Should You Block AI Crawlers? Probably Not
You can tell AI crawlers to stay off your site. Publishers do it to defend their product. For a local trade, blocking removes you from the answer for nothing.
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You can tell AI crawlers to stay off your site. Publishers do it to defend their product. For a local trade, blocking removes you from the answer for nothing.
Two things are happening to search and they pull opposite ways: longer questions, and commands. One rewards writing, the other rewards your listing data.
AI Mode is a separate way of searching, not a change to the results page. Knowing which of the three you are looking at is the first thing.
Several parts of search work are done better by the owner than by anyone they could pay, and a few genuinely need help. The dividing line is not difficulty, it is who holds the knowledge.
Zero-click is discussed as a loss. For a contractor the best result, a call straight from a map listing, was always zero-click. Only the proportion changed.
Inserting a first name is not personalization. For a trade it comes from the job record: what you installed, when you were last there, what they deferred.
Repurposing does not create material, it multiplies what was captured, and for a contractor almost nothing is captured, because nobody is photographing the job.
Redesign because something is failing, not because the site is old. The three-year rule is arbitrary; here is what genuinely warrants a rebuild and what does not.
Sequential retargeting is sound in principle and out of reach for most contractors, every stage needs enough people to deliver. One sequence reliably pays.
A promotion raises click-through rate almost regardless of what it offers. Whether it makes money depends on which service it is attached to, and emergency work is the wrong one.
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Algorithm shifts, badge changes, and what they mean for a home-service business, posted where you already are.