Team Empathy  ·  Sinclair Plumbing

Fourteen months
on the map.

From almost invisible across the Hutt Valley to a steady stream of calls
Sources: Your Google Business Profile, tracked through our Maps platform (169-point grid scans and daily metrics) · our delivery records · your monthly reports  ·  Assembled 12 October 2026  ·  This page is your reporting home now

Where you started, and where you are now

We measure your Maps visibility across a grid of 169 points spread over the Hutt Valley, checking where you rank from each one. When we kicked off on 30 July 2025 you were close to invisible on it.

ServiceShare of the grid in the top 3 nowAt kickoff, July 2025
plumber Upper Hutt
6.5%
1.2%
plumber Lower Hutt
15.4%
0.6%

Across all nine tracked services and all 1,521 grid points, you hold the top three at 125 points today. Upper Hutt carries both halves of the story: two points in 169 at kickoff, 43 on the 1 September scan and 11 on the 1 October scan. That step back is the main thing to talk through, and the detail is below.

A note on how we are reading this. The tracked keyword set was reset in February 2026, so the platform's own baseline already contained six months of our work. The two headline services above are measured against the original July 2025 kickoff, which is the honest before-and-after, and where a service only has the February baseline we say so.

The headline numbers

1.2% → 6.5%
Share of the 169-point grid holding you in the top 3 for "plumber Upper Hutt", after 25.4% on the 1 September scan (detail below)
0.6% → 15.4%
Same measure for "plumber Lower Hutt", up from 13.6% a month ago
47
Calls across June and July 2026, against 25 across April and May
158
Google reviews on your profile, 10 of them new in the past month, from 104 in November 2025
349
Search views in August 2026, the strongest calendar month of the engagement so far
321
Search views in the latest window, down from 391, and still inside the strongest fifth of every 31-day window since kickoff
26
Calls in July, level with the best months of the engagement
3 of 9
Tracked services with no top-3 position anywhere on the grid, all three of them bathroom renovations (detail below)

The honest picture

The Upper Hutt top three is the thing to name plainly. You held it at 43 of the 169 points on the 1 September scan and 11 on the 1 October scan, a loss of 32 points. What has not happened is a collapse down the list. You still come back at 164 of the 169 points, 121 of those inside the top ten, and the band is what changed: 49 points now return you at fourth or fifth. Fourth costs real money on Maps, because the map pack shows three.

Calls are down on the first half of the engagement, 99 across February to July against 115 across August to January, a fall of 13.9%. Direction requests swing hard month to month on small numbers, 25 in July and 51 in August. Search and maps views both grew across the same period, so people are finding you more often and picking up the phone slightly less.

All three bathroom renovation searches hold no top-three position anywhere on the grid, with two points inside the top ten between them, and that is among the higher-value work you do. Nothing material has moved there since the February baseline, which tells us the profile and the site do not yet give Google enough to rank you for it.

The things people actually do held up in the latest window. Calls came in at 20 against 18 in the window before, website clicks at 35 against 34, and Maps views were level at 63. Search views came off a very strong August at 321 against 391, which reads as a step back from a good month rather than a new problem: the strongest 31-day window on record is 403, across 20 July to 19 August. Drain unblocking is a genuine gain in the same scan, from nothing inside the top twenty in February to 13 points inside the top ten and one in the top three.

Where this goes next

OpportunityWhy it matters
Win back the Upper Hutt top three49 points on the grid return you at fourth or fifth. Those are the cheapest positions on the board to move, because you are already there and one place off the pack. This is October's focus.
The services that do not rankAll three bathroom renovation searches have never taken a top-three spot. They are winnable, they are the higher-value end of your work, and they need content and proof rather than more Maps activity.
AI assistantsThe open goal, and you now have a first reading. The platform checked ChatGPT, Gemini and Meta AI across the nine tracked services, 27 checks in all, and found you once: Gemini at position 15 for bathroom renovations in Upper Hutt. That is a baseline rather than a verdict, and it is roughly where a Maps-only engagement sits.
And the next step: Notable. We have built our own AI search platform, Notable, and it is live. It comes with a live dashboard including AI visibility tracking, so you can see exactly where you show up in AI answers. Ben is back and booking a catch-up from the week of 12 October to walk through the AI picture and the Upper Hutt scan.