Local Visibility Report — Hale & Whitfield Injury Law

⚠️ Fictional example business — for illustration only. This entire report is a fictional example built to show what a FoundFirst report looks like. Every name, address, phone number, website, ranking, review count, rating and competitor in it is invented for illustration and is not based on any real business. No live search, AI or crawl was run against a real firm to produce it. The "observed" values in §03–§10 are realistic but fictional examples, not measurements; the impact / difficulty / time estimates in §11 are estimates, not measurements.

Prepared by FoundFirst · 2026-10-02 (illustrative) · Report ID: FF-SAMPLE-FICT-US-20261002

Hale & Whitfield Injury Law · personal injury · Boise, Idaho · Service area: Boise metro + Nampa, Meridian and the Treasure Valley (the firm's own words)

READ THIS FIRST: this report is a prioritised diagnosis based on the dated checks below. It is not a guarantee of rankings, traffic or calls. No such guarantee exists.

Checks completed (illustrative — no live run): 10 Google queries (SerpAPI engine=google) · 7 AI prompts (OpenAI API web search, gpt-4o-mini) · Google AI Overview where Google returned one · own-property audit of the site, Google Business Profile (via SerpAPI engine=google_maps), reviews, posts, photos and the top 3 competitors. The numbers below are a fictional, internally consistent example of what such a run returns; they are not dated measurements of any real business. Google location used (illustrative): Boise,Idaho,United States (the value SerpAPI echoes as search_parameters.location_used on such a run) · 2026-10-02.

01 · The verdict

Hale & Whitfield is not invisible — it is the third firm in a two-horse race. The firm holds the #3 slot in Google's local pack for personal injury lawyer boise and its own site is on page one for 5 of 8 money queries — but it is absent from the pack for every car-, truck- and motorcycle-accident query (the higher-value jobs), where two larger competitors rotate through the top three slots. In AI assistants the firm is a distant third: the OpenAI web-search tool names it in 2 of 6 money prompts, never above #3, and it is not named for car or truck accidents.

The single clearest observable cause is review recency and mix, not absence. The profile is maintained (a UTM-tagged website link, a real description naming Boise and the practice areas), but it carries 76 reviews at 4.5, with 14 one-star reviews (18% of the total) and no new review in over five months, while the two pack incumbents sit at 4.9 (217 reviews) and 4.8 (164 reviews) and both display "Open 24 hours" where Hale & Whitfield is Mon–Fri 8–5, closed weekends. On the two signals the local pack weighs most — rating/review recency and hours — the firm reads as the third option, and Google shows exactly that.

At a glance (illustrative — fictional example)

02 · How these checks were run

This sample shows the production method; the figures it returns here are fictional. The method is identical to a real paid report — only the data has been replaced with an invented example.

• Google Search / Maps — SerpAPI. Ten queries would run through engine=google, location="Boise, Idaho, United States", gl=us, hl=en, num=20. SerpAPI echoes location_used: "Boise,Idaho,United States". The local 3-pack is local_results.places[] (each entry carries an explicit position 1–3 plus rating/reviews); page-one organic results are organic_results[]; a Google AI Overview, where returned, is in ai_overview.text_blocks / ai_overview.references. One raw JSON file per query.
• Google Business Profile, reviews, posts, photos — SerpAPI engine=google_maps. Each firm's public place data (categories, address, phone, website, hours, rating, review count, star distribution, attributes) via engine=google_maps (type=search), review recency via engine=google_maps_reviews, posts via engine=google_maps_posts, photos via engine=google_maps_photos. These return Google's public place data, not the private "Business Profile Manager" fields — see §12 for what that excludes.
• AI assistants — OpenAI Responses API web search. Seven prompts sent to the OpenAI Responses API (model gpt-4o-mini) with the web_search tool enabled, so every answer is web-grounded and carries url_citation annotations. This is the API's web-search tool — it is not the ChatGPT consumer app, and no line below claims otherwise.
• Own-property audit. The site, public profile pages, directories, review sources and the top-3 competitors are fetched/crawled and read field by field (title, H1, schema JSON-LD, phone numbers, navigation). Directory pages that refuse crawls (Avvo/Yelp/Martindale often return HTTP 403) are recorded as "not checked" rather than guessed.
• Repeatability. These are dated snapshots of Google's and OpenAI's outputs. AI answers and rankings move with location, device, history and time; two runs of the same prompt can differ. Nothing here is a stable ranking or a promise.

