Prepared for Jacob — Designed Equipment Corp. Basis: publicly available information only. No account access was used or required.
Search engines and AI tools can only repeat what is written down. Where DEC's pages carry real numbers, the tools quote them. Where they don't, the tools fill the gap from somewhere else — Yelp, LinkedIn, a competitor's site — and DEC loses control of what gets said about its work.
This pattern is already visible on DEC's own site. The canopy page, which carries real dimensions, gets quoted directly by all three engines tested. The shoring page, built from the same template and nearly the same length but carrying no figures, gets a vague mention or none. Asked who rents scaffolding in Chicago, the engines answered with Home Depot and Sunbelt Rentals, and did not name DEC at all.
33 findings. Rated by how much they impact DEC online right now:
DEC has ten service pages. They were built from the same template, and every one of them was last updated in June 2022. Two of them are almost exactly the same length.
The canopy page contains real numbers. It says DEC is a certified City of Chicago pedestrian canopy provider offering 20-foot light-duty canopies, 14-foot high-drive alley canopies, and heavy-duty 8×8 frame canopies.
The shoring page contains none. It says DEC uses “standard frames, post shores, or heavy-duty shoring frames.”
Here's what happened when the same three AI tools were asked about each.
| Canopy page (has numbers) | Shoring page (no numbers) | |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overview | DEC named 2nd of 4. DEC's own figures repeated almost word for word. | DEC named 4th of 4, in one vague sentence — and given a competitor's street address. |
| ChatGPT | DEC named with the 20-foot and high-drive canopies listed out. DEC's page cited as the source. (July. On a September 5 re-check DEC was named but described in general terms, while a competitor's published 150-PSF and 250-PSF ratings were quoted directly.) | DEC named, described in the page's own vague wording. Not named at all when asked about load capacities. |
| Perplexity | DEC named 2nd of 8, with the light-duty rollers, 8×8 frames, and alley canopies listed. DEC's page cited twice. | DEC named 4th of 9, same vague wording. Not named at all when asked about load capacities, or who rents post shores. |
Same website. Same day. Same template. Same length. The only difference between those two pages is whether real figures appear on them.
The sharpest version is the load-capacity question. Asked what shoring load capacities are available from Chicago suppliers, neither ChatGPT nor Perplexity named DEC. Both answered with companies that publish figures. One competitor's 10,000 and 25,000 pound per-leg ratings were quoted straight off its shoring page. DEC has an in-house engineering department, says so on the page, and publishes no load numbers anywhere on the site. On the one question that department exists to answer, DEC is not in the answer.
A third case completes it. DEC has no page dedicated to scaffolding rental; it exists as a single paragraph inside a larger page. Asked who rents scaffolding in Chicago, DEC did not appear at all. Home Depot and Sunbelt Rentals did.
No page, no mention. A vague page, a vague mention. A page with real numbers, quoted directly and named near the top.
That's the whole argument, and it's already happening on your own website — on one page, by accident.
A September re-check pushed the same point one step further. Asked the same canopy question, ChatGPT named DEC but described it in general terms, and quoted a competitor's 150-PSF and 250-PSF canopy ratings word for word. DEC's canopy page carries dimensions and no load figures. The competitor's carries both. Specificity decides whether you get named. It also decides how much of your own language survives into the answer.
Everything that follows is a version of this same problem.
↑ Back to topA Google results page is built from separate blocks. Each one is a separate place to win or lose. DEC can rank near the top of one and be missing from another on the very same search, so the rest of this audit scores them independently.
ChatGPT and Perplexity look nothing like this. They write one answer and list their sources underneath. Being named in that answer and being described accurately in it are two different things, and this audit tracks them separately.
The rest of this audit refers to these blocks by name.
↑ Back to topOn some searches that matter to DEC's potential clients, DEC simply is not in the answer. That includes anything phrased around renting, the load-capacity question that DEC's own engineering department exists to answer, and the local map block at the top of Google. DEC still ranks well on manufacturer, union, and brand-name searches — reputation carries those. It does not carry the rest.
| ID | Severity | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| 1.1 | High | DEC does not appear on any rental-phrased search on Google, ChatGPT, or Perplexity. Home Depot and Sunbelt Rentals do. |
| 1.2 | High | Asked directly about shoring load capacities, neither ChatGPT nor Perplexity named DEC. Both named suppliers that publish per-leg load ratings. DEC's shoring page contains no figures of any kind. |
| 1.3 | High | The swing staging page was not cited by any search or AI engine tested. |
| 1.4 | High | DEC was absent from the Places block on all seven searches where one appeared, including a September 5 re-check. |
| 1.5 | High | Google Business Profile is unclaimed and incomplete; 10 reviews total. |
| 1.6 | Low | Google generates no company-specific questions about DEC. Searching the company name returns generic trade trivia such as “Who is the grandfather of scaffolding?” |
When DEC does appear, the description is often not coming from DEC. Perplexity answered correctly about what DEC does and where it is — but built that answer from LinkedIn, Yelp, and ZoomInfo, with a single reference to DEC's own website. DEC's service area came from Yelp. DEC's UL-listed rigging came from Yelp. Those directory listings are currently more authoritative sources about DEC than DEC is.
