Google comes first because two listings read from it
The map pack and the Local Services listing both pull from the Google Business Profile, which is why the profile is the largest single item in the local SEO work and stays that way all year. Primary category HVAC contractor, with secondaries for the work you actually do and nothing you do not. Service areas drawn to where the trucks go, with the street address hidden if nobody walks in. Every service listed as its own item, with a price where you have one. Hours, holiday hours included, set in December and again in July.
Then the parts most profiles skip. A photo from a real job every week, uploaded from the technician's phone. The business description, with the six questions the CSR hears most answered inside it, now that the Q&A section that used to hold them is gone. Spam listings in your metro, the keyword-stuffed names and the addresses that turn out to be a mailbox, reported through Google's complaint form and reported again when they come back.
Three profile features are gone
Chat, the message button on the profile, was retired in July 2024. The phone number and the booking link carry that traffic now, so the booking link has to land on a page that shows real appointment slots. Websites built inside the profile shut down in March 2024, and any old flyer or directory entry pointing at that address is pointing at nothing. Questions and answers went in November 2025; Google now writes its own answers about a business from the profile, the reviews and the website, so the six questions go on the website's FAQ page instead.
All three show up in the January pass over the site, along with the holiday hours and the 24/7 claim.
Apple Business Connect is free and takes an afternoon
Apple has run Business Connect since January 2023. Claim the place card, fix the hours, set the category, upload photos of the trucks and a few installs. Siri and Apple Maps answer from that card, which covers every iPhone owner who asks the phone for a furnace repair without opening a browser.
Apple Maps also shows Yelp ratings and photos on US business cards. The card a homeowner sees on an iPhone carries a Yelp star rating, which is why Yelp is the next hour of work even for a contractor who stopped thinking about it in 2019.
Yelp feeds Apple, so claim it
Claim the page, fill in the hours and the service list, add photos, reply to every review including the ones that sting. Do not ask customers for Yelp reviews. Yelp's policy prohibits it, and the filter hides reviews it believes were solicited, so a review drive aimed at Yelp can lower the star rating Apple Maps then shows on the card.
Yelp ads are a separate decision from the free listing. Test them with their own tracking number and read the booked jobs, the same way you would read any other channel.
Bing Places feeds ChatGPT search and Copilot
Bing Places is free and imports the Google Business Profile in a few minutes. Do it. ChatGPT search has been open to every logged-in user since December 2024 and to anyone without a login since February 2025. It runs on Bing's index alongside OpenAI's own crawler, and Copilot is Bing with a chat window on it. When one of them answers a homeowner asking who repairs furnaces in Columbus, the business data comes out of that index. That listing is the first item on the AI search checklist for a contractor.
The same name, phone and hours on all four
The name as it appears on the truck and the license, with no city and no service words bolted onto it. The same phone number, or a tracking number you intend to keep permanently. The same hours. The address hidden everywhere if it is hidden on Google. A contractor who changes a phone number and updates three of the four will find that the fourth is the one Siri reads out.
The whole pass takes an afternoon, then about an hour a month: the weekly Google photo, the review replies, the hours twice a year. What you will not get from three of the four is a report. Google shows profile views and calls; Apple, Bing and Yelp show far less, and no engine tells you how often an AI answer used your listing. The measurement is the booking call, where the CSR asks how the homeowner found you and writes the answer next to the tracked source.