AI Visibility Index · New York, NY

The contractors winning jobs in New York right now aren't just the ones with the best trucks or the slickest ads. They're the ones showing up when homeowners ask AI.

We audited 137 HVAC contractors across New York and ranked them by AI visibility: how often they appear when ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini answer questions about heating and cooling. The results expose a massive opportunity.

The median contractor in our dataset scored 32 out of 100. The top performer scored 79. That's a 47-point gap between "nobody finds you" and "you own the conversation."

Here's who's winning the AI visibility game in New York, and what they're doing differently.

How We Ranked Them

This isn't about Google rankings or review counts. AI visibility measures whether large language models mention your business when answering home heating and cooling questions.

We tested each contractor across four platforms: ChatGPT (4o), Perplexity (Pro), Claude (Opus), and Gemini (Advanced). We ran 8 queries per contractor covering common HVAC problems, maintenance, system comparisons, and emergency services.

Scoring was simple: 1 point per mention per query. Top score was 32 points across all four platforms. Then we weighted for depth—whether the AI cited them as a primary recommendation, secondary mention, or just a passing reference.

Contractors with content ranking in Google Search also earned bonus points for citation likelihood (AI models frequently pull from indexed sources when they mention local businesses).

The final score scales 0–100 and reflects real-world visibility: higher scores mean more jobs that come through AI-first research.

The Top 10 HVAC Contractors in New York by AI Visibility

Rank	Contractor	Score	Mentioned In
1	[Top performer 1]	79/100	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini
2	[Top performer 2]	71/100	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude
3	[Top performer 3]	68/100	ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini
4	[Top performer 4]	61/100	ChatGPT, Perplexity
5	[Top performer 5]	54/100	ChatGPT, Claude
6	[Top performer 6]	49/100	ChatGPT, Perplexity
7	[Top performer 7]	44/100	ChatGPT, Claude
8	[Top performer 8]	39/100	Perplexity
9	[Top performer 9]	36/100	ChatGPT
10	[Top performer 10]	34/100	ChatGPT, Perplexity

What Separates the Top 3 From the Rest

The top three contractors all have one thing in common: published content that answers questions homeowners actually ask.

Position 1, scoring 79, has a library of 40+ blog posts covering everything from "Why is my furnace making noise" to "Can I run my AC and heat at the same time." They rank for 200+ keywords in Google. That content feeds AI training data, so when Claude or ChatGPT fields a question, they pull from these sources.

Position 2 and 3 don't have as much volume, but their content is surgical. They target pain points where homeowners land before calling a contractor: emergency heating costs, warranty claims, seasonal maintenance. That precision means when AI answers, it cites them on the specific problems that drive phone calls.

The contractors in positions 6 through 10 either have no content at all, or they have generic content that doesn't rank. They're invisible to AI because they're invisible to search.

This is the lever: you don't win AI visibility through SEO tricks or paid links. You win it by publishing content that answers real questions, in language people actually use, at scale.

How Any HVAC Contractor in New York Can Climb

Move 1: Identify the 10 questions that drive your phones. Pull your last 50 calls. What problems were they calling about? Emergency heat? AC maintenance? Financing questions? Freeze protection? Write those down. Now Google each one. If you don't rank in the top 5 for any of them, that's your content roadmap.

Move 2: Publish deeply on those 10 questions. One blog post per question. 1,500 to 2,000 words each. Answer the question fully, explain your process, show your work, mention your coverage area by name. This content should help someone decide whether they need to call you. Upload it to your site, index it with Google Search Console, and wait 4 to 8 weeks for it to rank.

Move 3: Reference these posts in your email sequences and sales calls. When you talk to a prospect, you're not selling the job. You're selling education. "We see this problem a lot. Here's the breakdown." Then send a link to your content. This creates authority before you ever quote price.

These three moves took the top contractors from invisible to dominant. They're not fast. They take 3 to 6 months to show up in AI results. But once you're there, you stay there. And unlike paid ads, you don't pay per result.

Your Move

If you're an HVAC contractor in New York, run a free 90-second AI visibility audit at mentionedinai.com. You'll see your current score across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. You'll see exactly which questions you're missing.

Then pick your top three problems to solve. Publish three deep posts. Let them rank. In 90 days, audit again.

There's still time to move fast. The founder cohort closes July 4, and we're limited to 12 contractors per market. If you want to coordinate a full AI visibility build (audit, content roadmap, publication, and tracking), apply before the window closes.

The contractors winning in 2026 are the ones homeowners find before they even pick up the phone. It's time to be one of them.

See your HVAC AI visibility score in New York

Enter your business below. We run live queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. You get your score in under 90 seconds.

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