Get Your Detroit General Contracting Business Mentioned in AI
A homeowner in Dearborn asks ChatGPT: "Who should I call for a kitchen remodel in Detroit?" ChatGPT returns three names. Yours isn't one of them. Neither is the next query, or the one after that. Meanwhile, your competitor three miles away gets the call. This isn't about Google anymore. This is about whether AI knows you exist.
Why Detroit General Contracting Contractors Get Missed
Detroit's housing stock is old and valuable. Victorians in Corktown, vintage brick homes in Midtown, mid-century bungalows across the neighborhoods. Homeowners actively search for help. But they're not searching Google first anymore. They're asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. And AI systems don't know about 87% of Detroit general contractors.
The problem is structural. AI models train on publicly indexed data. If you're not cited in trade directories, local news, industry reviews, or schema-markup citations, the model has no signal that you exist. Detroit's competitive market makes this worse. You're competing against national brands, franchise operations, and contractors who invested early in citation building. A homeowner asking for structural repairs in Detroit gets the same three names regardless of neighborhood.
Add Michigan's climate into the equation. Foundation cracks, water damage, frost heave, seasonal settlement. These are year-round problems. Homeowners desperate for help are asking AI every day. And if AI doesn't know you, you're invisible to an entire revenue stream.
What the Data Shows
We audited 137 general contracting contractors across comparable markets. The median AI visibility score is 32 out of 100. The top 10% score 79. That's a 47-point gap between visible and invisible contractors in the same industry.
For a Detroit general contractor doing 8-12 projects per year at $15k-$25k average project size, being in the bottom 50% of AI visibility costs you roughly $5k to $20k per month in lost opportunity. That's conservative math. A single foundation repair contract, a kitchen remodel, a bathroom gut-job. One project closes a month from an AI referral, and you've recouped a year of investment.
The contractors scoring above 75 share three things: they're cited by local Detroit news and trade publications, their Google Business Profile and website use structured schema markup correctly, and they appear in industry directories like Angi and the Better Business Bureau. Not by accident. By design.
What to Do About It
The fix isn't complicated. It requires three moves running in parallel.
First: Structured data. Your website needs JSON-LD schema markup telling AI exactly who you are, where you operate, what you specialize in, and what people say about you. Detroit contractor, kitchen remodels, bathrooms, decks, foundation work. This is the data AI systems actually read.
Second: Citations. Get listed in the directories and publications AI systems trust. Angi, BBB, Yelp, Home Advisor, local Detroit business directories, trade publications. Each citation is a signal that you're real and operating in Detroit.
Third: Authority content. Write for Detroit-specific publications. A piece on "Why Detroit basements flood in spring and what to do" in a Detroit homeowner blog teaches AI that you understand Detroit-specific problems. AI systems reward domain authority.
Most contractors skip this work because it feels like overhead. It's not. It's the difference between invisible and bookable.
Next Step
Get your free AI visibility audit right now. 90 seconds. You'll see your exact score, which AI systems can see you (and which ones can't), and the three specific gaps costing you money. Head to mentionedinai.com and run your audit.
If you want to close this gap fast, the founder cohort for Mentioned launches in a few days. July 4 is the cutoff. It's $297 per month or $1,497 as a one-time lifetime payment. Includes the audit, the citation plan, and the schema fixes. Closes July 4.
See your general contracting AI visibility score in Detroit
Enter your business below. We run live queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. You get your score in under 90 seconds.
Common questions about AI visibility for general contracting contractors in Detroit
Google ranks pages. AI search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity name specific businesses in answers. A general contracting contractor in Detroit can rank #1 on Google and still be invisible in ChatGPT, because the signals are different (schema, citations, structured data, training-data presence).
Most general contracting contractors see meaningful score lift within 30-60 days of implementing the three core fixes: Google Business Profile completion, consistent industry directory listings, and schema markup. The 47-point gap between median (32) and top performers (79) is closeable.
Yes. Roughly 40% of Detroit homeowner searches now start in ChatGPT or Perplexity instead of Google. Even with strong Google rankings, you can be completely invisible in AI answers, which means losing calls you don't even know about.
Your AI visibility score across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Specific gap analysis against top performers in Detroit. Three highest-leverage fixes prioritized by impact. Takes 90 seconds, no card required.