Provenance convention: a real report labels every AI / Google-AI line with its true source and date (OpenAI API web search, <date> / Google AI Overview via SerpAPI, <date>). In this fictional example those labels are retained for realism; the values they attach to are invented, not measured.

03 · Google map pack + organic rankings

Source & evidence (illustrative): SerpAPI engine=google → serp-google-q{n}-{slug}.json (one per query). Map-pack order is local_results.places[].position; own-domain position is the index of the firm's domain in organic_results[]. All values below are fictional examples.

Shape of the problem. The firm's visibility is narrow but real: it surfaces on page one for five of eight money queries and holds the #3 pack slot for the two broad "personal injury lawyer" phrasings — but it never rises above #3, and it drops out of the pack entirely for car, truck and motorcycle accidents, the three jobs with the strongest commercial intent. The pack is held by a rotating set: Bridgewater Injury Group (4.9 · 217 reviews), Cedar Point Injury Attorneys (4.8 · 164) and Summit Ridge Trial Lawyers (4.6 · 98). Two phrasing notes: a Local Services Ads (LSA) block sits above the pack on six of the money queries (Bridgewater and Cedar Point buy it; the firm does not), and the brand query is fully controlled — the firm's own site is #1 and its own review profiles, not competitors, fill the rest of page one.

04 · AI assistants + Google AI Overviews

Source & evidence (illustrative): OpenAI API web search → openai-q{n}-{slug}.json; Google AI Overview → ai_overview inside serp-google-q7-*.json and chained serp-aio-*.json. Values below are fictional examples.

The AI surface mirrors the Google surface. The OpenAI web-search tool names the firm in two of the six money prompts — best personal injury lawyer (#3 on both runs) and call after a car accident (#4) — and the answers lean on the firm's own Google Business Profile listing. It is not named for car accident, truck accident or motorcycle accident, exactly the queries where it is also absent from the Google pack in §03. The brand answer reproduces the firm's own claims (the citations point at the firm's site, Avvo and Yelp); because those are the firm's own pages, the answer is best read as the firm's self-description surfacing, not independent validation.

Google AI Overview (Google AI Overview via SerpAPI, illustrative) — only one of the ten queries (best personal injury lawyer boise) returned an AI Overview, and it was informational (how to choose a lawyer) rather than a firm list, so no firm order could be extracted and the firm's domain did not appear among its cited sources. The other nine queries returned no Overview (commercial local queries) — an observation about Google, not about the firm.

Instability is real. The best personal injury lawyer prompt was run twice; both runs named the firm at #3, but the firms at #1 and #2 (Bridgewater and Cedar Point) swapped order between runs. An AI answer is a dated snapshot, not a leaderboard. Not worth chasing: the informational settlement prompt named no firm — but note it leaned entirely on one third-party informational domain, which is itself an opportunity (§11).

05 · Google Business Profile

Source & evidence (illustrative): SerpAPI engine=google_maps → crawl-gbp-hale-whitfield.json; posts → crawl-posts-*.json; photos → crawl-photos-*.json. Values below are fictional examples. Completeness is stated against the fields observable from Google's public place data; the 5 private fields are flagged in §12, not guessed.

Gaps that matter. (1) Hours read as a liability next to the incumbents — the firm is "Closed · Opens 8 AM" and closed weekends, while Bridgewater and Cedar Point display "Open 24 hours" (a setting that makes them eligible for every "open now" and after-hours query; see the honesty note in §11). (2) The Q&A section has two unanswered questions — an owned surface the firm is letting sit empty. (3) Posts are stale (last ~4 months ago) while Cedar Point posts roughly weekly. The profile is otherwise sound — correct primary category, a real description, UTM tracking on the link — so the problem is not the profile basics but the rating, hours and activity cadence.

