September held its ground and turned it into traffic. On Duty ranked in the top 3 for 513 queries, on the first page for 1,087 queries, and inside the top 20 for 1,372 queries, counted across every search the site appeared for. Top 3 landed on exactly the same count as August, 513. The first page added 44 queries and the top 20 added 2. Positions, in other words, barely moved. Traffic did. Clicks rose 61 percent, from 458 in August to 739. From this report forward, clicks and impressions are Google's totals for the whole site, which include searches Google does not itemise. They are not like for like with the figures quoted last month. On the whole-site basis August was 458 clicks and 50,428 impressions. Of the clicks Google does itemise by position, 97 percent came from first page positions and 77 percent from positions 1 to 3 alone. Impressions came in at 45,836 against 50,428 in August, down 9 percent. Among the searches Google itemises, that decline sits in positions 11 and deeper, and it is the one item we are watching this month, covered just below the headline metrics.
We want to be plain about where the click gain came from. The brand term "on duty chimney" went from 67 clicks to 158 at position 1.8, on 662 impressions against 532 in August, and the homepage produced 251 clicks across 794 ranking queries, the most of any page by a wide margin. More people searched for On Duty by name as the busy season opened, and the site was in position to catch them. Underneath that, the cost guides kept doing the volume work. The Chimney Liner Cost Guide, the pillar we published on your behalf in February 2026, drew 9,576 impressions across 366 queries at an average position of 4.7 and produced 51 clicks, the most of any page after the homepage, with "chimney liner cost" itself at position 4.8 on 895 impressions.
Underneath those site-wide totals sits a narrower working list: the priority commercial terms our daily rank tracker checks in each market. This is a separate view from the counts above, built on a hand-picked list rather than on every search. On the map side, On Duty held 176 top-three local pack placements at the September 30 check, level with 177 on the same month-end basis at the end of August, led by Leominster with 46 on desktop and 44 on mobile, Fitchburg with 39 and Groton with 30. On the organic side of that same list, Leominster desktop holds 17 of 67 priority terms in the top three.
The 53 service-area town pages we published on your behalf in August are in their second month. "chimney repairs marlborough" produced 923 impressions at position 10.2, the largest term sitting just off page one, and the Marlborough page carried 925 impressions in total. Smaller towns have started to register too: the Tyngsborough page drew 60 impressions at an average position of 2.3. Town pages typically take two to four months to settle, so this is still the early read.
In AI search, Microsoft's own reporting shows 168 citations in September. From this report forward we total Microsoft's figures by calendar month, so they are not like for like with the rolling window quoted last month. On the calendar basis August was 55, so September is roughly three times that. Google's own reporting shows 11,400 impressions inside AI answers, up 25 percent from 9,110 in August, with the Chimney Liner Cost Guide alone accounting for 72 percent of them. That Google figure is now totalled by calendar month as well, so it is not like for like with the rolling 28 day figure quoted last month. Across the cross-platform snapshot the site was cited 74 times against 78 in August, with Perplexity the largest single surface at 34, ahead of Google AI Mode at 18 and Google AI Overviews at 12.
Total impressions came in at 45,836 against 50,428 in August, down 9 percent on Google's totals for the whole site, and July was 54,590, so the total has stepped down two months running. The detail matters. Among the searches Google itemises by position, a subset that does not add up to the whole-site total, first page positions carried 77 percent of impressions in September against roughly half in August, while positions 11 and deeper fell from about half to 23 percent. The same dip showed up in September across unrelated sites we track, concentrated in positions beyond page one. We are reviewing the daily data before drawing a conclusion. Next month we will check whether the total steadies and whether the first page share keeps climbing. If first page impressions turned down as well, that would be a loss of reach and we would treat it as one.
We pull from several sources so no single tool tells the whole story. The headline counts above come from Google's own reporting, which covers every search On Duty appeared for, while the city-by-city and map pack numbers further down come from a daily rank tracker checking a hand-picked list of priority terms in each market. AI figures come from the platforms themselves. Each number comes from whichever source measures it best, and stays with that source month to month.
