We Checked 50 Calgary Trades Websites: What Google and AI Can Read
Written by Dario Hudon-Verrelli
Marketing Strategy Consultant & Fractional CMO | Former Marketing Instructor, Mount Royal University
Synopsis
Calgary trades websites mostly get the basics right and miss the details that let Google and AI answers name them. On 3 October 2026 we read the homepages of 50 Calgary plumbers, electricians, furnace companies, roofers, renovators, landscapers, cleaners, painters, garage door and pest control companies, the way a search engine or an AI crawler reads them: the raw page, not the version a person sees.
Every one had a secure address, a title naming the trade and a description. But 17 of the 50 (34%) had no business markup that Google recognises, 13 of 50 (26%) gave no opening hours anywhere a machine can read, and 20 of 50 (40%) named fewer than three Calgary areas they serve. Those are the details an AI answer uses when someone asks who to call in their part of the city.
Why We Looked
When a homeowner asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI answer “who can fix my furnace in southwest Calgary tonight”, the answer is assembled from what those systems can read about each business: what it does, where, when it is open, how to reach it and what others say about it. Most of that comes from the business’s own website and its Google profile.
Owners spend a lot of attention on how their site looks. We wanted to know what it says to a machine, because that is increasingly who reads it first.
How We Checked
We searched the web for ten trades in Calgary the way a homeowner would (“plumber Calgary”, “garage door repair Calgary” and so on) and took the first five independent Calgary businesses for each, skipping directories, national franchise pages and lead-generation sites. That gave 50 businesses.
For each one, a script fetched the homepage, robots.txt and llms.txt, one site at a time, on 3 October 2026, and recorded about 25 facts that a machine can check: the title, the main heading, the structured business markup (schema), opening hours, phone links, the areas named, whether AI crawlers are blocked and whether an llms.txt file exists. We read the raw HTML, which is what most AI crawlers see; anything added later by JavaScript was not counted.
Two honest caveats. First, these businesses already rank on the first page of a web search, so they are better than average; the wider market is likely weaker. Second, we checked homepages only. A business may carry better markup on its service or contact pages. We are reporting what is on the front door.
What Most Of Them Get Right
The basics are no longer the problem. All 50 load over HTTPS. All 50 name their trade in the page title, and 48 name Calgary too. All 50 have a meta description, 47 have a tap-to-call phone link, and all 50 mention Calgary in the page text.
Access is not the problem either. Only 1 of the 50 blocks any AI or search crawler in robots.txt, and that block was aimed at one data-collection crawler (CCBot), not at ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Google. Five sites refused our first request with a firewall error, but every one of them let GPTBot and ClaudeBot in when we tested, so the machines can get through the door.
Where They Fall Short
The gaps are in the details that turn “a plumber” into “the plumber near you who is open now.”
Business markup. 33 of 50 homepages carry structured markup that tells Google “this is a local business, here is its address and phone.” 15 have none at all, and 2 more have markup with a business type that does not exist in the standard (one misspelled, one invented), which Google does not read as a business. Only 28 of 50 include the full set of address, phone and opening hours in that markup.
Hours. 25 of 50 show opening hours in the page text, and 13 of 50 give hours nowhere a machine can read, neither in the text nor in the markup. For an emergency trade, “are they open now” is often the whole question.
Areas served. Calgary is a big city, and people ask by quadrant, neighbourhood or nearby town. 30 of 50 homepages name at least three areas they serve; 20 name fewer than three, and 5 name none at all.
Ratings. Reviews are often a trade’s strongest proof, and 19 of the 50 homepages mention their Google reviews or star rating in the page text. Only 7 of 50 put a rating in their markup, the form Google and AI systems read most reliably.
Questions answered. 12 of 50 mark up a list of frequently asked questions. The rest answer customer questions, if at all, in a form an AI answer cannot lift cleanly.
Headings. 37 of 50 have exactly one main heading, 11 have several competing ones and 2 have none. It is a small thing, but it is how a machine decides what the page is about.
Put together, only 5 of the 50 homepages did all four of the things that matter most here: complete business markup with address, phone and hours, hours in the text, three or more areas named, and marked-up questions.
What About llms.txt?
An llms.txt file is a plain-text summary of a site written for AI systems. 17 of the 50 have one, more than we expected. 9 of those were generated automatically by an SEO plugin, and 8 were written for the business. No major AI company has committed to reading these files, so treat one as cheap insurance, not a fix. The markup and the page text above matter more.
What To Fix First
If you run a trade in Calgary and want AI answers to be able to name you, this is the order we would work in, based on what we found:
- Add complete business markup to your homepage: your trade as the business type, address, phone, opening hours, the areas you serve and your rating. Most website builders and SEO plugins can do this without code.
- Write your hours and your service areas in plain text on the homepage, by quadrant and neighbourhood, the way customers say them.
- Answer the five questions every customer asks (price range, how fast you come, which areas, warranty, how to book) on the page, marked up as an FAQ.
- Keep the same name, address, phone and hours everywhere: website, Google profile, Apple Maps, Yelp and directories. AI answers trust businesses that agree with themselves.
None of this is new or difficult, which is the point. The businesses we checked already did the visible work. The machine-readable work is where the gap is, and it is a few hours, not a rebuild.
For larger companies, this is part of the AI groundwork we do in AI marketing integration, after the customer and the message are clear in a Marketing Foundation. For a trade with one to ten people, our small-business studio does exactly the list above as a fixed-price job: Get Found, starting with a free one-page check.
FAQ
Almost certainly they can reach it: only 1 of the 50 Calgary trades sites we checked blocked any crawler, and none blocked ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Google. Whether they can understand it is the real question. That depends on business markup, hours and service areas written in a form a machine reads, and 25 of the 50 sites we checked were missing at least one of those three.
Business markup (schema) is a short block of code in your page that states, in a standard format, what your business is, where it is, its phone number, hours and rating. Google and AI systems use it to describe you accurately. 15 of the 50 sites we checked had none, and 2 had markup with a type Google does not recognise.
It may help a little and costs almost nothing, but no major AI company has committed to reading it. 17 of the 50 Calgary trades sites we checked had one, often generated by an SEO plugin. Fix your business markup, hours and service areas first; they matter more.
We searched for ten trades in Calgary the way a homeowner would and took the first five independent Calgary businesses for each, skipping directories, national franchise pages and lead-generation sites. Because they already rank on page one, they are likely better than the average Calgary trade website.
Add complete business markup to the homepage, write your hours and service areas in plain text, answer the common customer questions on the page, and keep your name, address, phone and hours identical everywhere you are listed. For a one to ten person trade, Get Found does this as a fixed-price job.
In maintaining the ethics and transparency of AI use, we leveraged AI tools to enhance the insights shared here in this article. Learn more about Why the Ethical use of AI is Important to Your Business.