Emergency plumbing, drain cleaning & gas services · Orlando FL · herrellplumbing.com
Prepared by REK Marketing & Design
Solid rating, but Frank Gay has 15,000 reviews and American Air has 10,000. Review volume is your biggest local gap.
Review gapYou have a working Google Business Profile and decent organic traffic. But your competitors have 10x to 90x more reviews, AI engines barely mention you, and the site has technical gaps holding back rankings. These three moves close the gap.
173 reviews vs. Frank Gay's 14,700 and American Air's 9,800. At your current pace, you'll never catch up. A text-based review request after every job, plus a follow-up sequence, can add 20-30 reviews per month.
Closes the trust gapNo schema anywhere on the site. The homepage title is 103 characters of keyword stuffing. LocalBusiness + Service schema and a clean title under 65 characters tell Google and AI exactly what you are.
Unlocks rich resultsChatGPT named you in 0 of 6 local answers. Gemini mentioned you twice. Roto-Rooter and Benjamin Franklin dominate AI results. Adding FAQ schema and question-format headings makes your content quotable.
Wins AI share of voicePlumbing is one of the most competitive and expensive categories in all of local search — the keywords cost more, the incumbents are deeply entrenched, and winning takes sustained, serious investment, not a quick tune-up. Herrell Plumbing has the fundamentals in place: a verified Google Business Profile with a 4.5-star rating, 3,046 monthly organic visitors, 313 referring domains, and a site that allows all AI crawlers. You're not starting from zero. But you're competing in one of the most saturated local markets in Florida, and the leaders have built review moats you can't ignore.
Frank Gay has nearly 15,000 reviews. American Air Plumbing and Electrical has close to 10,000. Emerald Plumbing has 1,300 and Choice has 1,700. All sit at 4.5 stars or above. Your 173 reviews, while genuine, make you look like a small operation by comparison. In AI search, the picture is similar: ChatGPT didn't mention you once in six local plumbing queries, while Roto-Rooter appeared five times and Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Rooter, Modern Plumbing, and Emerald each appeared three times.
The good news: your GEO foundation is better than most local plumbers. You allow all 14 AI crawlers, you have an llms.txt file, and Gemini already cites you. The site has real content (662 average words per page) and a clean heading structure. But the site itself is now the bottleneck — and these are not one-off tweaks. No schema anywhere, a 103-character stuffed title, pages returning 404 errors, six pages with multiple H1s, and a mobile speed score of 60 add up to a site that search engines — and increasingly AI — struggle to trust. In a category this competitive, you do not patch your way to the top of plumbing in Orlando. You need a modern, fast, technically-sound website built from the ground up to compete, paired with an aggressive review and content engine. That is the level of investment the market leaders are making, and it is what it takes to move from mid-pack to contender.
Verified GBP, 4.5 stars, 3,046 monthly organic visitors, 1,246 dofollow backlinks, and all AI crawlers allowed. The basics are in place.
No schema, 103-char stuffed title, 2 pages with 404 errors, 6 pages with multiple H1s, and 173 reviews vs. competitors with thousands.
You were mentioned in only 2 of 9 AI answers. Adding FAQ schema, question headings, and quotable content can capture the AI share of voice your competitors are ignoring.
Your site is technically open to AI crawlers and you've published an llms.txt file. But ChatGPT named you in 0 of 6 local plumbing answers, while Gemini mentioned you twice. Roto-Rooter, Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Rooter, Modern Plumbing, and Emerald Plumbing all outpace you in AI citations.
The site has zero schema markup. No LocalBusiness, no Service, no FAQ. AI engines and Google have to infer what you are from unstructured text. This is the single biggest technical gap holding back both traditional and AI search visibility.
GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, and all 14 major AI crawlers can access your site. No blocks in robots.txt.
You publish /llms.txt, the file AI uses to understand a site quickly. Most Orlando plumbers don't have one.
ChatGPT: 0 of 6. Gemini: 2 of 3. Roto-Rooter leads with 5 mentions. You're invisible in the AI answers that matter most.
Zero question-format headings on the site. No FAQ schema. AI engines quote pages that answer questions directly.
Your GEO score of 64 is above average for local plumbers, but the 22% AI mention rate shows the gap between being crawlable and being cited. The fix is content structure, not access.
