More difficult trail to Locator Peak
Collision Repair Locator
A public directory of 4,700+ certified collision centers. In its first months it went from zero to 57,000 search impressions and 2,200 Microsoft Copilot citations.
- Role
- Sole engineer, plus the SEO and answer engine optimization (AEO) program
- When
- Launched July 2026
- Status
- Live at collisionrepairlocator.com
4,700+
certified collision centers, 2,200 cities
57,000
Google + Bing impressions by Sept 21
2,200
Microsoft Copilot citations in 60 days
3,900+
Google AI Overview appearances
Architecture
Data
- Assurity platform (shared MySQL)
- 4,700+ centers, 2,200 cities
Site
- ZIP search: map + tiers
- City pages + shop spotlights
- Driver guides + schema.org
Discovery
- Google + Bing
- Copilot, AI Overviews, ChatGPT
Action
- Appointment requests to shops
- Free AI estimator + translator
Measurement
- AI crawler tracking, 14 bots
- Weekly PDF: GSC, Bing, GA4, bookings
Google + Bing search impressions since launch
collisionrepairlocator.com, running total by week through Sept 21, 2026, from Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
View as table
| Week of | Running total |
|---|---|
| Jun 28 | 17 |
| Jul 5 | 51 |
| Jul 12 | 303 |
| Jul 19 | 4,302 |
| Jul 26 | 6,326 |
| Aug 2 | 10,965 |
| Aug 9 | 15,106 |
| Aug 16 | 18,539 |
| Aug 23 | 25,625 |
| Aug 30 | 35,353 |
| Sep 6 | 44,573 |
| Sep 13 | 54,646 |
| Sep 20 (through Sep 21) | 56,932 |
The problem
Assurity certifies collision repair centers. Drivers needed a way to find one, and the network needed real driver traffic before shops would pay to join. The domain launched in July 2026 with zero authority.
What I built
A PHP site on a small custom MVC that shares a MySQL database with the Assurity platform. It reads shop data from the platform and writes appointment requests back, so shops handle them in the portal they already use.
- ZIP search with a map and a list grouped by certification tier
- A spotlight page for every shop, with a Request Appointment button and phone tracking
- A city page for every major market, linked to nearby cities
- Driver guides on the things nobody explains: betterment, R&I vs R&R, direct repair programs, diminished value, ADAS calibration, and how to read an estimate
- The free AI estimator and estimate translator, backed by Collision Estimate AI
Built to be read by AI
I planned for AI assistants from the start:
- schema.org markup on every page type, plus an llms.txt
- Guides written to answer the exact questions people ask assistants
- Tracking for 14 AI crawlers, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and OAI-SearchBot, so I can see what they read
- A weekly PDF report that pulls Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, GA4 sessions from AI assistants, and bookings from the database. Each source fails on its own, so one API hiccup never kills the whole email.
Results
By September 21, 2026:
- 57,000 combined Google and Bing search impressions
- Page 1 on Bing for “collision repair near me” (average position 4.4) and “auto body shops near me” (5.9)
- 2,200 Microsoft Copilot citations in 60 days. When Copilot answers “certified collision repair center,” it cites the locator 42% of the time.
- 3,900+ Google AI Overview appearances in the same window, more than 80% of them in September
- ChatGPT names the site when asked where to find certified body shops, and chatgpt.com shows up as a traffic source
What I learned
Bing moved first. In the first two months it sent about twice the clicks Google did, and Copilot runs on Bing’s index, so the citations followed. If you’re starting a new domain and care about AI answers, don’t treat Bing as an afterthought.