Google went further. Asked about shoring contractors in Chicago, its AI Overview reported that DEC is “headquartered nearby at 515 Jarvis Ave.” DEC is at 1510 Lunt Ave in Elk Grove Village. 515 Jarvis Ave is Gilco Scaffolding's address — confirmed across Yelp, Dun & Bradstreet, LinkedIn, and Gilco's own homepage. Gilco ranks directly above DEC on that search. Google cited both sites and merged them. A second case runs the other way: DEC has also been cited as the source of a load figure that appears nowhere on its site, which means DEC would carry the attribution if that figure were wrong.
In fairness: ChatGPT and Perplexity both returned DEC's address correctly. This was one instance on one engine, not a pattern. But it happened on Google, which is still the most frequently used search engine.
| ID | Severity | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| 2.1 | High | AI tools describe DEC primarily from Yelp, LinkedIn, and ZoomInfo rather than from DEC's website. |
| 2.2 | High | Google's AI Overview published a competitor's street address as DEC's. |
| 2.3 | High | DEC named as the source of a load figure DEC never published. Observed September 4, 2026 — outside the July test set. On the search “sidewalk canopy scaffolding chicago,” Google's AI Overview stated light-duty rolling canopies are rated for about 150 PSF and cited Designed Equipment Corp. first. That figure appears nowhere on designedequipment.com; DEC's page lists dimensions and no load ratings. A second source behind the citation's “+1” was not captured. |
| 2.4 | Medium | Third-party listings for DEC exist across Procore, The Blue Book, Yelp, and others, unmanaged and inconsistent. |
| 2.5 | Low | Perplexity referred to the business as “Designed Equipment Company” rather than Designed Equipment Corp. |
This September 4 query was not part of the July test set and should be added to the standing set for future re-testing.
↑ Back to topDEC already does the work. The site does not say enough about it for a buyer — or a search tool — to use. The pages that exist are too thin to be quoted, and the work that would be most persuasive — project figures, capacities, credentials, how a job actually runs — is either absent or buried.
| ID | Severity | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | High | Ten service pages average ~120 words each, with no specs, capacities, or use cases. |
| 3.2 | High | Eight project pages are photo galleries with a caption. The Vista Tower page is roughly 65 words — despite containing 700 linear feet of monorail, 400 feet installed on the 96th floor, 30+ swing stages, and 12,000 man-hours with no lost-time incidents. |
| 3.3 | High | No content on the site has changed since June 2022. |
| 3.4 | High | No FAQ or buyer-question content exists anywhere on the site. A direct competitor publishes 23 such answers. |
| 3.5 | High | Union signatory status appears once, in one sentence, on a buried page. |
| 3.6 | Medium | The main Services page lists ten services as bare links with no description under any of them. |
| 3.7 | Medium | Manufacturing capability is claimed but never substantiated — no specs, no capacities, no fabrication detail. |
| 3.8 | Medium | Credential badges carry no readable text and no explanation. |
| 3.9 | Medium | Nothing on the site explains how DEC actually works with a contractor — assigned project manager, site walks, ongoing consultation. |
Some of what is wrong is content that people can see but search engines cannot use. For example, DEC's phone number is in the footer of every page, yet when Perplexity built a comparison table of Chicago swing stage providers, every competitor got a street address and phone number and DEC's row read “See website.” Machines could not tell the footer text was a phone number.
| ID | Severity | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| 4.1 | High | No machine-readable record of DEC's name, address, phone, or services anywhere on the site. |
| 4.2 | High | Every page tells Google the same short description of itself — one identical description across roughly 20 pages. |
| 4.3 | High | The clickable titles in search results leave out the words people type. No service page title contains “rental,” “Chicago,” or “union.” |
| 4.4 | Medium | Behind the scenes, every service page is tagged with the same wrong category — “Construction Installation” — rather than its actual subject. |
| 4.5 | Medium | The images have no written descriptions search tools can read. More than 60 confirmed across the pages examined; sitewide the number is likely well over 100. |
| 4.6 | Medium | On phones, visitors cannot pinch to zoom. A setting on every page blocks it. |
| 4.7 | Low | Placeholder and broken links appear on the homepage and every project page. |
| 4.8 | Low | The two files that tell Google which pages exist and which to skip could not be confirmed from outside, and should be checked directly. |
After answering questions about DEC, Perplexity suggested what to ask next:
DEC's website answers none of them.