Orlando's plumbing market is dominated by a deep field of players with massive review counts. Frank Gay, American Air, Rainaldi, MAC 5, Choice, and Emerald have all built review moats that directly translate to Map Pack dominance. Your 173 reviews put you in a different weight class.
| Competitor | Reviews | Rating | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frank Gay | ~14,700 | 4.5+ | 87x your volume |
| American Air Plumbing & Electrical | ~9,800 | 4.5+ | 58x your volume |
| Rainaldi Home Services | ~5,900 | 4.5+ | 35x your volume |
| Choice Plumbing | ~1,700 | 4.5+ | 10x your volume |
| MAC 5 Services | ~1,500 | 4.5+ | 9x your volume |
| Emerald Plumbing | ~1,300 | 4.5+ | 8x your volume |
| Herrell Plumbing (you) | 173 | 4.5 | baseline |
Source: Google Business Profile data, June 2026. All competitors maintain 4.5+ star ratings. The gap isn't quality, it's volume. Review count is a direct ranking factor in the Map Pack.
| Competitor | AI mentions (of 9 queries) | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Roto-Rooter | 5 | ChatGPT, Gemini |
| Benjamin Franklin Plumbing | 3 | ChatGPT, Gemini |
| Mr. Rooter Plumbing | 3 | ChatGPT, Gemini |
| Modern Plumbing Industries | 3 | ChatGPT, Gemini |
| Emerald Plumbing | 3 | ChatGPT, Gemini |
| Herrell Plumbing (you) | 2 | Gemini only |
Source: REK AI mention tracking, June 2026. ChatGPT named you in 0 of 6 local plumbing queries. Gemini mentioned you in 2 of 3. National brands and local competitors with stronger content structure dominate AI recommendations.
Roto-Rooter, Benjamin Franklin, and Mr. Rooter all have FAQ pages, question-format headings, and schema markup. Their content is built to be quoted. Local competitors like Emerald are catching up with the same approach.
National brands can't write about Orlando-specific issues the way you can. Hard water problems in Winter Park, older pipe systems in College Park, emergency response times to specific neighborhoods. Hyper-local content with FAQ structure beats generic national pages.
Your site has solid bones: 24 pages, 662 average word count, proper HTTPS, and a working canonical setup. But there are specific technical issues dragging down performance, ordered by impact below. Note that these are symptoms; the platform itself (section 04) is the deeper constraint.
Mobile performance score of 60 and LCP of 5.8 seconds are below Google's thresholds. LCP over 4 seconds is rated "poor" and can hurt rankings. Image optimization, lazy loading, and server response time improvements can bring this under 2.5 seconds.
Your site is a templated build on Duda, wired with Thryv's (formerly Yellowpages) marketing tags. That is the marketing channel you flagged, and it is the ceiling on everything else in this report. A template like this is a lead-capture brochure, not an SEO asset. It structurally cannot produce the schema, page depth, location pages, and speed that win local search in 2026.
| Company | Platform | Pages | City pages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Herrell Plumbing (you) | Duda / Thryv template | 24 | 0 |
| Frank Gay | WordPress | ~720 | ~255 |
| Matt's Plumbing | WordPress | ~430 | ~350 |
| MAC 5 Services | WordPress | ~225 | 49 |
| Rainaldi | WordPress | ~60 | 12 |
| Choice Plumbing | Custom (static) | 35 | 11 |
Source: competitor sitemaps and homepage source, June 2026. "City pages" are dedicated location landing pages. Herrell has zero, which is why competitors rank for "plumber [suburb]" across the whole metro while you show mainly for branded and core Orlando terms.
Frank Gay, Matt's, and MAC 5 run plugin-heavy WordPress that needs WP Rocket caching just to load. That bloat is why their mobile speed suffers, and it is an opening, not a model to copy.
Not a template, not WordPress. A custom, SEO-engineered site (the approach behind the fastest competitor, Choice, on a static build) with schema, location pages, and Core Web Vitals handled from day one, so it loads faster than every competitor and stays fully controlled for search and AI.
You have a verified Google Business Profile with a 4.5-star rating and 173 reviews. That's the foundation. Your GBP visibility score is a solid 85/100 — verified, open 24 hours, with phone, website, and category all set; the main remaining gap is status verification. And your map grid shows strong performance near your location but rapid drop-off as distance increases.
Priority fix: The profile fundamentals are solid — verified, open 24 hours, and phone, website, and category all set. The single biggest lever now is review volume: 173 reviews vs. competitors in the thousands. Review count is the GBP signal that most directly moves Map Pack rankings.
Verify the business status is showing as operational, confirm the service area, and ensure every relevant category is set. These round out an already-strong 85/100 visibility score.
