MaloneCo

08/29/2026

🚨 Google just rolled out an update every brand, Law Firm, and SEO should pay attention to.

It's called Preferred Sources, and it allows users to tell Google which websites they trust and want to hear from more often.

Once selected, content from those websites becomes more likely to appear in Top Stories and can also be highlighted in AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Think about that.

For most of SEO's history, we've focused on convincing Google's algorithm that our website deserves visibility.

Now users can explicitly tell Google who they trust.

This is another example of something I've been saying for a while:

SEO and brand are becoming harder and harder to separate.

The future of search isn't just about rankings, links, content, and technical SEO.

It's about building a brand people recognize, trust, search for, and now potentially tell Google they want to hear from.

If you have an audience, I'd start thinking about how you can get them to add your website as a Preferred Source.

I think we're only seeing the beginning of where this is headed.

08/29/2026

I spent the morning sketching a new system for a client, and it reminded me of a fundamental truth about growth you cannot build a scalable business on a fragile foundation.

Every lead she'd gotten in the last year had landed in one personal inbox.

Most businesses start with what I call Design A. It's simple, direct, manual a lead comes in, the founder sees it, the founder handles it. That works perfectly when you're just starting out.

But as you grow, Design A becomes the bottleneck.

If you're in a meeting, the lead waits. If you're asleep, the lead goes cold. If you forget to follow up, the opportunity is just gone. In Design A, the founder is the single point of failure.

That's why I move clients to Design B a system built for scale, not just storage. It doesn't just hold contacts. It manages the journey

Filters and qualifies leads instantly

Answers common questions immediately

Handles follow-up without depending on anyone remembering to do it

Gives every prospect a clear next step, 24/7

The shift from A to B isn't really about technology. It's about moving from a business that runs on your memory to one that runs on a system you built.

One lets you survive the hustle. The other lets you scale beyond it.

Which design is your business currently running on?

If you're not sure, send me SYSTEM and I'll help you find out.

08/27/2026

Quick SEO check for every home service company following me: ask whoever manages your website to validate your structured data this week.

This is one of those technical SEO things most business owners will never see, but it can absolutely matter.

Structured data, or schema, is basically code behind your website that helps search engines understand what they're looking at. Your business. Services. Reviews where eligible. Videos. Breadcrumbs. Products. Articles. Locations. And other information about the page.

The problem is that simply having schema on your website doesn't mean it's working correctly.

Google has recently tightened how it parses structured data, meaning certain formatting mistakes that may have previously been tolerated can now cause markup to fail parsing correctly.

So here's what I would be asking my SEO or website team this week:

“Can you validate the structured data across our important pages and make sure Google can actually parse it correctly?”

Not “Do we have schema?”

Actually validate it.

Run your important service pages through Google's Rich Results Test where applicable and Schema.org's validator. Check Search Console for structured-data enhancement issues. Look for invalid JSON-LD, improperly escaped characters, outdated markup, duplicate/conflicting information and schema that doesn't actually match what's visible on the page.

And please don't turn this into “WE NEED MORE SCHEMA!” 😂

That's not the point.

Adding 40 different schema types isn't some secret way to rank #1.

The goal is making the information you DO provide accurate, technically valid and consistent with the actual page.

This is also why technical SEO still matters so much while everyone is screaming that “SEO is dead because of AI.”

Search is changing.

AI search is changing.

How information gets retrieved and presented is changing.

But underneath all of that, machines still need to be able to crawl, interpret and understand what your website is telling them.

Sometimes improving your marketing isn't creating another 100 pages.

Sometimes it's making sure Google can properly understand the pages you already have.

Schema.org is a set of extensible schemas that enables webmasters to embed structured data on their web pages for use by search engines and other applications.

08/25/2026

I think one of the biggest reasons home service marketing fails is because businesses confuse activity with strategy.

They’re posting four times a week. Running Google Ads. Running Meta Ads. Paying for SEO. Writing blogs. Sending emails. Using LSA. Boosting posts. Maybe even trying TikTok.