There is also no Chicago scaffolding permit explainer, no published pricing structure (not dollar figures — how rentals are calculated), and no page covering the suburbs DEC serves or how permitting differs between them.
Two competitors are already earning citations by publishing things DEC unintentionally treats as unpublishable. One states plainly that rentals are priced per piece with a 28-day minimum cycle and per-day billing after that — no dollar figures, just the structure. It gets quoted for it.
| ID | Severity | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| 5.1 | Medium | No Chicago scaffolding permit explainer exists on the site. |
| 5.2 | Medium | No swing stage versus scaffolding comparison exists anywhere in this market. |
| 5.3 | Medium | No published pricing structure — not dollar figures, but how rentals are calculated and what changes a quote. Competitors publishing this are being cited for it. |
| 5.4 | Medium | Five distinct buyer questions surfaced by AI tools have no answer on the site. |
| 5.5 | Medium | No page addresses the suburbs DEC serves or how permitting differs between them. A competitor runs eight such pages. |
Every search tested, scored block by block. A top-three organic position and an absence from the Places block can happen on the same search, so each block is scored on its own.
| Search | Position | Places block | AI Overview |
|---|---|---|---|
| scaffolding manufacturer Chicago | Top 3 1st | No | None appeared |
| union scaffolding contractor Illinois | Top 3 2nd | No | Named, 2nd of 3 |
| shoring contractor Chicago | Top 3 2nd | No | Named, 4th of 4 |
| swing stage rental Chicago | Top 3 3rd | No | None appeared |
| commercial scaffolding contractor Chicago | Page 1 4th | No | None appeared |
| sidewalk canopy rental Chicago | Page 1 ~5th | No | Named, 2nd of 4 |
| scaffolding rental Chicago | Absent Not found | No | None appeared |
| Designed Equipment Corp (branded — excluded from count) | Top 3 1st | — | None appeared |
| Question asked | ChatGPT | Perplexity |
|---|---|---|
| Who provides sidewalk canopies in Chicago? | Quoted Named, specs quoted | Quoted Named 2nd, specs quoted |
| Swing stage rental for a high-rise façade job? | Vague Named 2nd, described vaguely | Vague Named 2nd, described vaguely |
| Who rents scaffolding in Chicago? | Absent Not named | Absent Not named |
| Who provides shoring systems in Chicago? | Vague Named, described vaguely | Vague Named 4th, described vaguely |
| Who rents post shores and shoring frames? | Vague Named 2nd, described vaguely | Absent Not named |
| What shoring load capacities are available? | Absent Not named | Absent Not named |
| Where is DEC and what do they do? | Correct | Correct, sourced from Yelp and LinkedIn |
The pattern is consistent. Where DEC's reputation carries it (manufacturer, union, brand name), DEC ranks well. Where the search is generic, reputation doesn't carry it and DEC disappears. And in every case where DEC is named, the description is only as specific as the page behind it.
↑ Back to topEvery page on designedequipment.com was retrieved and read directly. Competitor sites were retrieved the same way. Searches were run on Google in a private window while signed out, and on ChatGPT and Perplexity in fresh sessions with memory and personalization disabled, so no prior activity influenced the results.
One deliberate exclusion: ChatGPT and Perplexity both display map widgets alongside their written answers, and DEC appeared in several of them. Those widgets are populated from business-listing indexes rather than from website content, so they aren't counted here. This audit measures what the engines could say about DEC after reading DEC's pages.
Five honest limits:
Location. Searches were run from Massachusetts, not Chicago. Because the searches contain the words “Chicago” and “Illinois,” the standard results are close to what a Chicago buyer would see. The Places block results are not reliable from outside the area and should be re-run locally before being treated as settled. That said, DEC's absence from all six is consistent with the unclaimed business profile, which is verifiable from anywhere.
One snapshot. These are results from a single day in July 2026, with two spot re-checks on September 5. Search results move. This is a baseline, not a permanent measurement, which is exactly why it's worth re-running the identical set in ninety days.
The address error appeared once. Google's AI Overview merged DEC with Gilco Scaffolding on one search. ChatGPT and Perplexity both got it right. It's a real, documented, current instance, not a systemic pattern, and this doesn't claim it is one.
AI Mode wasn't tested. Google has a separate tab that answers conversationally instead of returning links. It's a different system from the AI Overview measured here, and nothing in this audit says anything about where DEC stands in it.
Nothing here is a guarantee. No one can promise a search ranking or an AI citation, and anyone who does is selling something. What this establishes is what's currently true and measurable, and what specifically is missing.
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