Local service sites get a short list of high-stakes questions: Are you open? Do you come to my area? How fast can you get here? How much for a callout? Maps apps and directories invent answers to the first two constantly. Your assistant should not join them.
Publish one canonical hours page
Holiday exceptions, seasonal hours, and “closed for lunch” belong on a page you control — then index that page. If the bot has to reconcile three conflicting footers, it will average them into fiction. Update the page first; re-crawl second.
Service areas as explicit copy
“Greater Manchester” means different things to different customers. List postcodes, towns, or a clear radius in prose. When a visitor asks about a place you do not cover, refusal plus a human quote path is better than a hopeful yes.
Pricing and callouts
If you do not publish callout fees, the bot should not invent them. Offer a booking or phone path. Invented prices create angry doorstep conversations your technicians inherit.
A tiny evaluation set
- Today’s hours (especially around a holiday)
- A postcode you cover and one you do not
- A price you do not publish — expect refusal
- “I want to speak to someone” — one turn
Keep the index small and current. For local businesses, a tight crawl of hours, services, and contact pages outperforms a whole-site grab of blog nostalgia. Start with crawl your first site.