Queries where On Duty currently appears on the first page of Google. These are the search terms actively bringing buyers to the site. The landing page column shows the best performing page for each term.
| Keyword | Landing page | Position | Monthly Impressions |
|---|---|---|---|
| stainless steel liner for chimney cost | /chimney-liner-cost/ | 4.2 | 4,754 |
| chimney liner cost | /chimney-liner-cost/ | 4.8 | 895 |
| on duty chimney | / | 1.8 | 662 |
| chimney repair | / | 1.9 | 497 |
| chimney cleaning | / | 1.6 | 455 |
| chimney sweep near me | / | 2.8 | 338 |
| chimney liner replacement cost | /chimney-liner-cost/ | 6.6 | 231 |
| chimney liner installation cost | /chimney-liner-cost/ | 8.7 | 223 |
| chimney sweep | / | 2.3 | 218 |
| chimney relining cost | /chimney-liner-cost/ | 3.8 | 209 |
| fireplace cleaning near me | /service/fireplace-repair-leominster-ma/ | 2.1 | 197 |
| masonry chimney repair | /service/masonry-repair-leominster-ma/ | 1.9 | 187 |
| chimney repair near me | / | 2.4 | 185 |
| on duty chimney sweep | / | 2.6 | 168 |
| chimney leak repair | / | 1.3 | 161 |
| chimney inspection | / | 1.4 | 159 |
| pellet stove repair | /service/pellet-stove-repair-install-leominster-ma/ | 7.5 | 147 |
| chimney rebuild cost | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 6.4 | 145 |
| chimney liner | / | 6.8 | 142 |
| chimney crown repair | / | 4.4 | 136 |
Eleven of the twenty first-page terms above sit at position 3.0 or better. The movement is on the click side. "on duty chimney" went from 67 clicks to 158 at position 1.8 and "chimney sweep leominster" from 6 to 11, with "chimney liner installation cost" delivering 5 from position 8.7 and "chimney inspection" 4 from position 1.4. The homepage carried 251 clicks across 794 ranking queries, the most of any page by a wide margin, so branded and near-branded demand did most of the lifting while the cost guides carried the impression volume. One row to read with care: "stainless steel liner for chimney cost" tops the table on impressions but produced a single click, so we read it as exposure rather than demand and are not building the plan around it.
| Keyword | Position | Clicks | Impressions |
|---|---|---|---|
| on duty chimney | 1.8 | 158 | 662 |
| chimney sweep leominster | 2.6 | 11 | 69 |
| on duty chimney masonry stove | 1.6 | 10 | 85 |
| chimney liner cost | 4.8 | 6 | 895 |
| chimney sweep near me | 2.8 | 6 | 338 |
| on duty chimney sweep | 2.6 | 6 | 168 |
| chimney liner installation cost | 8.7 | 5 | 223 |
| chimney sweep | 2.3 | 5 | 218 |
| chimney repair near me | 2.4 | 5 | 185 |
| chimney inspection | 1.4 | 4 | 159 |
Queries already ranking on page 2 where a small content or link push moves them onto page 1. These are the next wave of winsStriking distance keywords are search terms ranking close to page 1 (positions 11 to 20). They typically take less work to push onto page 1 than starting a brand new keyword from scratch.. This month the list is concentrated: nine of the sixteen terms below have the Chimney Repair Cost Guide as their best performing page. One page of work reaches nine rankings.
| Keyword | Landing page | Position | Monthly Impressions |
|---|---|---|---|
| chimney repairs marlborough | /service-area/marlborough-ma/ | 10.2 | 923 |
| chimney crown cost | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 10.4 | 232 |
| chimney crown repair cost | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 13.8 | 126 |
| cost to repoint chimney | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 15.7 | 113 |
| how long does a chimney liner last | /chimney-liner-replacement-guide/ | 16.8 | 97 |
| how much to cap a chimney | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 14.3 | 80 |
| chimney company near me | / | 17.2 | 60 |
| chimney replacement cost | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 13.1 | 56 |
| chimney repointing cost | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 12.3 | 44 |
| chimney crown repair costs | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 15.5 | 41 |
| how much does chimney rebuilding cost | /signs-its-time-to-replace-your-chimney-liner/ | 12.4 | 39 |
| chimney fire cleanup ma | /service/chimney-cleaning-and-sweeping-leominster-ma/ | 16.3 | 37 |
| smoky fireplace fix | /how-to-troubleshoot-a-smoky-fireplace/ | 17.2 | 35 |
| chimney masonry repair | /service/masonry-repair-leominster-ma/ | 11.9 | 27 |
| tuckpointing chimney cost | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 18.2 | 26 |
| chimney crown replacement cost | /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 12.4 | 26 |
"chimney crown cost" (232 impressions, position 10.4), "chimney crown repair cost" (126, position 13.8), "cost to repoint chimney" (113, position 15.7), "how much to cap a chimney" (80, position 14.3) and five more all land on that single guide, which averages position 14.5 across the 315 queries it ranks for and carried 2,782 impressions in September. The on-page fix we have specified, a dedicated FAQ block plus the verified cap and crown pricing, serves the entire cluster at once. Separately, "chimney repairs marlborough" at position 10.2 with 923 impressions is the largest single term on this list and sits two tenths of a position off page one, which makes it the closest term to a first-page position anywhere in this report.
