What geothermal customers ask Google,
and who answers them on video.

Geothermal homeowners ask Google how the thing works, what it costs, and whether it will cope with winter. They ask often. On the day we checked, the people answering them on video were a manufacturer, a state energy agency, a dealer network and other YouTube channels — not the installer down the road.

We should say one thing up front, because it shapes why this piece exists. Groundline sells short explainer films — a 30-to-45-second film that answers one of these questions. Everything below is what we measured on 1 October 2026, and it stands or falls on its own whether or not you ever buy one.

The questions, with the numbers

These are the customer-side questions we measured. The figures are monthly searches, averaged over the twelve months to August 2026.

Two things stand out. The first is that “how does it work” and “what does it cost” are the big ones, by a distance. The second is that “how does geothermal work”, “how does geothermal heating work” and “how does a geothermal heat pump work” are separate Google estimates for related phrasings, and we cannot tell how much the people searching them overlap.

Google also shows the follow-up questions people ask. On the United States page for “how does geothermal work”, the “People also ask” box held these four: “What is the downside of geothermal heating?”, “Why is my electric bill so high with geothermal?”, “How much does it cost to put geothermal in a 2000 sq ft house?” and “Will we ever run out of geothermal energy?”

Our reading, not a measurement: those are the questions of someone weighing a large, long-lived purchase. Three of the four are worries rather than curiosity.

Who answered on video, on the day we checked

We pulled the first page of Google for “how does geothermal work” in the United States and in Canada. Both pages had a video block, a row of videos sitting among the ordinary results.

United States, four videos: two YouTube channels, MEP Academy and AGL Mechanical Tips; NYSERDA, New York State’s energy research and development authority; and Upgrade To Comfort, whose channel name describes it as a Northeast HVAC dealer network.

Canada, three videos: MEP Academy again, the same dealer network again, and Bosch, the equipment manufacturer, with a “Geo 101” explainer.

The written results around them were similar in kind: the US Department of Energy, the manufacturers WaterFurnace and ClimateMaster, Dandelion Energy, a Reddit thread and a handful of others. In Canada, a university page and Natural Resources Canada joined them.

Notice who is missing. Not one of the seven video slots on those two pages, on that day, went to an individual installer answering in their own name for their own area. We recorded who appeared, not whether the videos fit any particular area.

That is not a criticism of anyone on the list. It describes who appeared in the video blocks we checked.

The one results page with no video block

Across the three trades we work in, we pulled 13 results pages for customer questions that day (9 in the United States, 4 in Canada). Twelve had a video block. The one that did not was “does geothermal work in cold climates”, in the United States.

That page was led by a Reddit thread asking whether geothermal makes sense in a cold climate; the rest of the page was New York State’s clean-heat program, the industry association IGSHPA, and several heating and cooling companies. Its follow-up questions included “What is the best heating system for very cold climates?” and “Why don’t more homes use geothermal?”

Keep the scale in proportion. That exact phrasing gets about 10 searches a month in each country. It is a small question by volume. It is also, for anyone selling geothermal where winters are hard, the worry behind a lot of the others.

What a short answer looks like

Here is our demo film for geothermal. Hearthcairn Geothermal is a business we made up to show the format; it is not a client. Its question — does geothermal heat still work when it is this cold? — sits close to the cold-climate question above.

Two more, made for the founder’s own geothermal directory rather than for a client. One answers the “how does it work” family of questions through one idea, the steady temperature of the ground. The other answers a cost question without quoting a price, by explaining why two honest quotes for the same house can be far apart.

None of these three was tested in Google’s video block, and we are not suggesting any of them would appear there. They are here so you can judge the format with your own eyes.

How to pick the one question

A film that tries to answer everything answers nothing in forty seconds. The useful work is choosing.

1. Start with the question you answer on the phone. Not the one you wish people asked. The one you have explained so many times you could do it in your sleep. Check whether it is also one your customers type into Google; step 2 shows how.

2. Check that people search it, and do not panic at small numbers. Type it into Google and look at the “People also ask” box and the suggestions. A phrasing that shows about 10 searches a month is not a question nobody asks; it is one of several ways of asking it.

3. Look at who answers it today. Search it from a phone that is not signed into your accounts. If the answers are national and correct, your version can be the one that is local and specific — your ground, your winters, the loop types you actually install.

4. Pick one you can answer honestly in forty seconds. Cost questions are the hardest. A range with its conditions is honest; a single number without its conditions is not. When we counted what geothermal installers publish, not one of 2,355 listings stated a cost per foot — that is in what geothermal contractors publish about themselves, along with the argument that the differentiator is being the one contractor who answers a question.

A film is one way to give that answer. A written explanation on your website is another. If you want the wider picture of how we work with geothermal installers, it is on the geothermal page.

If you are weighing up a film, we have also set out what an explainer video actually costs, from a studio, a do-it-yourself tool or us.

What we are not claiming

We would rather draw these lines ourselves than have you find them.

We are not claiming a film will put you in Google’s video block. Google decides what appears there. We did not test it, and nothing on this page shows it.

We are not claiming a film brings calls. We do not promise more calls or enquiries. A film can explain your work clearly; whether that turns into work depends on where it is shown, who sees it, and what happens after they call.

Search volumes are estimates. They are Google’s own Ads estimates, rounded, and averaged over a year, so a monthly average hides any seasonal peaks.

This is one day of results. Search results change, and they vary by location and by personal search history. Treat every observation about who appeared as a snapshot of 1 October 2026.

How we measured this

Search volumes come from Google Ads keyword data, requested through DataForSEO on 1 October 2026: United States and Canada, English, the 12-month average from September 2025 to August 2026. Where Google reports no figure, we say “no estimate reported”; that is unknown, not zero.

Results pages are first-page desktop pulls through DataForSEO on the same day: “how does geothermal work” in the United States and Canada, and “does geothermal work in cold climates” in the United States. Every one of them also carried an AI Overview at the top. The 12-of-13 figure counts every distinct customer-question page we pulled that day across grease trap, geothermal and water well; two grease trap pages pulled twice that day are counted once.

Two caveats we would rather state than have you find. We did not pull the results page for “how does geothermal heating work” itself — the video observations above come from the pages named in this section, not from every phrasing in the table. And this is search measurement, not client results; we have no client results in this trade to report, and we say so on the evidence page. Raw responses are retained.

Published by Groundline Marketing, 1 October 2026.