DEEP DIVE: AI PROMPTS
What people ask the AI before they call you: the prompts, the answers, and how to be in them
Somewhere in your neighborhood tonight, a homeowner is typing a full sentence into an assistant: "my roof is leaking after the storm, who should I call in Westchester that speaks Spanish." The assistant answers with a name. Here is how to find out what people are asking about your trade, what the answers say today, and what you can change.
A note on what this is. There are no numbers here and no tool to buy. Ten minutes on your phone, once a month, in both languages.
The four kinds of prompt
- The emergency: "the AC stopped and it is 90 degrees, who can come tonight in Doral." The assistant looks for hours, a phone, and reviews that mention speed.
- The decision: "should I repair or replace a 14-year-old AC in Miami." The assistant looks for a page that explains both sides, and then names who wrote it.
- The price: "how much does a panel upgrade cost in Miami-Dade with the permit." The assistant looks for a page with a range and names its source.
- The who: "best plumber in Hialeah that answers in Spanish." The assistant looks for reviews, listings and pages that agree on the trade, the area and the language.
Every one of these is a question your phone already gets. The difference is that the assistant answers it before you can, and it answers with whoever its sources agree on.
Run them yourself, tonight
Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google on your phone. Type one prompt from each kind, in English, about your trade and your neighborhood. Then the same four in Spanish. Read every answer to the end. Write down three things: who is named, what the assistant says about them, and which sources it links to or mentions.
WHAT THE ANSWERS TELL YOU
The Spanish answers are different answers
Run the Spanish prompts separately and read them separately. The assistants pull from Spanish sources for Spanish questions, and most contractor sites, reviews and videos are English only. A Spanish job page, a Spanish video and Spanish reviews are a source almost nobody else in your trade has made. In a neighborhood where most calls come in Spanish, that is the whole game.
Check the robots line
Your site has a small file that tells machines what they may read. Some sites block the AI crawlers without anyone deciding to. Ask whoever runs your site whether robots.txt allows GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended. If any of them is blocked, that assistant never reads your pages, and no page you write will ever be in its answer.
What you can change, and what you cannot
You cannot submit yourself to an assistant. You cannot pay one. You cannot write "recommended by AI" on your site and make it true. What you can do is make the four layers below agree: a page that answers each of the four prompt kinds, reviews that mention the trade and the area, a video of the job, and listings that match. The assistant reads those and repeats them. That is all it does.
The prompt that ends in a call
Every one of these prompts ends the same way: the homeowner taps the number the assistant gave. If it rings out, they ask the assistant for the next name, and it gives one. A text back within a minute, in the language they asked in, with a real way to book, is what turns being named into a job. On Crew and Fleet the voice agent answers the call itself, in either language, takes the address and books the visit. Getting named is the map. Answering is the truck.
Write the eight prompts down and run the same eight every month. The trend tells you which layer is working; a single read tells you almost nothing.
Questions we get asked about this
Which AI assistants matter for a contractor?
Google's AI answer at the top of the results, because that is where most homeowners search. Then ChatGPT and Perplexity, because that is where the full-sentence questions go. Gemini and Claude read the same sources; if you are in the first three you are usually in those too.
Can I pay to be recommended?
No. There is no form and no fee. The answer is assembled from your site, your profile, your reviews, your video and the places your name comes up. Anyone selling a shortcut is selling those four layers with a different label, or nothing.
How often should I check?
Monthly, the same eight prompts, both languages, written down. Three months in you can see which layer moved the answer. One read is noise.
Related
Want to run the eight prompts together?
Bring the question your last customer asked to a 30-minute call. We run it through the assistants with you, in both languages, and show you which layer the answer points at.