There’s a lot happening.

But if I ask one simple question — “What is all of this supposed to accomplish?” — a lot of businesses don’t have a clear answer.

That’s the problem.

Marketing activity can make you feel productive while still producing very little growth.

You can publish 50 blogs nobody finds or cares about. You can post every single day without building any real authority. You can spend $20,000 on ads sending people to a website that doesn’t build trust. You can generate 100 leads and still lose money because nobody answers the phone, the close rate is terrible, or the leads are for services you barely make money on.

That’s why I keep coming back to two things:

Strategy before spend. System before scale.

Before I put another dollar into advertising, I want to understand what happens after someone sees the ad.

Where do they go? What do they see? Do they trust the company? Does the website answer their questions? Are there enough reviews? Are we tracking the lead correctly? Does somebody answer the phone? Can they book the appointment? Do we follow up? Do we close? Does that customer come back? Do they refer anyone?

Because if that system is broken, increasing the marketing budget doesn’t solve the problem.

It just sends more people through a broken system.

And the same thing applies to organic marketing.

Let’s say I own a plumbing company and I want to become THE water-treatment company in a particular market.

Now we have direction.

Our technicians should be answering hard-water questions on video. Our website should have incredible water-treatment resources. Our SEO strategy should support those services. Our social media should educate homeowners about water quality. Our Google Business Profile should show real installations. Our customer reviews should naturally tell stories about those services. Our paid ads can then amplify all of it.

Now Facebook, Google, SEO, video, reviews, the website and paid advertising aren’t seven random marketing activities.

They’re seven pieces of the same strategy.

That’s what I think a lot of home service companies are missing.

You don’t necessarily need another tactic.

You need everything you’re already doing to start moving in the same direction.

So the next time someone tells you, “We need to post more,” “We need another blog,” “We need more ad spend,” or “We need to try another platform,” ask one question first:

Why?

What business outcome is this supposed to create?

If nobody can answer that clearly, I’d seriously question why you’re spending time or money on it.

Because the goal isn’t to do more marketing.

The goal is to build a marketing system where every piece has a reason for being there, every channel supports the others, and everything eventually connects back to growth.

That’s the difference between doing marketing and actually having a strategy.

08/22/2026

Facebook basically just told every home service company what I’ve been saying for a while: stop trying to look like a media company and start showing your actual company.

Meta has been very clear that Facebook is prioritizing original content in Feed and Reels while deprioritizing unoriginal and low-value content. Meta even reported that views and time spent watching original Reels roughly doubled in the second half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024.

I think this matters a lot for home services because I still see companies spending so much time trying to make their social media look perfect.

Perfect Canva graphics. Stock photos of technicians who don’t work there. Generic “5 Ways to Save Money on Your Energy Bill” posts. AI-generated captions. Holiday graphics. The same content that 500 other HVAC, plumbing, roofing and electrical companies could post tomorrow.

Meanwhile, there’s a technician standing next to a 15-year-old AC system who could explain in 45 seconds exactly why it failed.

I’ll take that video every single time.

Show the technician. Show the broken part. Show the homeowner’s problem. Explain what happened. Show the repair. Show the before and after. Let the owner talk about something they disagree with in the industry. Answer a question a customer asked that morning. Show the new employee. Show the team meeting. Show the ugly job nobody wanted. Show something happening in your community.

It doesn’t have to be perfectly filmed.

It needs to be yours.

And that’s an important distinction going into 2027. I think we’ve spent years teaching businesses that “content creation” means sitting in an office trying to figure out what to post.

Home service companies already have content happening around them every single day.

Your technicians are seeing problems homeowners want answers to. Your CSRs are hearing questions homeowners are searching for. Your salespeople are hearing objections. Your customers are telling stories. Your crews are completing jobs. Your owner has years of knowledge and opinions sitting in their head.

Document it.

Then let your marketing team turn those experiences into Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, website content, SEO, email and everything else.