These specific pages are the foundation for everything ranking. Each one drives traffic across dozens of related search terms. The number of ranking queriesA "ranking query" is a unique search term that this specific page shows up for on Google during the reporting month. One page often ranks for hundreds of related searches at once. shown next to each page is how many different Google searches each page is showing up for.
Real local 3-packWhen someone searches for a local service like "chimney sweep near me," Google shows a special box at the top with a map and three business listings. This is called the local 3-pack or "map pack" and ranking inside it is a major driver of calls. rankings checked every day across the metros On Duty serves, on a hand-picked list of priority terms. This is the tracked per-city view, separate from the site-wide counts at the top of this report. At the September 30 check, On Duty held 176 top-three local pack placements across the tracked service area, counted as one placement per keyword per tracked location. These are month-end counts. Last month's table counted every keyword that held a top-three map position at any point in August, so it ran higher and is not like for like with this one. On the same month-end basis the end of August stood at 177, so the map held level. Leominster, Fitchburg, Groton and Worcester run the same 67-term list, while Harvard, Bolton and Lancaster run a shorter 13-term list, so their counts are not directly comparable to the others.
| Tracked location | In the map pack top three | Keywords tracked |
|---|---|---|
| Leominster (desktop) | 46 | 67 |
| Leominster (mobile) | 44 | 67 |
| Fitchburg | 39 | 67 |
| Groton | 30 | 67 |
| Harvard | 6 | 13 |
| Bolton | 6 | 13 |
| Lancaster | 5 | 13 |
| Worcester (desktop) | 0 | 67 |
| Total top-three placements | 176 |
| Tracked location | In the organic top three | Keywords tracked |
|---|---|---|
| Leominster | 17 | 67 |
| Groton | 5 | 67 |
| Fitchburg | 3 | 67 |
| Worcester | 2 | 67 |
The local 3-pack and the ten links underneath it are two different result sets, and our daily tracker checks them separately. Both tables count the same hand-picked list of priority terms, so neither restates the site-wide totals at the top of this report. In Leominster On Duty holds both: 46 map placements and 17 organic top-three positions on the same 67 terms. In Fitchburg and Groton the strength is on the map, with 39 and 30 placements against 3 and 5 organic top-three positions. For a local service search the map pack sits above the organic links, so that is the right place to be strong first. The organic side in those two markets is the next piece of ground to take, and the town pages we published on your behalf in August are the assets built to take it.
| Keyword | Map position | National monthly searches |
|---|---|---|
| chimney sweep | 1 | 60,500 |
| chimney sweep near me | 1 | 40,500 |
| chimney cleaning | 1 | 20,100 |
| chimney repair | 1 | 18,100 |
| chimney service | 1 | 8,100 |
| fireplace repair | 1 | 8,100 |
| fireplace insert | 2 | 47,500 |
| chimney repair near me | 2 | 20,100 |
176 top-three local pack placements at September 30, against 177 on the same basis at the end of August, with Leominster at 46 on desktop and 44 on mobile, Fitchburg at 39 and Groton at 30. Leominster mobile gained four placements over the month while Fitchburg gave back two, which is ordinary drift for a check that runs every day. The head terms are where it counts: "chimney sweep" and "chimney sweep near me" at map position 1 in Leominster on 60,500 and 40,500 national monthly searches, with "chimney cleaning" and "chimney repair" at position 1 as well. Local pack placement is the single biggest driver of phone calls for a chimney business, and this is the middle of the September to November peak, when that placement is worth the most.
The AI picture has a clear headline this month and it is Microsoft. Microsoft's own reporting shows 168 citations in September against 55 in August, both counted by calendar month. Google's own reporting shows 11,400 impressions inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, up 25 percent from 9,110 in August on the same calendar month basis, with the Chimney Liner Cost Guide carrying 72 percent of them. The cross-platform snapshot as of September 30 shows 74 On Duty citations against 78 in August, essentially holding, with Perplexity the largest single surface at 34 citations ahead of Google AI Mode at 18 and Google AI Overviews at 12.
