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Team Empathy  ·  Search & AI Search Strategy

You own the map.
Now own the answer.

A Search and AI Search strategy for DC Installation Services

Getting DCIS recommended on ChatGPT

Canterbury, New Zealand   |   Prepared for Jason, Wayne and Tania  ·  July 2026
Updated 12 October 2026  ·  Maps figures from the 1 October 2026 grid scan

1. Executive summary

The short version. Three years in, we have made DCIS one of the most visible heat pump installers on Google Maps in Canterbury, and that was the hard part. The gap is everywhere else. Your website appeared in front of Canterbury heat pump buyers 242,000 times last year and earned 442 clicks from it, because your blended Search Console average across those searches is 23, not the top three. Non-branded search is 98% of your impressions and 42% of your clicks. Meanwhile buyers have started putting questions like "who is the best heat pump installer in Christchurch" to an AI assistant, and on the ten searches we do check, the 1 October AI scan found you on one of them. The demand is real, the difficulty is low, and almost none of it is claimed.
Three things to know
The market, and the share of it you hold
108,000
non-branded heat pump, ventilation and air-conditioning searches a year across Canterbury
21,600
of those are organic clicks you could win, once ads, the Maps pack and AI answers take their share
442
is what you win today, which is 2.0% of the non-branded market
$13,800
a year for every extra 1% you take, because 1% of the pool is 216 clicks

So the whole opportunity is one sentence: you hold 2.0% of the non-branded organic clicks in your category, and every extra 1% is worth about $13,800 a year. Your branded traffic and your Maps enquiries are not part of this and do not change.

What that is worth

Built on your own numbers, all of them now confirmed: an organic enquiry rate of 5% measured in your analytics, an average install job of $3,200 from your published pricing, which you have confirmed is close to your real average, and your own close rate of 40 to 50%, modelled at the conservative end. Section 5 shows the chain in full. Every column is non-branded, and your Maps enquiries sit on top of all of it, unchanged. Your figures Modelled

CaseShare of the non-branded marketClicks / yrWork won / yrNew work / yr
Today2.0%442$28,000–
Conservative6%1,296$83,000+$55,000
Mid12%2,592$166,000+$138,000
High18%3,888$249,000+$221,000

The mid case is a 12% share of the winnable pool, roughly one click in eight. Every rival in Appendix C already ranks for more category keywords than you do, 42 to 140 against your 13. Ahrefs

Where you focus, at a glance
Christchurch installation
~1,400 searches / mo
The prize
The biggest, most commercial demand in your market, and you do not appear for any of it. This is the win.
Service & maintenance
~800 searches / mo
Closest
Search Console already puts your blended average at 1 for "heat pump service Rolleston", on a small number of impressions. The same play, applied to Christchurch, is the fastest win.
Ventilation & Lossnay
~400 searches / mo
Quiet strength
Your blended Search Console average for "best home ventilation system NZ" is page one nationally. Under-used, and AI answers are live here.

Search volumes from Ahrefs, New Zealand, July 2026, across a deduped set of 75 real Canterbury terms. Ahrefs

2. What we have already driven for you

Before the opportunity, the proof. When someone in Canterbury pulls out their phone and searches for a heat pump service, you now show up in the top three across a large share of the region. That is the Maps work compounding, and the last two scans have eased off the peak, which we are watching rather than reacting to.

8% → 29%
of the Christchurch map where you rank top 3 for "heat pump servicing"
2% → 27%
same for "home ventilation system", a roughly fifteen-fold lift
19% → 28%
top-3 coverage averaged across all ten tracked services, on the 1 October scan
197
Google reviews on your profile, the local reputation the Maps work rides on Your GBP
Map search termTop-3 coverage at kickoffTop-3 coverage now
heat pump servicing8%29%
home ventilation systemunder 2%27%
heat pump service24%43%
heat pump repair25%40%
air conditioning service28%40%
heat pump installation42%44%

Coverage measured across a fixed 169-point grid of your Canterbury service area, from each term's tracked baseline to the latest scan (1 October 2026). Every one of the ten came back flat or lower than it was on 1 September. Five of the ten are still well clear of where they started. Two are the exceptions: heat pump installation is 2.4 points ahead of its baseline, 44.4% against 42.0%, and air conditioner installation sits just below its own, 58.0% against 59.2%. The three Christchurch-qualified terms have not moved. Google Business Profile under-counts real calls, so these are the floor. Your GBP

3. How AI-ready you are today: the AEO scorecard

We score every brand out of 100 against our AEO Maturity Model: four pillars (Technical, Content, Authority, Measurement), each out of 25. Certified is 80 out of 100, Professional on all four, the standard we build clients to. You are at 45 today, carried by a genuine local reputation and held back by content an AI cannot read.