AI can help you edit it. AI can help repurpose it. AI can help organize it.

But AI shouldn’t be the experience itself.

Facebook is giving us another reason to think this way. Meta says original content receives greater distribution while duplicative content and low-value modifications can be deprioritized.

So if I owned a home service company right now, I wouldn’t be asking my marketing person, “What are we posting on Facebook this week?”

I’d be asking:

“What happened inside our company this week that’s worth showing people?”

That’s where I’d start.

08/20/2026

Late night and you’re not going to believe what I just found…

Google launched another search ranking update TODAY.

It’s officially called the August 2026 spam update, it applies globally across all languages, and Google says it could take a few days to completely roll out.

If you own a home service company, this is exactly why I keep telling you that SEO cannot be something your marketing company sets up and checks once a month.

Google is changing while we’re sitting here.

Now, before everyone freaks out and starts changing their website tomorrow morning, DON’T.

An update rolling out does not mean your rankings are going to tank. It also doesn’t mean every ranking movement you see tomorrow was caused by the update.

I’d be watching.

What happens to your important service pages?

What happens to your Google visibility?

Which competitors move?

Do sites with hundreds of thin or duplicated pages start moving?

Do your calls or organic leads actually change?

And most importantly, wait for enough data before making major decisions.

This is also why I’ve been warning home service businesses about pumping out hundreds of AI-generated pages simply because AI makes it easy.

Google isn’t against AI.

Google is against trying to manipulate search with low-value content.

There’s a HUGE difference.

I’ll be watching this rollout closely across home services because I’m much more interested in what actually happens than making predictions tonight.

But if your SEO company isn’t even aware Google launched a ranking update today…

I’d probably be asking some questions

08/14/2026

Yesterday I had a discovery call with a home service business owner who told me something that I think a lot more companies are experiencing right now. This time last year, he was having the best year his company had ever had. Today, business is down over 50%. It almost feels like it happened overnight.

The first thing I told him was that when something changes that dramatically, I don't immediately assume the marketing stopped working. I want to understand what changed around the business, because the home service market in 2026 is very different depending on what you sell. Homeowners are still spending money, but they're becoming much more selective about where they spend it. One 2026 homeowner survey found 77% are delaying or scaling back projects because of rising costs, even though 96% still plan to spend something on their homes. Another study found spending on necessary repairs has held up much better than discretionary home improvements.

That distinction matters. A leaking pipe doesn't care about consumer confidence. A homeowner can delay a $40,000 kitchen remodel. They can repair an AC system another year instead of replacing it. They can postpone new flooring. They can get three estimates instead of immediately signing the first one. They can finance the project, reduce its scope or simply wait. Harvard's latest remodeling outlook is now projecting growth in improvement and repair spending to slow to just 0.5% year over year by the second quarter of 2027.

So how can a business be crushing it one year and down 50% the next?

Because sometimes a great year hides weaknesses.

Maybe demand was so strong that you didn't need great SEO. Maybe your Google Ads were carrying the business. Maybe referrals were flowing. Maybe one service category was unusually hot. Maybe your close rate could be mediocre because there were enough opportunities coming through the door. Maybe your competitors weren't spending aggressively. Maybe seasonality worked heavily in your favor.

Then the market tightens and suddenly all those little weaknesses become very expensive.

That's why if a home service company came to me down 50%, I wouldn't start randomly changing marketing. I'd diagnose the business from the top down.

First, I'd determine whether market demand actually changed. What happened to search volume for your services in your market? Which services declined? Did everything fall 50%, or did two high-revenue categories collapse and make the entire company look down?

Then I'd look at visibility. Did rankings change? Did the Google Business Profile lose visibility? Did competitors gain ground? Did paid impression share change? Did budgets, bidding, payment methods, targeting or campaign structure change? Did your Local Services Ads change? Did the website lose traffic? Did something technical happen?

