Guide · Website
Home care agency website checklist: can families reach you and can AI read you?
Check four things: families can reach you, machines can read you, the site says what families ask, and it looks maintained. Your Google listing must link to a working site, your email and call button must work, crawlers must see real text, and the page must say plainly what care you provide, where, and how private pay works.
Can families reach you?
From my check of 160 independent agency websites in Omaha, Lincoln, Des Moines and Kansas City, these are the failures that lose enquiries outright.
- Click your website link from your Google listing.Five listings pointed at a domain that no longer worked; five more loaded a different company.
- Open the site in a browser and look for a security warning.Six sites showed one before the page loaded.
- Find your phone number and email without scrolling past the first screen.Seven sites published neither, anywhere.
- Email the address on your contact page from a personal account.Four published addresses were on domains that don't work or don't match the site.
- Tap the call button from a phone.On some sites the button dialled a different number than the one printed next to it.
Can AI assistants and search engines read you?
A crawler doesn't see your site the way you do.
- Search Google for
site:yourdomain.com.Read the grey summary text. Blank, placeholder or someone else's words means that's roughly what an assistant sees too. - Ask whoever built the site whether the text is in the page or drawn by JavaScript.Two sites drew every word after loading, so crawlers received no visible text.
- Open
yourdomain.com/robots.txt.One site's robots.txt told search engines not to read it. - Check that injected spam isn't in your search listing.Three sites had been hacked and were serving spam; on one, the spam was in the description search engines read.
Does it say what families are asking?
These are the kinds of statements ChatGPT quoted when it explained why it named an agency. Each belongs on your site in plain words, only if true.
- The services you provide, by name.Personal care, companionship, respite, overnight, live-in or 24-hour care.
- Dementia or memory care, if it's a real specialty.In Kansas City ChatGPT put one agency first because it makes dementia care “a core specialty rather than simply listing it among dozens of services.”
- A free in-home assessment, if you offer one.Named as a reason for recommending an agency in more than one city.
- How private pay works.Payment types, minimum hours, and whether the assessment costs anything. In Lincoln, ChatGPT told families to ask exactly these questions.
- Every town and suburb you serve.Bellevue and Papillion each returned only four home care results in Google Maps data, likely because the Omaha search absorbs them.
- Your license, where your state issues one, and whether you're locally owned.Assistants pointed families to state license lookups in Florida and Nebraska.
Does it look maintained?
Families choosing who to let into a parent's home read closely.
- Search the site for template text.Twenty-two sites still showed placeholder text, unfilled counters or demo copy.
- Check the copyright year in the footer.An old year reads as an abandoned business.
- Make sure your email is on your own domain.An address on a domain you don't own can look like phishing to families and to spam filters.
What should you do with the results?
Fix anything in the first two sections today; those failures cost enquiries now. The third section is the content work that makes you easier to recommend. Why that content matters for ChatGPT.
Short answers
Questions owners ask
How do I know if my site is readable by AI assistants?
Search Google for site:yourdomain.com and read the summary under your link. If it is blank, wrong or placeholder text, crawlers are not reading what you see.
Do I need a new website?
Rarely. Many of the failures in the audit were a wrong email, a leftover setting or unfilled template text, which can be fixed without a rebuild.
How often should I run this checklist?
After any change to your site or hosting, and otherwise every few months. Domains lapse and sites get hacked without anyone noticing.
See what ChatGPT says about your agency
I'll run these questions for your city, show you which agencies get named and why, and list what your site and listings are missing. Twenty minutes, no charge, and you keep the findings either way.
Book a Visibility Review