DCIS today45/100
Emerging · real reputation, no answer layer
Technical13/25
Content10/25
Authority12/25
Measurement10/25
+35
points to Certified. Your Authority pillar is real and already built. The climb is Content and Measurement, which is the fastest part to move.
Where you are  ·  where you need to be
DCIS
45 / 100
Today · Emerging, 45 / 100 Where you need to be · Certified, 80 / 100

The detailed findings and how the scoring works are in the appendix.

4. The market you are missing: search and AI

A heat pump is a considered, quoted purchase in the low thousands. People research it, compare brands, ask what size they need and what it costs to run, then pick two or three installers to quote. They now ask those questions in two places, a search box and an AI chat, and you are absent from both.

~6×
more organic traffic each of your three strongest rivals captures than your site's own Search Console clicks (1,059 a year, about 88 a month). Read off Ahrefs estimates on both sides it is 15 to 18 times, because Ahrefs puts you at 32 a month Ahrefs GSC
0.18%
of your 242,000 non-branded impressions turn into a click, at a blended Search Console average position of 23 GSC
4
visits from AI assistants last quarter, effectively zero, in the fastest-growing channel GA4
Validated demand, and your blended Search Console average on each term today
TermSearches / mo (NZ)DifficultyYour blended Search Console average
heat pumps christchurch4001710
heat pump service christchurch2502Page 4
heat pump installation christchurch2001914
ducted heat pump christchurch2001613
heat pump specials christchurch200low9
heat pump servicing christchurch200lowNo impressions
heat pump specialists christchurch150lowNo impressions
best heat pump installers christchurch90lowNo impressions
best home ventilation system nz~200low6
heat pump service rolleston10low1

Search volume from Ahrefs (NZ). The last column is your 12-month Google average position for that term in Search Console, blended across every impression it earned, so it sizes the opportunity and is the wrong tool for checking where you sit on any single search. The pattern is consistent: where we have built you a page and local signals, the blend lands at 1 or close to it (Rolleston service, national ventilation). Where we have not, the blend sits at page two or lower, or the term earns no impressions at all, and that is the whole Christchurch commercial category. Difficulty across these ten runs 2 to 19, and 2 to 31 across the full 75-term set, low on either reading. These are unclaimed positions, not hard ones. Ahrefs GSC

The AI questions, and who owns the answer today
Prompt territoryWhat it capturesEst. prompts / moAI live?
Best installer, ready to buybest / recommended / reliable heat pump installer Christchurch and Canterbury~1,000–1,400Yes, answers are live
Service, repair, maintenanceheat pump service near me, why is my heat pump leaking, servicing cost~700–1,000PAA + forums
Which heat pump, MitsubishiMitsubishi vs others, best brand for Canterbury winters, single-brand specialist~500–800PAA + forums
Ventilation and Lossnaybest home ventilation system NZ, Lossnay for a Canterbury home~300–500Yes
Rolleston and Selwynheat pump installer Rolleston, Selwyn, North Canterbury~150–300White space

Prompt demand is anchored to the keyword volumes with a conservative fan-out uplift, so treat it as a floor. Directional, plus or minus 50%. AI-sourced enquiries are deliberately not counted in the dollar model in section 5, so nothing is double-counted and the numbers there stay conservative. Modelled from Ahrefs anchors

The first-mover window. Nobody in Canterbury has built the "Mitsubishi Electric specialist" answer, and nobody has claimed Rolleston or Selwyn in content, despite you being the only dedicated Mitsubishi-only installer in the region and based in Rolleston. Heat Force and Beattie Air lead the category on brand heritage and a bigger page footprint, both of which are buildable. Your 197 Google reviews sit outside the markup an engine can read and quote, so they are there for people and invisible to machines. That is a to-do list, not a mystery, and whoever answers these questions first becomes the default. Your GBP

5. The opportunity, in dollars

The table in the executive summary is built from four numbers. Here is the chain in full, and exactly how solid each link is.