06 · Reviews

Source & evidence (illustrative): SerpAPI engine=google_maps star distributions → crawl-gbp-*.json; recency → crawl-reviews-{hale-whitfield,bridgewater}.json. Values below are fictional examples.

The single largest deficit. The firm's 4.5 is dragged down by 14 one-star reviews — 18% of its total — while Bridgewater and Cedar Point hold 4.9 and 4.8 respectively, and even Summit Ridge averages 4.6 with fewer one-star reviews (5 of 98). Just as important is velocity: the firm has received no new review since 2026-04-18, whereas Bridgewater — the firm now outranking it — has added ~11 reviews in the last 90 days. Review recency and rating are the two signals that most directly explain the pack order in §03. Owner replies could not be observed from the public crawl (the response field is not exposed by the Maps API); answering the 14 one-star reviews is the cheapest rating-repair lever available and shows activity Google and prospective clients both read.

07 · Directories & citations

Source & evidence (illustrative): presence → serp-google-q9-brand.json, serp-google-q10-brand.json, openai-q5-brand.json, openai-q7-authority.json; direct crawls → crawl-directory-*.json (Avvo/Yelp/Martindale return HTTP 403). Values below are fictional examples.

Canonical NAP (from Google's public place data): 914 W Grove Street, Suite 220, Boise, ID 83702 · (208) 555-0147. The firm's own site shows the same address and phone.

What this shows. The firm has a broad third-party footprint and a controlled brand query — its own profiles, not competitors, fill page one. But per-directory NAP is only partly verified (several crawls return HTTP 403), and the one inconsistency we could observe is the Yelp phone number, which shows an old number that no longer matches the site. A single stale phone across two major properties is the kind of mismatch Google's own guidelines tell businesses to avoid, and it is fixable in minutes.

08 · Website

Source & evidence (illustrative): own crawl → crawl-site-{homepage,car-accident,about}.json / .html. Values below are fictional examples.

Website-side verdict. The on-page local content is strong — city-named title, H1 and meta description, dedicated pages for three of the four money jobs, tap-to-call, and named-attorney trust signals. The defensible gaps are technical and coverage-related: (1) no truck-accident page — the firm lists truck accidents in its description but has no page for them, so it cannot be shown for truck accident lawyer boise (§03); (2) schema markup is generic — a single Yoast @graph with no Attorney/LegalService/LocalBusiness node and no address/phone/geo, so the firm's local facts are not machine-readable the way Google and the AI assistants expect; and (3) mobile speed is low (41/100) relative to the incumbents.

09 · Local authority

Source & evidence (illustrative): OpenAI API web search → openai-q7-authority.json; organic observations → serp-google-q9-brand.json. Values below are fictional examples.

Scope note: true backlink count/quality needs a link-index tool (Ahrefs/Moz/Semrush) that is not in the current stack. This section reports mentions, memberships and recognition observed from public sources, not a full link graph.

Read. The firm has a legitimate but thin authority base — bar and trial-lawyers memberships plus a self-asserted award and a self-asserted local sponsorship. The gap is narrower than a rebuild and sharper than it looks: none of it is carried into structured data (no Attorney/LegalService schema, no award field), so the earned authority exists in prose and directory profiles rather than in the machine-readable places Google and the assistants read. Items marked "self-asserted" are claims made on the firm's own site; they are reported as such, not as externally verified.

10 · Competitor analysis

Source & evidence (illustrative): competitor identity comes only from businesses observed in §03/§04; teardown data → crawl-gbp-{bridgewater,cedar-point,summit-ridge}.json; appearance counts from the serp-google-*.json files. Values below are fictional examples.

