Every one of the 220 HVAC answers asking who to hire named a specific company. The only question is which one.
Your customers ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews who to hire before they open a search results page. We ask the same questions in your city every week and show you how often you’re recommended, and who else is.
Then we show you what to work on: the directories and review sites the answers draw on, where your business can be listed, and the competitors’ pages they cite, which point to the pages worth adding to your own site.
HVAC, dental, family law or any other local business: the questions are written for your industry, your competitors are the businesses AI assistants name in your city, and the sources are the websites they cite when they answer.
Check your own business with the free check: one real question put to all five AI assistants, with the result emailed to you.
“Who should I call for emergency AC repair?” and “Who is the best divorce attorney?” draw on different businesses and different sources. Here is what we found in some of them.
204 accountants were named in Dallas, the most in any city we measured.
Only 18% of sources were listings, the lowest share we measured.
In every city, the three most-named dentists took only about 12% of all mentions.
Electricians’ own websites were 44% of sources, the lowest share we measured.
43% of sources were directories, review sites and other listings, the highest share we measured.
Lawyers’ own websites were 64% of sources, the highest share we measured.
National chains led in Dallas. In Boise, local companies led instead.
In every city, the three most-named plumbers took less than a fifth of all mentions.
The three most-named roofers took nearly a third of all mentions in every city.
Not on this list? Run the free check for any local business, and we’ll write the question your customers ask.
Twenty questions for your industry, asked in your city: who to hire, how to choose and what it costs.
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, through APIs, three times a question, every week.
How often you’re recommended, who else is named, and the sites the answers draw on.
Ask an AI assistant the same question twice and the answer moves. We collect every answer through an API, three times a question, every week — so what you get is the pattern underneath the variation rather than one lucky answer. That is what makes a trend line mean something, and it is why every figure here carries the date it was measured and the AI assistants behind it. How we measure.
The same questions in the same city every week, so this week is comparable to last week, and when you publish something new, the readings that follow show whether it worked.
The same twenty questions, asked three times of each AI assistant, every week. Two points make a line and the third tells you whether the line is real.
All five on one schedule, so comparing them always compares the same week. Google is run as a real search from your city.
Being recommended depends on your reputation; being cited depends on your content. We count them separately.
Found in the answers themselves, so the list is whoever AI assistants recommend in your city.
The AI visibility tools we have looked at measure a whole country. A local business is chosen city by city, so we measure it in its own city.
Google is a search run from the place you are tracking, resolved against the provider’s own list of 26,544 US locations. A national average cannot tell a Boise plumber anything about Boise.
Your figure counts only answers that recommended a business. The answers left out, and why, are listed beside it.
Ten ask who to hire, and your figure is built from those. The other ten ask how to choose and what things cost, and their answers reference different websites. Of every website referenced in the answers we collected by September 2026, just over half appeared only in answers to these ten.
Every figure carries its date, its denominator and the AI assistants behind it, and the full method is on the methodology page.
Canceling stops collection. Everything already collected stays here and stays readable — your answers, your questions, and every finding built from them.
Collected answers are kept while your plan runs, and for twelve months after it ends. After that we remove them. Your businesses and their questions stay, so coming back picks up where you left off rather than starting again.
Try it free for fourteen days, no credit card. Plans are billed monthly, or once a year up front: twelve months for the price of ten. See the plans.
Guides to answer engine optimization, and what we find when we measure it. All posts.
When a customer asks an AI assistant who to hire, it names a few businesses. Answer engine optimization is the work of getting your business named among them.
We asked three AI assistants who to hire in ten industries in Dallas, Nashville and Boise: who they named, how often that changed, and what they cited.
How to get onto the directories, review sites and roundups AI assistants cite, and what to publish on your own site.
Tell us your business name, city, industry and email, and we’ll email you the report.
Run the free check