Lou Curley's Chimney Service

Impressions fell 18 percent while rankings and clicks rose.

Impressions came in at 61,562 against 75,312 in August, a drop of 18 percent, and below July's 73,985 as well. Rankings moved the other way at every depth, with top 3 up 102, first page up 205, and top 20 up 139, and clicks rose from 326 to 454, so this is not positions being lost. 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 impressions settle at this level or recover, and whether clicks keep rising alongside. If clicks start to follow impressions down, that changes the picture and we will say so.

The headline ranking counts above come from Google's own reporting, which covers every search Lou Curley's appeared for. The city-by-city and map pack numbers further down come from our daily rank tracker, which checks a set list of priority terms in each market on desktop and mobile. AI figures come from the platforms themselves, including Microsoft's and Google's own reporting. Each number stays with the source that measures it best, month to month.

117 map pack placements on September 30, from a tracked set rebuilt mid month.

The tracked keyword set was rebuilt on September 15 and now checks the same 33 priority terms in all four markets on desktop and mobile. That gives 16 days of readings and no August baseline, so these figures are a starting position, and next month's report will show the first like for like movement. Last month's 69 was counted on the earlier setup and is not comparable. Havertown and Drexel Hill are the strongest markets, and Wayne, at 5 and 6 of 33, has the most room to grow. In the Drexel Hill core, "chimney sweep," "chimney cleaning," "chimney inspection," "chimney repair," and "fireplace repair" all hold map pack position 1 on desktop.

On these 33 tracked terms, 20 organic top three finishes sit alongside the map pack placements.

This tracked view is not the headline Top 3 count, which covers every query Google showed the site for. On the 33 tracked terms, organic top three finishes on September 30 totalled 20 across the eight city and device checks, and 16 of those are brand terms. A keyword can hold a map pack spot and an organic spot at the same time, so the two counts are never added together. The split is the clearest read on where the next organic work belongs: the non-brand service terms, where the map pack is already strong and the organic listing has room to follow.

The snapshot eased from 68 to 61, with Perplexity and Copilot both up.

The snapshot total came in at 61 against 68 in August. Perplexity rose from 27 to 29 and Copilot from 3 to 4, while AI Overviews gave back 6 and Gemini and AI Mode gave back 2 each. The snapshot samples answers across the platforms and is the narrowest of the four windows, so it is best read as one input alongside the two larger counts the platforms report themselves: Google's generative AI impressions, up 21 percent, and Microsoft's 1,137 citations for the month.

ChatGPT links to the site on every tracked prompt. Google AI Overviews names the business more often than it links.

On ChatGPT, both measures are at 100 percent, unchanged from last month: every tracked prompt names Lou Curley's and every one links to a page on the site. On Google AI Overviews the business is named on 60 percent of prompts and linked on 20 percent, down from 60 percent last month. That link rate is the one measure in this view that moved the wrong way, and it defines the work. Google's AI still names the business on most of these questions, so the job is to give it a specific page worth linking, which is what deeper cost and evaluation content is for: chimney repair cost, chimney relining cost, and what a homeowner should look for when hiring.

No single page carries the Google AI footprint.

The seasoned wood guide leads at 2,051 impressions, 23 percent of the month's 8,940. The five pages behind it, the liner types guide, the homepage, and the roofer, chimney types, and shared chimney articles, add 2,333 more between them. No single page is carrying the Google AI footprint on its own, which is the more durable shape: if Google changes how it treats any one topic, the rest of the library absorbs it.

Lou Curley's owns the dryer vent frequency question inside Microsoft's AI.

Microsoft's reporting names the questions that pull the site into its answers. The lead one is "how often should dryer vents be cleaned," credited with 414 citations at a 31.4 percent citation share, and six further variants of the same question sit behind it. That footprint traces back to the dryer vent cleaning frequency pillar we published on your behalf, supported by the Dryer Vent Fire Risk post and the Dryer Vent Cleaning service page rewrite we also delivered. The site is credentialed to answer these questions too: Lou Curley is a C-DET Certified Dryer Exhaust Technician in addition to being Pennsylvania's first CSIA Master Chimney Sweep.

Four different measurement systems, and the site is a source in every one.

Google's own generative AI reporting is up 21 percent, led by the seasoned wood guide. ChatGPT links to a Lou Curley's page on every conversational prompt we track. Microsoft's reporting shows 1,137 citations for the month, lower than August's 1,452 and still anchored by a question family the site owns. And the answer platform snapshot, the narrowest of the four, stands at 61 against 68. Two windows are up or at their ceiling and two are lower than August, with the site present in all four. The depth of the content library is being picked up independently by each major answer engine, which is a durable position for a local service business to hold in AI search.