Then I'd look at conversion. Maybe traffic isn't down 50%. Maybe calls are. What changed on the website? Are forms working? Is call tracking working? Are homeowners visiting but not converting? Are competitors presenting financing, stronger reviews, better guarantees or more compelling proof?

Then I go further into the business. How many calls are actually being answered? What's the booking rate? What's the show rate? What's the close rate compared with last year? Average ticket? Financing acceptance? Cancellation rate? How quickly are estimates followed up? How many leads never receive a second call?

Because imagine demand drops 15%, your organic visibility drops another 10%, your cost per lead rises, and your close rate goes from 45% to 30%.

It can feel like your business fell off a cliff even though there wasn't one single thing that caused it.

That's what I think home service owners need to understand about this market.

You can't run a 2026 business assuming last year's demand will automatically come back.

If I were down 50%, I wouldn't immediately double my Google Ads budget either. I'd figure out exactly where the 50% disappeared first. I'd pull last year's numbers beside this year's numbers and work all the way through impressions, traffic, leads, booked calls, estimates, close rate, average ticket, repeat customers and referrals.

Find the first place the numbers meaningfully separate.

That's usually where the investigation starts.

Then I would get extremely aggressive about the things I can control. Strengthen the website. Build better service pages. Document real jobs. Collect legitimate reviews. Improve the Google Business Profile. Create useful video. Stay visible on social. Reactivate previous customers. Build referral relationships. Improve follow-up. Offer financing where it makes sense. Measure every acquisition channel. Make sure every lead is being worked properly.

And most importantly, I wouldn't panic and start changing everything at once.

A 50% decline is scary. But “business is down” isn't a diagnosis.

Why is it down? Where did it start? What changed? What can we control?

Those are the questions I would spend my time answering before spending another dollar trying to fix it.

08/14/2026

I think we’re going to see home service companies spend MORE money on marketing while actually becoming LESS differentiated.

AI is making marketing easier and cheaper to produce. AI websites. AI blogs. AI social posts. AI ads. AI graphics. AI videos. Everyone suddenly has the ability to create more content, more pages, more ads and more marketing than ever before.

But there’s a problem.

Everyone is starting to sound exactly the same.

Same stock photos. Same offers. Same “family-owned and operated” messaging. Same financing language. Same blogs answering the same questions. Same perfectly written social posts. Same websites telling homeowners they provide “quality service you can trust.”

We’re getting more efficient at creating marketing, but I’m not convinced we’re getting better at creating brands people actually remember.

If I owned a home service company going into 2027, I would actually go the opposite direction.

I would use AI heavily behind the scenes, but I would make the things homeowners see more human than ever.

I’d put the owner on camera. I’d introduce the technicians. I’d photograph the actual jobs. I’d show the ugly before photos, not just the perfect after photos. I’d talk about jobs that didn’t go as planned and what we learned from them. I’d answer the uncomfortable questions homeowners ask about price. I’d explain why we recommend certain products and why we don’t recommend others. I’d show the neighborhoods we work in and problems that are specific to homes in our market.

I’d have technicians document what they’re seeing in homes every week. I’d have CSRs keep a running list of questions customers are asking. I’d turn estimates, objections, service calls and customer conversations into content ideas. I’d make our website feel like it could only have been created by OUR company.

I’d also develop actual opinions.

That’s going to matter.

If every HVAC company says every system is great, nobody remembers anyone. Tell me what systems you’ve had problems with. Tell me what homeowners waste money on. Tell me when you would repair instead of replace. Tell me when the expensive option isn’t worth it. Tell me what you’ve learned after doing thousands of calls.

That’s experience AI can’t manufacture.

I’d use AI to help organize all of that knowledge, research topics, edit videos, analyze data, repurpose content and make the company more efficient.

But I wouldn’t let AI become the personality of the company.

And I definitely wouldn’t use it as an excuse to create 500 pieces of generic content just because we suddenly can.

I think that’s going to be one of the biggest marketing opportunities over the next few years.

As generic marketing becomes almost free to produce, originality becomes more valuable.

