AI Visibility Case Study: Bartlett Cocke
Case Study · Commercial General Contractor
Client
Bartlett Cocke
Engagement
PositionOS + Demand Engine + Visibility Intelligence
pERIOD
Launched January 2026 · Results through July 2026
The Challenge
A reputation everyone in the room knew, with an opportunity to reach more people online
Bartlett Cocke General Contractors has built one of the strongest in-person reputations in Texas commercial construction over nearly seven decades. Owners, architects, engineers, and program managers know the name across San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Bryan-College Station, spanning K-12, higher education, healthcare, industrial & manufacturing, and civic/government work.
The firm’s previous website communicated its brand and capabilities, but it was not designed to generate measurable traffic, capture project inquiries, or provide insight into who was searching for the firm and what those visitors wanted. Meanwhile, buyers had moved online, and increasingly into AI tools, to research and shortlist firms before the first call. Bartlett Cocke saw an opportunity to make its digital presence more fully reflect the reputation, experience, and market position it had already established across Texas.
Known in every room. Ready to be found in every search.
What we installed: A Demand Engine
Movement Maker rebuilt bartlettcocke.com as a system for generating demand, not simply a digital brochure. Two things had to work together. The firm needed to be found and trusted across every place buyers now research, from Google to AI assistants. And the site itself needed to turn that attention into qualified conversations, backed by real data on what was working.
Signal · getting found and trusted
- Locked brand ownership. Searches for the Bartlett Cocke name now return the firm in the top position, protecting a reputation built over decades.
- Built AI visibility from scratch. The site and its content are structured so AI assistants can read, trust, and cite Bartlett Cocke when buyers ask them to recommend a contractor.
- Expanded the category footprint. The site now earns visibility for competitive, non-branded terms across the firm’s verticals and markets, including industrial & manufacturing, healthcare, education, and civic/government work.
- Established topical authority. Bartlett Cocke leads AI responses for the topics that match how it actually wins work, from healthcare facilities to CMAR delivery.
Structure · converting attention into pipeline
- Rebuilt the site as a demand engine. Dedicated market pages and vertical pages give buyers and search engines a clear, specific answer for every kind of project the firm pursues.
- Created a new lead channel. The previous site was not structured to consistently convert visitors into inquiries. The new one captures inquiries and routes qualified project leads to the regional teams.
- Instrumented everything. Google Analytics and Search Console now show the team who is searching, what they want, and which pages perform, giving the firm a level of visibility it did not previously have.
- Turned the site into a recruiting asset. The careers and people pages became two of the highest-traffic pages on the site, supporting hiring alongside business development.
From limited digital visibility to first in AI answers
Within six months of launch, Bartlett Cocke went from a limited measurable digital footprint to leading its market in AI search and expanding fast in classic search.
Why the position holds: AI search visibility
The durable advantage is what happens when a buyer skips the search bar entirely and simply asks an AI tool who to hire. Most firms in the industry are invisible in that moment. Bartlett Cocke is not. We began tracking the firm’s AI visibility in May 2026. In roughly two months, its LLM visibility score climbed from 15 to 56, a 273 percent increase, and moved it clearly ahead of its direct competitors.
against competitors
| Firm | LLM visibility score |
|---|---|
| Bartlett Cocke | 56 |
| Turner Construction | 18 |
| Joeris | 15 |
AI Platform
| AI platform | Visibility score |
|---|---|
| Perplexity | 73.3 |
| Gemini | 60 |
| ChatGPT | 50 |
| Copilot | 41.7 |
Across major AI platforms the firm has drawn 2,459 citations at 80.4 percent positive sentiment, and it ranks first in AI responses for the topics that match how it wins work:
| Topic | AI rank | Visibility |
|---|---|---|
| General contracting services | #1 | 55 |
| Healthcare and medical facility construction | #1 | 52 |
| Construction management services | #1 | 47 |
| CMAR vs. design-build | #1 | 46 |
| Education facility construction | #1 | 45 |
| Employee-owned construction | #1 | 43 |
This is not a vanity metric. AI assistants are already sending real people to the site. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini referred roughly 270 sessions, and those visitors engaged at 60 to 66 percent, higher than the rate on the site’s main entry pages. AI is not only recommending Bartlett Cocke. It is delivering prospective buyers and partners to the door.
Search Footprint Expansion
AI visibility was the headline. The underlying search footprint expanded from a limited baseline to a working presence across the firm’s markets and verticals.
The brand terms the firm spent decades earning are now locked at the top of Google, with Bartlett Cocke at position 1.5 and Bartlett Cocke general contractors at position 1.1. Non-branded category terms like general contractors San Antonio, industrial general contractors, and healthcare construction are climbing, most on pages three through eight, generating more than 129,000 impressions and set to convert as rankings rise. That is the next phase of the work.
Growth Metrics
The result that matters: a measurable digital pipeline
Before this engagement, Bartlett Cocke had no consistent, measurable inbound digital pipeline. The rebuilt site changed that. For the first time in the firm’s history it is producing confirmed leads, with conversions on the contact and newsletter forms up 2,900 percent over the prior site, which captured almost none. The team now forwards two to three qualified project leads to its regional offices out of every ten inquiries it receives.
Two of those have become serious industrial opportunities, including one the firm is actively pursuing. No job has closed yet, and the team is candid about that. What matters is that the site now produces qualified pursuits from a channel that did not exist before, and the firm can finally measure them. The website has moved from a cost the firm tolerated to a source of work it can track.
Notably, the leads arriving through the site skew toward industrial & manufacturing and healthcare work, the verticals where Bartlett Cocke has greater opportunity to build new relationships. In education, where the firm is already well known, buyers still come through referral. The site is opening doors in market segments where digital visibility can complement traditional relationship development.
Why This Matters For AEC Firms
AI visibility is a business development strategy, not a marketing trend
The buying journey for a general contractor is research-heavy. Selection committees, developers, and program managers validate firms across multiple sources before they ever pick up the phone, and AI is increasingly one of those sources.
AI search raises the stakes, because there is no page two. The tool names a short list and stops. Firms off the list are invisible in the moment that matters, and most established AEC firms, with thirty, forty, fifty year reputations, have no idea they are missing.
The firms that will win the next decade of work treat visibility as infrastructure, not brand decoration. That means owning the brand term, earning the category terms, being citable by the AI tools buyers trust, and instrumenting the whole thing so the pipeline is visible instead of invisible. Bartlett Cocke moved on that years before its peers, and the lead continues to compound.
Strategic takeaway
Being known in the room is not the same as being found in the search bar
Bartlett Cocke proved what happens when a firm runs its digital presence as a demand engine instead of a brochure. First in AI answers across its core services, ahead of its closest competitors. Brand terms locked at the top of Google. Non-branded visibility climbing across every market. And the firm has created a measurable digital pipeline that did not exist in its current form a year ago.
Most AEC firms have the reputation. Many have not yet built the digital infrastructure to fully support it. A Demand Engine is what closes the gap between what the firm actually does and what AI and search understand about its capabilities.
Your firm, recommended by AI before anyone picks up the phone.
Movement Maker installs Demand Infrastructure for professional service firms. If your firm is invisible where buyers are now searching, we should talk.