Perplexity went from 5 citations in July to 30 in August to 34 in September. Two months in a row at the top of the list is a pattern, not a spike, and at 34 citations it now sits well clear of Google AI Mode at 18 and Google AI Overviews at 12. Perplexity users are disproportionately researching before a purchase rather than browsing, which makes this a high-intent surface to hold. The two Google surfaces softened in this snapshot, from 40 citations combined to 30. We are not reading much into that, because Google's own count of AI impressions for the site rose 25 percent over the same month.
Citation counts for each AI search platform tracked. "Citations" is the total number of times On Duty was named as a source in an AI answer.
Google's own Generative AI features reportA beta Google report that shows how often your pages appear inside AI-generated answers on Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode). Unlike traditional impressions, these show up when Google's AI synthesizes an answer using your content as a source. gives us Google's own direct measurement of how often On Duty pages surface inside AI Overviews and AI Mode. This one comes straight from Google.
| On Duty page | AI impressions | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| /chimney-liner-cost/ | 8,260 | 72.5% |
| /chimney-repair-cost-guide/ | 1,084 | 9.5% |
| /wood-stove-installation-guide/ | 786 | 6.9% |
| ondutychimney.com (homepage) | 526 | 4.6% |
| All other On Duty pages combined | 744 | 6.5% |
The Chimney Liner Cost Guide and the Chimney Repair Cost Guide account for 9,344 of the 11,400 impressions Google's AI generated for On Duty in September. Add the Wood Stove Installation Guide, a third pillar from the same set, and the figure reaches 88.9 percent. Google's own reporting names these pages directly, so this is a measurement rather than an estimate. Months after publication they are still the engine, and on Google's count the engine got bigger in September rather than coasting.
Second month of this view. Rather than counting citations in aggregate, it tracks the buyer questions a Central Massachusetts homeowner would actually type into an AI assistant, and checks every day whether On Duty is named among the sources. It answers the practical question directly: when a real buyer asks, does the brand come up.
ChatGPT is the stronger half of this view, and it is the half where buyers are asking open questions rather than searching. At 90 percent it is in line with the 9 of 10 questions we reported at the end of August. Google AI Overviews sits at 60 percent, against 7 of 10 at the end of August. Some of that gap is real and some of it is measurement, because Google does not generate an AI answer for every query on every check, so a quiet day reads the same as an uncited one. We report these two platform-level rates and nothing beneath them on purpose: the daily checks give us a dependable rate across the whole question set, not a dependable status for any one question on any one day.
Notes on the data: Google's Generative AI features report currently surfaces impression data only, not clicks, because AI-generated answers often satisfy the query in place without the user visiting the source. Treat those numbers as authority and exposure indicators rather than direct-traffic drivers. Separately, Google does not generate an AI Overview for every query on every check, so an uncited reading in View F above can mean either that On Duty was not cited or that Google returned no AI answer to measure on that day.
October sits in the middle of the heaviest demand window of the year, which runs from September through November. The pre-season content is published and indexing, and September showed the positions holding as demand arrived. The work for next month is not about chasing new rankings. It is about pulling more traffic out of the positions already held and pushing the page-2 cluster over the line while volume is at its peak.
The Chimney Liner Cost Guide is the strongest content asset on the site: 9,576 impressions and 51 clicks in September at an average position of 4.7, and 72 percent of the brand's Google AI impressions. Its head term "chimney liner cost" sits at position 4.8 on 895 impressions, with "chimney liner replacement cost" at 6.6 and "chimney liner installation cost" at 8.7. A dedicated stainless steel liner section and FAQ block on the guide, using the verified $4,735 to $8,896 installed range, is aimed at moving those terms toward the top 3 while demand is at its annual high.
Nine of the sixteen striking-distance terms resolve to the Chimney Repair Cost Guide, which averages position 14.5 across 315 ranking queries. The pending FAQ block plus the verified $1,440 to $5,460 cap pricing and $800 to $3,400 crown pricing, with an internal link between that guide and the Chimney Cap Cost Guide, works on the whole cluster at once and settles which page Google should rank.
"chimney repairs marlborough" is at position 10.2 with 923 impressions, two tenths of a position off page one and the closest term to a first-page position in this report. Expanding the Marlborough town page and linking it from the service-area hub is the direct lever. Worcester is the same job, one step behind: 2 of 67 priority terms in the organic top three and no top-three local pack placements at the September 30 check. Depth on the Worcester page and the masonry repair service page, linked to each other, gives Google something to rank there.