ChatGPT was ranking Comfort Pros on two Yelp reviews, not 166 Google ones.
A five-star HVAC company in Leander with 166 Google reviews was getting retrieved by ChatGPT but almost never named. Ten recorded buyer prompts showed why: ChatGPT's business lookup runs on Yelp's feed, where Comfort Pros had two reviews. The fix list came straight out of the captures.
Where the business stood.
Comfort Pros launched a new site in June 2026 with sixteen neighborhood pages. On Google it was climbing. On ChatGPT, nobody had looked.
The business
Carrier dealer in Leander, Texas license TACLB116912E, 166 Google reviews at 5.0. New site live since 7 June 2026 with sixteen neighborhood pages from Cedar Park to Lago Vista.
Google, before
Search Console, 7 June to 23 August 2026: 37 clicks on 18,997 impressions, average position 40.3. Only 790 of 16,617 impressions for named service terms landed on page one.
ChatGPT, unmeasured
No record existed of what ChatGPT answers when a Leander homeowner types “my ac stopped working who do i call.” That is what the September audit recorded.
What we changed, in order.
Dated where it shipped, labelled where it hasn't yet. Nothing here is a service category; it's the specific thing that was done and why the captures asked for it.
01
Recorded what ChatGPT actually does
Ten prompts a real buyer would type: discovery (“best hvac company in leander tx”), urgent (“my ac stopped working who do i call in leander”), comparison, credential (“carrier factory authorized dealer near leander tx”) and brand. Each ran in a fresh temporary ChatGPT session with web search on, so nothing from our own history leaked in. For every prompt we captured the business lookup, the web searches, the pages read, the pages cited, and only then where Comfort Pros landed.
- 10 prompts
- Temporary chat
- Retrieval captured, not screenshots
02
Found the listing source
Every ranked business in every lookup carried the same provider tag: Yelp's feed. The rating and review count ChatGPT weighs are Yelp's, not Google's. Comfort Pros' record: 5.0 from 2 reviews. TemperaturePro's: 570. Patriot's: 600. ChatGPT names the top four or five by rating times volume, so a two-review record gets retrieved and then never named, even when it ranks fourth.
- Yelp feed, not Google
- 2 reviews vs 570 and 600
- Retrieved, not named
03
Filed the listing fixes
Four items a person handles, none of them a Google Business Profile edit. Yelp review velocity, as a client conversation. A wrong zip code inside Yelp's feed record: 78628, a Georgetown zip, on a 78641 Leander address. The Carrier dealer locator marking a competitor Factory Authorized and Comfort Pros as “identifies itself as.” And a name collision with an unrelated Comfort Pros LLC in Leonard, TX that ChatGPT cited on the brand prompt.
- Yelp reviews
- Zip 78628 → 78641
- Carrier locator
- Entity name
04
Queued the content the captures asked for
The credential prompt was the only one where comfortprosatx.com was cited, and it cited the homepage. So: a Carrier Factory Authorized Dealer page for Leander with the license and address on it. An Emergency AC Repair Leander page, because both urgent prompts cited competitors' emergency pages. And two sourced articles, repair-or-replace a 12-year-old AC and heat pump vs. AC in Central Texas, answering the two prompts ChatGPT resolved entirely from web pages.
- Carrier dealer page
- Emergency AC page
- 2 sourced articles
Prompt by prompt, and who ChatGPT returned instead.
Every prompt below was typed into a fresh ChatGPT session with web search on. The position is the client's rank in ChatGPT's business lookup; named means the written answer used the client's name; cited means the answer linked the client's site.
What moved, and what's still moving.
The September run is the baseline. The fixes above are in flight, and the same ten prompts re-run every month, so this page carries the October numbers when they land.
Where something didn't work, it's in here too. It's usually the more useful half.
What didn't work
Cedar Park and Liberty Hill lookups don't return Comfort Pros at all, and neighborhood pages don't change that: the lookup keys off the city in the prompt, not the service area on the site. We're not chasing it with more pages.
Why the series starts in September
A pilot run on 4 September named Comfort Pros in more answers than the clean re-run a day later. The pilot didn't record its model or exact prompt strings, so it isn't a data point. September is the first fully recorded month.
Three things this one proves.
Your Google reviews aren't what ChatGPT reads.
The business lookup runs on Yelp's feed. 166 five-star Google reviews counted for nothing there; two Yelp reviews were the whole record.
Retrieved isn't named.
Comfort Pros was in six of ten lookups and named in two. ChatGPT shortlists by rating times review volume, so being in the list isn't being in the answer.
The credential page is the one that gets cited.
The only prompt that cited comfortprosatx.com was the Carrier dealer one. A page that states the authorization, license and address gives ChatGPT something better than a homepage to cite.
Same method, different trade.
Find out what ChatGPT says when someone asks for a business like yours.
We run the same ten-prompt audit on your business, record who ChatGPT names instead of you, and hand you the list. Free, and yours whether you hire us or not.