2008.
Because I've seen this film before. Several times.
A Quick History Lesson For Tradespeople
If you've been in business more than a decade, you'll remember when SEO agencies used to promise "page 1 of Google guaranteed." Their trick was submitting your website to hundreds of directories, those random business listing sites that nobody ever actually used. They'd send you a report showing "500 new backlinks!" and you'd nod along thinking that meant something.
Then in 2012, Google did an update called Penguin. Overnight, all those directory links were either ignored or actively penalising the sites that had them. Trade businesses who'd paid thousands for "guaranteed rankings" suddenly disappeared from Google completely. Took some of them years to recover.
I watched it happen to plenty of mates in the trades back then. Now it's happening again, just with a different marketing angle.
The New Con: "We'll Get You Recommended By AI"
Here's the pitch, stripped of the marketing stuff:
"Pay us monthly and we'll get your business mentioned across the internet so that ChatGPT recommends you to customers."
Sounds clever. Sounds modern. Sounds like exactly the kind of thing you should be doing in 2026 right?
But think about it for a minute.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, not even the people who built ChatGPT, can guarantee what it'll say to any given customer. Ask it the same question twice and you'll get different answers. It's not like Google where you can pay for the top spot. There's no "AI directory" they're submitting you to.
So what are these agencies actually doing for your money? They're spamming the internet on your behalf, posting fake recommendations on Reddit, commissioning dodgy "Top 10 Electricians in [Your Town]" articles on content farms, dropping your business name in random places, hoping the AI picks it up.
It's the directory game of 2010 all over again, just with different tactics.
Why This Matters For You
The AI companies aren't stupid. They know people are trying to game them. And they're already catching it.
OpenAI (who run ChatGPT) publish a report every few months listing accounts they've banned for coordinated manipulation. Reddit has automatic detection for fake posting campaigns. Google's AI Overviews actively favour businesses with real, authentic signals over those with manufactured ones.
The pattern is exactly the same as the directory link era. Works for a bit. Then doesn't. Sometimes takes your whole online presence down with it when the crackdown comes. And it WILL come!
Google's own John Mueller has publicly warned about AI SEO scams, with a simple rule: the higher the urgency and the more new acronyms they throw at you, the more likely it's a scam. If someone's pitching you "GEO" or "AEO" or "LLMO" or "AIO" with a money-back guarantee, that's the signal to delete the email.
The Three Search Battles You're Actually Fighting
Here's the bit nobody explains properly to trade businesses. When your customers search for you, there are three completely different types of search going on, and each one needs a different strategy.
Battle 1: "Electrician near me" type searches
These trigger the map pack, those three local business listings with the map. Around 44% of clicks go to these listings, 29% go to the organic results below, and the rest go to ads or the wider map. About 78% of these searches don't result in any click at all, the customer just sees your name, phone number, and reviews on the map pack and either calls you directly or remembers you for later.
This is where your Google Business Profile wins or loses. Your website matters less than you'd think for this type of search.
Battle 2: "How much does a consumer unit upgrade cost" type searches
These are research queries. They usually don't trigger a map pack at all. These are not location based search queries. Instead, Google now shows an AI Overview at the top. An AI-generated answer pulled from various websites, followed by the normal blue links below.
This is where your blog content matters. But there's a twist I'll come back to.
Battle 3: "Best electrician in Maidstone" type searches
These trigger both the map pack AND organic results. Your GBP, your reviews, AND your website content all matter for these. They're often the queries where customers are actively choosing who to call.
Most trade businesses don't realise these are three different things. Most marketing agencies only handle one or two of them. Winning all three is what makes the difference between getting enquiries and not.
The Bigger Story Nobody's Telling Tradespeople
Here's where it gets interesting, and where I have to be honest with you about something that's happening in the wider web right now.
Google's AI Overviews are eating organic clicks. Not slightly. Significantly.
Research from Ahrefs (February 2026) found AI Overviews correlate with a 58% reduction in click-through rates for top-ranking pages. Pew Research found click-through rates dropped from 15% to 8% when AI summaries appear. Major publishers — Penske Media (Rolling Stone, Hollywood Reporter), the European Publishers Council (Guardian, News UK, Condé Nast) — are filing antitrust lawsuits because they're losing 40-75% of their traffic.
Google is making some token changes in response (better source links in AI Overviews, subscription labels, more visible citations) but isn't fundamentally backing down. AI Overviews made them $50 billion in ad revenue last quarter. The system works for Google.
Why does this matter for your trade business?
For local trades, the impact is much smaller than for news publishers, and it's important you understand why.
When someone searches "electrician near me," AI Overviews barely show up. The map pack still dominates. So your Google Business Profile is largely unaffected by this change.
But when someone searches "what causes flickering lights" or "how much does a rewire cost," AI Overviews now answer that question directly. The blog post you wrote on the topic gets fewer clicks than it did 18 months ago.
That doesn't mean blogs are dead. Far from it. Good blog content is more important than ever, it just needs to be the right kind of good.
