Why is my pest control business slow?

First: is it the season, or is it you?

Ontario pest demand has a real trough — December through February runs a fraction of July's search volume. If it's January and the phone is quiet, that's the calendar. If it's June and the phone is quiet, something structural is broken. The checks below find it.

Check 1 — Search your own service, like a customer

Open an incognito window and search pest control [your city], then wasp nest removal [your city]. Where are you? If you're not in the map pack and not in the ads, you're invisible for the exact moment the market exists. Note who IS there — that's who's eating the season.

Check 2 — Call your own number

Call your business line at 2pm on a Tuesday. Did a human answer? Did anything text back when you hung up? Pest is urgent — the first operator to respond books the job. A missed call with no text-back is a lead handed to the next name on the list. This is the cheapest fix on this page.

Check 3 — Count your ad groups

If you're running Google Ads, open the account and count. One or two ad groups covering every service is the classic structure problem: termites, bed bugs, and "ants in kitchen" sharing one Quality Score and one landing page. Google charges you more to show for everything, and the high-value keywords never get their own page. The fix is the pest-type restructure.

Check 4 — Read your last twenty reviews

Count them by month. A profile that collected fifteen reviews two summers ago and four since is a profile Google is quietly demoting. Review velocity — the steady ask after every job — matters more than review count. The GBP guide covers the system.

Check 5 — Ask ChatGPT who to call

Ask ChatGPT: "Best pest control company in [your city]?" If you're not named, your site isn't telling machines who you are, what you treat, and where. A growing slice of customers never see the blue links at all — the AI search guide explains what gets an operator on the list.

Check 6 — Map last month's jobs

Drop last month's jobs on a map. Are they clustered where your trucks already run, or scattered across an hour of windshield? Scattered stops at full price still lose money against clustered stops at the same price. If the map looks like buckshot, the targeting is set to "anyone," and the fix is geographic — bid where density pays.

What to do with what you found

Most operators fail two or three of the six. The order to fix them is almost always: answer speed first (days), account structure second (weeks), reviews and site clarity third (months). The free diagnostic reads the public side of all six and comes back with the fix order — plus a strategy session with Chris.