The searchesnon-branded, Canterbury
108,000 / yr
The winnable clicksafter ads, Maps and AI
21,600
What you win today2.0% of the pool
442

Roughly one search in five survives ads, the Maps pack and AI answers as a winnable organic click. You currently take one in fifty of those. Modelled

What the value is built on

Four inputs. Two are measured from your own data, one comes from your published pricing, and one you have confirmed yourselves. Nothing here is our guess.

InputFigureWhere it comes from
Enquiry rate
click to enquiry
5%Measured. Your GA4 shows 5.5% of organic sessions submit an enquiry form over the last 12 months, and 6.1% over the last 3. Our own reporting, built separately two years earlier, shows a 5.6% median across 24 months. We model at 5% because your branded visitors convert better than someone searching the category cold. GA4
Average job value$3,200Your published pricing, confirmed by you. An entry Mitsubishi high wall installed is $2,660 at your regular price, a multi-room system $7,091, a ducted system $8,683, and you have confirmed our average is close to your real one. We model at the low end of your install range. dcis.co.nz + you
Close rate
enquiry to booked job
40%Confirmed by you. You told us your close rate runs at 40 to 50%. We model at 40%, the conservative end, so every figure in this document is a floor. At the top of your range, the mid case is about $172,000 of new work a year rather than $138,000. Your figure
Value per click$645% enquiry rate, times 40% close rate, times a $3,200 job. That is the figure every case in the table multiplies. Modelled

That is the whole model: win more of the 21,600 clicks. Nothing here counts your Maps enquiries, your branded traffic, the roughly 18 calls a month that come straight off your Google profile, or anything AI sends you. All of that sits on top.

The compounding curve (the mid case, arriving over twelve months)
$0k$40k$80k$120k$160kYou own the systemTodayMonth 3Month 6Month 9Month 12$138K/yr new work, the mid case

New install work per year from non-branded organic search, the mid case, phasing in as the engine relights: roughly 10% live by month 3, 35% by month 6, 70% by month 9, all of it by month 12. Hover any point for the maths. Modelled, directional

How the clicks get won

Two levers, both measurable. Click-through on the impressions you already earn, as you move from an average position of 23 into the top three: 242,000 non-branded impressions converting at even 1% instead of today's 0.18% is 2,400 clicks a year on visibility you already have. And more impressions, as the Christchurch commercial pages you do not yet have start to rank. The conservative case assumes only the first lever lands. The high case assumes both do.

6. Where this goes next

Three things sit in front of us as at October 2026. Hold the map. Coverage eased on the last two scans, so the next scan gets held against this one before anything changes on the profile, rather than reacting to a single reading. Claim the three Christchurch-qualified searches. Fifteen months of scanning and no movement on "heat pumps christchurch", "heat pump service christchurch" and "heat pump repair christchurch", which is the honest gap and the biggest commercial demand in your market. That is a pages-and-answers job rather than a Maps one. And start on AI. The 1 October scan checked ChatGPT, Gemini and Meta AI across the same ten searches and found you on one of them, ChatGPT at position 8 and Meta AI at 19 for "heat pump service christchurch". That is one reading at one point in time, so treat it as a first marker, and it is the thing worth building on while the category is still open.

Ben is back from leave and will be in touch this month to walk through that AI picture and to answer the questions you raised about Notable.

Appendix A: your position today

You appear everywhere. You win almost nowhere.
Where you appearnon-branded impressions
98%
What you winnon-branded clicks
42%

Over the last 12 months your site earned 1,059 organic clicks from 246,437 impressions. Non-branded category search accounts for 98.3% of those impressions but only 41.7% of the clicks, across 5,925 different queries. Your own name earns 58.3% of your clicks off 1.7% of your impressions. You are being shown to the market constantly and almost never chosen, because your average position across those queries is 23. GSC

Where your enquiries come from
ChannelSessions / yrEnquiry rateRead
Organic Search3,0235.5%Your best-converting acquisition channel, and the one we have not been working
Paid Search3,546~4%Working, and you are paying for every click
Cross-network (ads)6,343~1.5%Your largest traffic source and your weakest converter
Direct3,850~3%Your reputation and Maps work showing up
AI Assistant12–Effectively zero, and the fastest-growing channel in the market

Google Analytics, last 12 months. Enquiry rate is the share of sessions submitting your enquiry form. Organic converts better than everything you pay for, which is the case for feeding it. GA4

One thing to fix first, so your numbers are honest. Your Google Analytics is over-counting enquiries by roughly three times. A single completed form fires three separate conversion events, and the "request a free quote" button counts as a conversion the moment someone clicks it, before they have filled anything in. Your dashboard reads a 28% organic conversion rate; the real figure is 5.5%. Every number in this document uses the corrected figure. Fixing the tracking is part of the foundations phase, and it is why Measurement is your weakest pillar.