What Makes Blog Content Work In 2026
The blogs that perform best now share a few traits:
- They're written by real humans, not AI. The web is being flooded with AI-generated content. Google's algorithms increasingly favour authentic human-written content, and AI Overviews tend to pull from sources that demonstrate genuine expertise.
- They have a local angle. Town names, specific areas, types of property common to a region, real local context.
- They contain real experience. Case studies, actual job examples, specific challenges and how they were solved.
- They give honest opinions. Not just facts, but perspective. AI struggles to replicate genuine viewpoints from people who've done the work for years.
- They give specific information. Real numbers, real pricing ranges, real timeframes, not vague generalities.
That's the standard worth investing in. Two well-written, locally-anchored, human-written blogs a month from someone who understands your trade is worth more than a hundred AI-generated articles a month from a content farm.
The trade businesses winning right now are the ones whose blog content reads like it comes from a real person who's actually been on the tools, because that's exactly what AI engines now prefer to cite.
What Actually Gets You Found Locally
Stop me if you've heard this before, but here's the unsexy truth.
Google's AI Overviews for the queries that do affect your business pull heavily from your Google Business Profile and your website content combined. It's treated almost as a source of truth.
What feeds Google's AI for local trades:
- A complete, active Google Business Profile, all services listed, accurate hours, regular photos, consistent updates
- Detailed reviews that mention specific jobs (not just "5 stars great service")
- Consistent business information across the web
- Real authority signals, Citations, Trustpilot, certification body listings
- A proper website with genuine, locally-specific content, not just generic blog filler
That's it. That's the formula. No magic. No guarantees needed. No "AI manipulation services" required.
The Review Trick That's Worth More Than Most Marketing Services
Here's something you can do today that costs nothing and is more impactful than 90% of paid services.
Most tradespeople ask happy customers to leave a Google review. The customer leaves something like "Paul was great, 5 stars." That's polite, but worth almost nothing to Google's AI.
What you actually want is for them to describe the job they had done. So instead of asking "please leave a review," ask:
"When you leave the review, would you mind mentioning what work I did for you?"
Now you get reviews like:
"Paul rewired our 1930s house in Bradford last month. Replaced the old fuse box, sorted out the dodgy kitchen sockets, brilliant job and fair price."
Those words, "rewired," "1930s house," "Bradford," "fuse box," "kitchen sockets", that's exactly what Google's AI uses to understand what you do and where you do it. Multiply by 50 reviews like that and Google's AI has a comprehensive picture of your expertise. Without ever paying an agency a penny.
What I'd Tell Any Trade Business Owner Today
Forget the AI hype emails. Stop reading the LinkedIn and Facebook posts about GEO and AEO and whatever new acronym shows up next month. Focus on the boring stuff that actually works:
- Keep your Google Business Profile active. Post regularly. Add photos. Respond to reviews. Keep your services list accurate.
- Build a proper review system. Ask every happy customer. Ask them to describe the job. Don't accept "5 stars great service" if you can help it.
- Get on the proper review platforms. Trustpilot, Checkatrade, Yell. Complete profiles, not half-finished ones.
- Make sure your website has genuine, human-written content — case studies, real job examples, local pages, your actual approach to the work. The web is increasingly flooded with AI-generated content, and real human writing now stands out more than ever.
- Be active in your local community. Local Facebook groups, local Chamber of Commerce, sponsor a local event. Real presence in real places.
- Don't pay anyone to manipulate AI. It'll work for a bit, then it won't, and you might be worse off than when you started.
My Honest Closing Take
I've watched too many trade businesses get burned by SEO agencies selling shortcuts over the last 18 years. The pitch evolves, directory submissions, paid links, exact-match domains, content farms, and now AI recommendations, but the underlying con is the same: "Pay us, and we'll game the system on your behalf."
The system always catches up. The agencies always disappear. The clients are always left holding the bag.
The trades industry is full of hard-working people who are great at their craft but often terrible at spotting marketing BS, not because they're stupid, but because they're busy fixing things! That's exactly who these agencies target.
If a service genuinely worked the way it's pitched, the agencies selling it wouldn't be cold-emailing tradespeople for £X a month. They'd be doing it for themselves and printing money.
Here's the thing I keep coming back to after nearly two decades in this game. The web moves fast, but the underlying principles I've been operating by for 18 years don't. Honesty. Real human work. No shortcuts. Genuine value. Every shift in the algorithm, every new acronym, every "revolutionary" AI hype cycle, they all end up rewarding the same kind of behaviour. The agencies built on shortcuts have to reinvent themselves every 18 months. The businesses built on doing things properly just keep doing what they've always done.
That's the quiet advantage. And it's the one I'd back every time.
Just my thoughts.
About My Local Trades
Built for trade business owners who value honesty, hate being scammed, and are ready to pay for proper monthly website, SEO, and hosting from someone they trust.
No magic guarantees. No AI manipulation. No directory spam. Just the boring stuff that compounds over time.
If you've been burned by an agency and want a straight conversation, get in touch here.