Your people become the advantage. Your experience becomes the advantage. Your customers become the advantage. Your opinions become the advantage. Your actual work becomes the advantage.

AI can help amplify all of it.

But first, you have to give it something worth amplifying.

The companies I’m betting on going into 2027 aren’t going to be the ones that look the most AI-powered.

They’re going to be the ones that use AI incredibly well behind the scenes while somehow feeling more human everywhere the customer looks.

08/14/2026

𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗜 𝘀𝗲𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗯𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲𝘀...

Everything is mixed together.

• Service pages
• Location pages
• Blog posts

They're all published, but there's no clear connection between them.

𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲...

Let's say you're a dentist and you want more patients for dental implants.

Many websites only have one "Dental Implants" page and expect it to rank.

Instead, build content around that service.

Your main Dental Implants page can be supported by articles like:

✔ Who is a good candidate for dental implants?✔ How much do dental implants cost?
✔ Dental implants vs bridges
✔ What is the recovery process?
✔ Common questions about dental implants

Each of those pages should naturally point back to your main Dental Implants page.

Now you're not just telling Google what you do...

You're showing that you genuinely know the topic.

I've noticed that websites with a clear content structure are much easier for both Google and AI to understand.

Sometimes it's not about writing more content.

It's about organizing the content you already have.

Thank You...

08/11/2026

There’s a lot of Google Business Profile advice being repeated as fact right now that I don’t think we actually have enough evidence to call fact. One of the biggest examples is posting frequency.

I’ve heard everything from “You need to post every day” to “You need to post three or four times a week” to “The more you post, the better you’ll rank.” But when you actually start looking for evidence that posting more frequently improves local rankings, it gets a lot harder to prove.

For most home service businesses, posting at least once per week on your Google Business Profile is enough. Not because Google has told everyone once a week is some magic number, but because I haven’t seen convincing evidence that posting three, four, or seven times per week produces better rankings than one consistent, quality post per week.

And if I saw legitimate evidence tomorrow showing that four posts per week consistently improved rankings, we’d change the strategy. That’s how marketing should work.

Google itself says local rankings are primarily based on relevance, distance, and prominence. It encourages businesses to use Google Business Profile posts to communicate updates, offers, photos, videos, and other information, but it doesn’t tell us that increasing your posting frequency increases your local rankings.

That doesn’t mean Google Posts are worthless. They absolutely have a purpose. It means I don’t believe in creating additional deliverables just so we can say we’re doing more.

If I have another five hours to invest into a home service company’s organic strategy this month, where is that time going to create the biggest impact? Is it publishing 15 more Google Posts, or is it improving service pages, creating better content around homeowner questions, getting real job photos and videos onto the website, strengthening internal linking, building local authority, improving the Google Business Profile, earning legitimate reviews, or finding gaps competitors are beating us on?

That’s the question I care about.

I think this is where business owners need to be careful with marketing in general. More activity does not automatically equal better marketing.

Four Google Posts aren’t automatically better than one.

Eight blogs aren’t automatically better than four.

Fifty city pages aren’t automatically better than ten great ones.

Posting on social media three times a day isn’t automatically better than posting once with something people actually care about.

More deliverables look great on a proposal. That doesn’t mean they’re creating more business.

I would rather do fewer things where we understand the purpose behind them than create a massive checklist of activity simply because it makes it look like more work is being done.

And I’m completely open to being proven wrong. That’s actually how I think good marketing should work. If new data, testing, or changes from Google show us that something works better, adapt immediately.

But until then, I don’t want to tell a business owner something is a ranking strategy simply because it’s become common SEO advice.

If someone tells you that you need to post on your Google Business Profile every single day to improve your rankings, there’s nothing wrong with asking one simple question:

“Can you show me the evidence that posting daily ranks better than posting once a week?”

We should all be willing to answer questions like that.

Because business owners aren’t paying marketing companies to stay busy.

They’re paying us to know where their time and money have the best chance of creating an impact.