Bridgewater Injury Group — appeared in 8 of 8 map packs (position #1 in six). 4.9 · 217 reviews · 950 W Bannock Street, Suite 300, Boise · (208) 555-0101. Categories: Personal injury attorney · Law firm · Trial attorney (3). Open 24 hours (all days). Dedicated car, truck and motorcycle pages; 18 photos; posts ~weekly (most recent 2026-09-25). Newest review 2026-09-10 — ~11 five-star reviews in the last 90 days. Named #1 in the AI answers. The clear pattern: a large incumbent winning on rating, fresh velocity, "Open 24 hours", and an LSA budget.

Cedar Point Injury Attorneys — appeared in 7 of 8 packs (position #1 in two). 4.8 · 164 reviews · 910 W Main Street, Boise · (208) 555-0102. Categories: Personal injury attorney · Car accident attorney (a Google taxonomy type in this market) · Law firm (3). Open 24 hours. 30 photos; posts ~weekly. Ranks #1 organic for car accident lawyer boise on a dedicated /car-accidents/ page. Named #1 in the "call after a car accident" prompt. Wins the car-accident queries specifically — the one set where its "Car accident attorney" category matches intent.

Summit Ridge Trial Lawyers — appeared in 5 of 8 packs. 4.6 · 98 reviews · 1220 W River Street, Boise · (208) 555-0103. Categories: Personal injury attorney · Trial attorney (2). Mon–Fri 8–6. Strong review velocity (newest 2026-07-15, ~4 in 90 days) despite lower volume. Named in the car-accident AI prompt. Takes the #3 slot on the car/truck/motorcycle queries.

The pattern behind the misses. Every firm holding the pack ahead of Hale & Whitfield shows a 4.6–4.9 rating with a recent review trail, and the top two display "Open 24 hours" and buy the LSA block. The firm shows the inverse on the two signals that matter most here: 4.5 with 18% one-star reviews and zero new reviews in over five months. The profile and site are otherwise equal-or-better than two of the three incumbents (more categories than any of them, correct primary category, city-named content) — which is why the fix list below is dominated by review work, the truck-accident page, and the hours/schema settings, not a rebuild.

11 · Prioritised action plan

Every item cites the section where it was measured. Ordered by the priority rule: eligibility/blocking fixes first, then impact ÷ effort, then free-and-fast, review-velocity early. Impact and time are ESTIMATES (estimated); every underlying fact they cite is a dated observation in the cited section.

This week (owner, free, under 30 minutes each)

Next 14 days

Next 60 days

12 · What this report can't see

1. Five GBP private fields could not be observed. Services list, verification status, storefront-vs-service-area setting and opening date require the private Business Profile Manager; SerpAPI's engine=google_maps returns Google's public place data only. They are flagged in §05, not guessed.
2. Per-directory NAP is only partly verified. Avvo, Yelp and Martindale direct crawls return HTTP 403 (Cloudflare). Directory presence is established from search results and AI citations; per-listing NAP is unverified where noted (§07).
3. Owner review-reply rate could not be observed. The Maps review API exposes reviews but not owner responses (§06).
4. The verbatim ChatGPT (and Gemini/Perplexity) consumer-app answers were not captured. This report uses the OpenAI API web-search tool, a different pipeline from the consumer app. A verbatim logged-in answer needs a manual session on a clean, non-datacentre IP.
5. AI answers are unstable — the same prompt can return a different order across runs (§04).
6. Results are a dated snapshot — they move with location, device, history and time; the SerpAPI runs are anchored to Boise,Idaho,United States, not a specific signed-in user.
7. No Search Console or analytics access, so no traffic, click or enquiry attribution.
8. True backlink count/quality is not measured — only public mentions/recognition (see §09).
9. This is a diagnosis of public, dated observations. It is not a guarantee of rankings, traffic or calls.

13 · Check log (illustrative — fictional example)

End of report · FoundFirst · FF-SAMPLE-FICT-US-20261002. This is a fictional example for illustration only; every name, address, number, ranking, review count, rating and competitor above is invented and not based on any real business. No guarantee of rankings, traffic or calls is made or implied.