Text-based review request after every job. Follow-up email 48 hours later. Target 20-30 new reviews per month. At that pace, you'll reach 500 reviews in 12 months and start closing the gap with mid-tier competitors.
Each square is a search run from that spot on the map. Green means you land in the top 3 of the Map Pack there; red means you're outside the top 15 or not showing. Your strongest performance is for "emergency plumber orlando" (51% top-3) and "24 hour plumber near me" (43% top-3). Weakest is "leak repair plumber near me" (4% top-3).
Every high-intent Orlando plumbing search now opens with Google Local Services Ads (the "Google Guaranteed" pack), then Search Ads, then the Map Pack. Your competitors occupy all of it. Herrell is in none of the paid units, which is a direct reason the phone isn't ringing on emergency and "near me" searches.
| Competitor | Paid unit | Status |
|---|---|---|
| American Veteran Plumbing | Local Services Ads (Google Guaranteed) | Running |
| Frank Gay | Local Services Ads | Running |
| American Air Plumbing & Electrical | Local Services Ads | Running |
| MAC 5 Services | Local Services Ads | Running |
| Matt's Plumbing | Google Guaranteed / LSA | Running |
| Choice Plumbing | Google Search Ads | Running |
| Herrell Plumbing (you) | None | Not running |
Source: live Orlando SERPs, June 2026 (Local Services Ads panel and Sponsored results). LSA placements rotate by exact query and time of day.
Local Services Ads appear above the Map Pack, are pay-per-lead, and carry the "Google Guaranteed" trust badge. Getting Herrell screened and enrolled is the fastest path to the top of the page and inbound calls while the SEO and new site compound.
Frank Gay, the market's biggest player, runs zero active Facebook or Instagram ads, and the niche follows that pattern. Paid social is a low-cost, uncontested secondary channel once the Google fundamentals are in place.
Sequenced so the fastest wins (GBP completion, review generation) land first, while the technical and content work builds momentum.
Plumbing is one of the most competitive and expensive categories in local search, and Orlando is one of its most saturated markets. Winning takes real, sustained investment — not an entry-level add-on.
The businesses ahead of you — Frank Gay, American Air, Rainaldi — are not competing on a token budget. Industry benchmarks put a serious home-services marketing investment at 10–15% of revenue; in a market this saturated, that is simply the cost of being found. A bare-bones SEO add-on is a fraction of that, and it will not move you against incumbents with thousands of reviews and years of authority.
Based on everything in this audit, here is the program we recommend — built to rebuild the foundation, close the review gap, and generate booked jobs now while the rankings compound:
A custom-coded, speed-engineered website to replace the current Thryv-template site — schema baked in from day one, full technical and on-page SEO, Google Business Profile management, comprehensive local citations, and an aggressive content engine to out-publish the market. This is the foundation everything else rides on, and it is the new site this report calls for.
Your single biggest ranking and trust gap is reviews: 173 versus competitors in the thousands. Automated review requests after every completed job systematically close that gap. As this audit puts it — the review gap is the ranking gap.
Organic SEO in a category this competitive takes 6–9 months to mature. Local Services Ads place you at the very top of local plumbing results on a pay-per-lead basis from day one — the fastest path to booked jobs while the organic work compounds.
You have the rating. You have the service quality. What's missing is the volume and the technical foundation to compete with Orlando's biggest plumbers. REK can build both.
Book the strategy call →Everything above, with the specifics. Tap each block to open it.
Deploy this JSON-LD in the <head> of your homepage. Verify NAP matches GBP exactly.
Required fields: @type: LocalBusiness (or Plumber), name: Herrell Plumbing, address: 5613 E Colonial Dr, Orlando, FL 32807, telephone: +1-407-273-6260, url: https://www.herrellplumbing.com/, aggregateRating: 4.5 stars / 173 reviews, priceRange: $$, areaServed: Orlando metro.
Add Service schema for each service page (drain cleaning, water heater repair, emergency plumbing, gas services) with serviceType, provider, and areaServed.
Site crawl via Screaming Frog, PageSpeed Insights API, Moz domain analysis, GBP Places API, and REK AI mention tracking across ChatGPT and Gemini. June 2026.
Local grid: 7x7 grid centered on business location (5613 E Colonial Dr, Orlando), 7 keywords tested, 49 points per keyword. "Found" means appearing in top 20 of local pack results at that grid point.
AI mentions: 9 total queries (6 ChatGPT, 3 Gemini) for Orlando plumbing services. Mention rate = queries where business was named / total queries.
