The home-service AI study
AI left out the business we checked in 59.7% of answers.
We checked 8 US home-service businesses across 5 trades and 8 cities. See where they appeared. Then find out where your business stands.
312 of 775 sampled answers named the tracked business.
How often each AI assistant named the business.
Compare assistants instead of relying on a single search. Each bar pools the 8 businesses we checked.
ChatGPT
40.7%72 of 177 sampled answers named the tracked business.
1201 citation links; 1142 cited website appearances.
Claude
53.0%106 of 200 sampled answers named the tracked business.
1126 citation links; 1014 cited website appearances.
Perplexity
17.5%35 of 200 sampled answers named the tracked business.
4885 citation links; 1841 cited website appearances.
Google AI Mode
50.0%99 of 198 sampled answers named the tracked business.
819 citation links; 274 cited website appearances.
See the results for your trade.
Each group pools two businesses in two cities across the engines shown above.
Find the group that includes your trade, then run the free scan to see your business’s result.
Plumbing
57.4%112 of 195 sampled answers named the tracked business.
Heating and air conditioning
31.7%63 of 199 sampled answers named the tracked business.
Roofing
35.4%67 of 189 sampled answers named the tracked business.
Garage doors and pest control
36.5%70 of 192 sampled answers named the tracked business.
Now check your own business.
Find out whether AI names you when someone asks about your trade in your city.
Run the free scanYour first scan is free. No card. No account needed.
Method and limits
The sample
These are selected reference businesses, not a random sample of US contractors. Their pooled rate cannot tell you yours.
Sample dates: 2026-11-01 UTC. One scan per selected business asks each question 5 times on each listed engine. The questions name a trade and city, never the business being tracked.
- Who are the best [trade] businesses in [city]?
- Recommend a reliable [trade] in [city].
- Who should I call for a [trade] in [city]?
- Which [trade] in [city] has the best reviews?
- I need to hire a [trade] in [city]. Who do you suggest?
Trades and locations
Garage doors and pest control share one group to keep individual results private.
- Plumbing
- Austin, Texas; Columbus, Ohio.
- Heating and air conditioning
- Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia.
- Roofing
- Denver, Colorado; Dallas, Texas.
- Garage doors and pest control
- Charlotte, North Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee.
Engines and sampling
ChatGPT: collected from the app; answers can differ for each user.
Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Mode: sampled via API; the consumer app can differ.
- ChatGPT
- Model reported with these answers: gpt-6.
- Claude
- Model reported with these answers: claude-sonnet-5-5.
- Perplexity
- Model reported with these answers: sonar-reasoning-pro.
- Google AI Mode
- No model reported.
What counts
An answer counts as naming a business when its name or a listed variation appears. We add those observations and divide by sampled answers; failed, unavailable and unreturned answers are excluded. App answers missing their required citations are unavailable too.
25 of 800 planned checks were unavailable and excluded.
ChatGPT is collected from its app. Other assistants use software connections. Differences here do not rank the engines or predict what a homeowner will see.
Repeats of the same question are related observations, not independent homeowners. This single-day sample measures neither change over time nor normal variation between scans. City, question, model and sampling method can all affect the result.
Sources and privacy
Citation links are the sources attached to sampled answers. Cited website appearances count each distinct domain or subdomain once per answer; the same domain in another answer counts again.
Business names, answer text, website addresses and source links are withheld to keep individual firms out of the results. Citation figures describe the pooled sources, not endorsements or proof that a source caused a recommendation.
Google AI Mode coverage may change. These sampled results form no part of a client promise.
What it means for your business
AI answers change from day to day, so we promise no rank. Every week you see how often AI names you, beside where you started. A baseline shows what happened in the questions sampled, not how many jobs you will win.