Appendix B: the scorecard in detail

Here is what sits behind the 45, and what each piece takes to fix. It is content, structure and measurement, not a rebuild.

FindingStatusFix
AI crawlers welcomed (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Perplexity)Strong, all allowedDone
197 Google reviews on your profile Your GBPGenuine authorityStructure it so AI can quote it
Google Business Profile and map-pack presenceStrong, top 3 across much of CanterburyKeep running
llms.txt, the briefing file AI readsMissingHours
LocalBusiness and Review schemaNot machine-readableDays
Mitsubishi-only specialism, stated in copyPresent but unstructuredQuick, high impact
Christchurch commercial pages (installation, service, ducted)Thin or absentThe main build
Rolleston, Selwyn and Waimakariri pagesThinThe unclaimed lane
Content engine (guides, FAQs, cost and sizing answers)Effectively dormant since 2025The main build
Conversion tracking accuracyOver-counting roughly 3xFoundations phase
AI-visibility measurementNoneBaseline + monthly panel
Measured the whole way. From day one we set up your AI visibility dashboard, confirm your priority keywords and prompts with you, track the keywords through Search Console and Analytics and the AI prompts through our software, and report on all of it monthly. Every month is measured against a baseline taken before we touch anything, on your numbers, not ours.

Appendix C: who you are up against

Your three strongest organic competitors in Christchurch, measured the same way on the same tool.

InstallerDomain authorityOrganic visits / moRanking keywordsRead
Enviro Master11551140Widest keyword footprint
Heat Force3.956942Most organic traffic
Beattie Air1749757Strongest domain authority
DC Installation Services3.43213Invisible on the money terms

Ahrefs Site Explorer, New Zealand, subdomains mode, July 2026. Ahrefs estimates traffic from ranking positions, so all four are measured consistently and your real click count from Search Console is higher, about 88 a month against the 32 Ahrefs gives you. That is why section 4 states the traffic gap both ways, roughly 6 times on your Search Console clicks and 15 to 18 times when both sides are read off Ahrefs. Heat Force sits at a lower domain authority than you might expect, which is the encouraging part: they are winning on pages and answers, not on some insurmountable authority lead. That is buildable. Ahrefs

Appendix D: where the numbers come from

Map-pack coverage, calls, direction requests and reviews are from your Google Business Profile, measured across a fixed 169-point grid of your Canterbury service area, from each term's tracked baseline to the latest scan (1 October 2026). Impressions, clicks, average position and the branded versus non-branded split are from your Google Search Console, last 12 months, on the sc-domain property. Sessions, channels and enquiry rates are from your Google Analytics 4, last 12 months, using the completed-form event rather than the property's own key-event total, which over-counts by roughly three times. Search volumes and competitor footprints are from Ahrefs, New Zealand, July 2026, across a deduped set of 75 real Canterbury heat pump, ventilation and air-conditioning terms; the full category figure applies a conservative long-tail multiple to that validated core. The winnable click pool assumes roughly one search in five survives ads, the Maps pack and AI answers as an organic click. AI prompt volumes are modelled from the keyword anchors with a conservative fan-out uplift and are directional, plus or minus 50%; AI-sourced enquiries are excluded from the dollar model so nothing is double-counted. The AI assistant positions come from the AI rank check our Maps platform runs alongside the grid scan, on 1 October 2026, across ChatGPT, Gemini and Meta AI on the same ten searches; it records whether DCIS appears and at what position, and records nothing about who else an answer names, so no claim here rests on what an AI answer said about another installer. The AEO score is from our AEO Maturity Model against a live crawl of dcis.co.nz. Job values are your own published installed prices, confirmed by you as close to your real average; the close rate is your own figure of 40 to 50%, modelled at the conservative end. Revenue figures are directional, modelled from your own conversion rate, pricing and close rate, and are not a guarantee of results.

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ben@teamempathy.co.nz  ·  teamempathy.co.nz