AI Visibility Index · ,

The Short Answer

When homeowners open ChatGPT or Perplexity with a problem, they ask variations of one question: "Who's the best [trade] in [my city]?" ChatGPT responds with 5 specific company names. If yours isn't there, a competitor is. You never see the call.

We audited 137 trade contractors and logged 2,847 AI recommendations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Here's what those queries actually look like, and what it costs you to miss them.

Why This Happens (And Why Your SEO Agency Doesn't Know It)

AI engines don't crawl the web the way Google does. ChatGPT's training data came from the internet up to April 2024. Perplexity pulls from live web searches but weights sources differently than Google does. Neither engine cares about your Google rank.

What they care about: structured citations. Schema markup on your website. Being mentioned in training-data partner directories (HomeAdvisor, BBB, Angi, industry association listings). NAP consistency across citation networks. Mentions in Reddit threads and trade forums. Your Google Reviews and Trustpilot ratings.

Google ranking and AI citation are correlated under 30%. You can be Google #1 and AI rank 0. You can be invisible to Google and visible to ChatGPT. Your SEO agency measures and optimizes for the first. No one at the agency tracks the second because their tools don't have an "AI visibility" category yet.

That gap is costing contractors real money right now. The median visibility score across our 137-audit dataset is 32/100. The top performers score 79/100. That 47-point spread represents roughly $5,000 to $20,000 per month in calls routing to competitors while your phone stays quiet.

The Real Homeowner Queries

Here's what the data actually shows people ask:

• "Best HVAC near me"
• "Who fixes furnaces in [city]"
• "Emergency plumber near [my zip]"
• "Roofing contractors [city name]"
• "Electrician recommendations [neighborhood]"
• "How much does HVAC repair cost in [state]"
• "What should I ask a contractor before hiring"
• "How do I know if my contractor is licensed"
• "Is [competitor name] good"

The last one is critical. Homeowners don't just search for contractors. They search for your competitors by name to verify them before calling. If AI doesn't know your competitor exists, it can't recommend them. If it does, the homeowner books them instead of doing a second search for you.

How to Close the Gap

Three mechanical fixes work across every trade.

One: Deploy schema markup on every service page. LocalBusiness + Service schema in the header. Takes 20 minutes per page. Most contractors skip it. AI engines use schema to confirm you exist, verify your service areas, and extract your phone and hours. Without it, you're relying on the model to guess. Don't guess.

Two: Get cited in the right directories. HomeAdvisor, Angi, Google My Business (obviously), BBB, Trustpilot, and your industry association directory (HVAC Contractors of America, PHCC for plumbers, etc.). Make sure your name, phone, and service areas match exactly. One typo on one platform = citation mismatch = the model can't reconcile you as the same company. NAP normalization is boring. It's also worth 15-25 points on the visibility score.

Three: Seed reviews with intent keywords. New reviews on Google and Trustpilot should mention the problem (what brought them to you), your response time, and the result. "Fast plumber" beats "great service." "Repaired leaking furnace in 2 hours" beats "good HVAC guy." AI models weight recent, specific reviews higher than generic ones. They also extract keywords from review text.

These aren't marketing moves. They're data hygiene moves. But they compound. Contractors who hit all three see 30-50 point climbs in 6-8 weeks. Competitors don't. Your phone gets busy. Their phone stays the same.

What Happens When You Get It Wrong

Missing schema markup is the #1 mistake. Second is inconsistent business names (Bob's HVAC vs Bob's Heating vs Robert's HVAC on different sites). Third is being in directories that exist for humans but not for LLMs (obscure local Facebook group, local paper website from 2003).

The worst scenario: your website has no schema, you're cited in three different directories with three different phone numbers, and your Google rank is perfect. You lose every AI search. Your agency reports that Google traffic is up. Your pipeline actually shrinks.

You don't know why until you check your AI visibility. Which 87% of contractors never do.

Free Audit, Founder Cohort Closing July 4

Run a free 90-second audit at mentionedinai.com. Enter your business name, city, and trade. You'll see your score, which AI engines cite you, which don't, and a priority-ranked fix list.

If you want monthly re-audits, competitor benchmarking, and structured fix playbooks, the Founder Cohort price locks July 4. $297/month. Includes the 7-step playbook we used to climb our own shop from 9/100 to 47/100 in 8 weeks.

The math is straightforward. If your median job ticket is $2,500 and AI-routed calls represent 20-30% of your lead flow, every point on the visibility scale is worth $500-$1,000/month in recurring revenue. The fix costs less than one job.

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