AI Visibility for Contractors — Field-Tested, 5 August 2026
We Asked ChatGPT, Gemini & Perplexity to Recommend Contractors in 11 Cities. Here’s What They Actually Check.
On 5 August 2026 we ran 11 homeowner queries across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity — 12 runs on each platform, 36 answers in total, covering kitchen, bath, roofing, deck and basement contractors in eleven cities across Georgia, Florida and Michigan. Not one answer sent the homeowner to a contractor’s website. Several quoted contractor websites word for word. This page shows which signals decided each answer, with screenshots.
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The shift
Why this matters now
Homeowners are starting to ask an assistant before they open a search results page, and the assistant answers with a shortlist instead of ten blue links. The question is no longer whether AI platforms name contractors. It is whose data they read when they do — and in these 36 answers, that data came from a small, identifiable set of places.
The eight signals
What do ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity actually check before recommending a contractor?
Eight signals, ranked by how consistently they appeared across the 36 answers we ran, strongest first. No single one of them carried an answer on its own, and no platform used all eight the same way.
Google Business Profile
Rating, review count, and category accuracy. The only signal that showed up on all three platforms, in all three states. In the smaller markets it was the strongest thing Gemini had to work with — in the Lansing and Flint runs the profile data was doing most of the work, because there was little else to pull from.
Review volume and velocity
Not sentiment — the raw number. The platforms quoted review counts back at the user as a reason (“4.9, 627 reviews”). A profile with a handful of reviews gave the AI nothing quotable to justify a pick with.
The contractor’s own website, written so it can be extracted
License number, certifications, permit record, years in business, service area, stated in plain structured text on the page. Perplexity leaned on this hardest, particularly on verification queries.
License database consistency
Whether the business name on the state license listing matches the name everywhere else. Gemini went furthest here: on the Orlando “how do I find someone trustworthy” query it walked the homeowner through checking Florida’s DBPR portal and cited Florida Statute §489.126 on deposit limits, and in the Flint roofing answer it spelled out Michigan’s residential builder licensing requirement.
BBB profile
The one directory that turned up in every state, on every platform. Present in the source list whether the query was a metro discovery query or a small-market verification query.
Directory and listicle presence
Expertise.com, Houzz, Angi, ProFindr, and the year-stamped “Best of [city]” roundups. Perplexity cited one listicle that advertised itself as updated for 2026. In the Atlanta runs these were close to the whole answer.
Permit activity
BuildZoom permit history came up as a proof-of-life check. ChatGPT used an active permit trail on the Marietta verification query to conclude the company was still working, in those words: “ongoing remodeling and construction work in recent years, indicating they remain active.”
Reddit reputation
Only ChatGPT touched it. Gemini and Perplexity never surfaced a Reddit thread in any of the 36 answers. It also cannot be manufactured — it is earned in public by people who are not you, and we do not offer it as a service.
There is no one-lever version of this. The stack that gets a contractor read on Perplexity is not the stack that gets them read on Gemini, and the daily ranking and Google Business Profile work that feeds several of these signals already runs inside the AI Rank program. Anyone selling a single fix — just the profile, just content, just an llms.txt file — is working on a third of the picture at best.
What your site is for
Your website doesn’t get you discovered. It gets you described.
Across all 36 answers, not one platform pointed the homeowner at a contractor’s website as the answer. Discovery ran on third-party signals every time. But when the AI had already picked a company and needed to describe or verify it, it went to that company’s own pages — and in several runs it quoted them directly.
The clearest case was Miami. Gaven Constructions had written concrete trust data into their own site: hundreds of projects since 2015, 37+ BuildZoom-verified permits, license number GCG1524886. Perplexity reproduced that line close to verbatim as part of its justification for naming them. The contractor did not get a citation because the copy was persuasive. They got it because the copy contained specific, checkable facts in a form a machine could lift.
Copper Sky Renovations in Atlanta showed the same mechanism from a different angle. Perplexity named them the single strongest pick and borrowed the site’s own “award-winning design + remodel firm” framing in its reasoning. Gemini did it too, in Lansing: it pulled a price range of $40,000 to $150,000, a phone number, and a service area straight off the Odd Fellows Contracting site. In Flint it treated gunsnhosesllc.com as a primary source.
The inverse is the more useful finding. Generic service-page copy — “quality craftsmanship,” “free estimates,” “family owned and operated” — was never quoted, on any platform, in any of the 36 answers. Only specific structured claims got picked up: license numbers, permit counts, years, review counts, named certifications. That is a writing and page-structure problem before it is anything else, and it is the same problem we solve when we rebuild a contractor’s site so the facts are readable rather than decorative.
Market size changes the job
Big metro vs. small market — the stack flips
In the metros, the lists decide.
In Atlanta, Miami, Detroit and Tampa, ranked listicles and directories carried the answers. The Gemini Atlanta run was built almost entirely on The Pinnacle List and Expertise.com. Perplexity’s Atlanta answer ran off a Houzz “Best 15” roundup. In those markets the practical question is not what your website says. It is whether an editor at one of those properties has heard of you.
Atlanta · Miami · Detroit · Tampa
flips
In smaller markets and niche trades, there is no list to get into.
The basement finishing query in Lansing, the roofing query in Flint, the custom home query in Macon — the platforms fell back on Google Business Profile data and the contractor’s own website, because no ranked roundup existed to fall back on. Gemini’s Lansing answer was assembled largely out of one contractor’s own page.
Lansing · Flint · Macon · Grand Rapids
Answers that sent the homeowner to a contractor’s website as the recommendation. In the metros the directories carried it; in the small markets the contractor’s own page did.
Which of those two you are determines what the work actually is. A metro contractor is fighting for placement in other people’s rankings. A small-market contractor is the source material, which is a very different and considerably more controllable job. Most of the cities we work in fall on the second side of that line.
Branded queries
What happens when a homeowner asks the AI about YOUR company by name?
They ask. Not everyone starts at “who’s the best kitchen remodeler in Savannah” — plenty of homeowners arrive with a name from a neighbor and type “is [company] any good.” That query type went deeper than the discovery queries did.
We ran it on Alair Homes Marietta. ChatGPT produced a numeric verdict, 8.5 to 9 out of 10, and showed its working: roughly 40 Google reviews, an A+ BBB record, and a BuildZoom permit history it read as evidence the company was still actively building.
Inputs it showed
- ~40 Google reviews
- A+ BBB record
- BuildZoom permit trail
Gemini took the same question somewhere else entirely. It surfaced the franchise history — formerly Atlanta Design & Build, franchised with Alair in 2020, sourced from Houzz — a national NARI chairmanship, and the company’s open-book accounting model, then organized the whole thing into a “choose them if / look elsewhere if” table.
Inputs it used instead
- Franchise history, via Houzz
- National NARI chairmanship
- Open-book accounting model
Neither of those was a marketing message. Both were assembled from public records the contractor may never have looked at. Your permit trail, your BBB file, your license listing and your review history now function as a public score you never see being calculated. A stale profile, a license listed under a slightly different business name, an unclaimed BBB record — in these runs, gaps like those were exactly the material the AI used to hedge.
Negative findings
What didn’t matter
Paid ads
Advertising never appeared as a source in any of the 36 answers we ran. Not in the metro discovery queries, not in the verification queries, not on any of the three platforms. That does not make ads useless — they do a different job on a different surface. It does mean an ad budget was not buying anything in these particular answers.
Social media profiles
No platform cited an Instagram or Facebook page as a reason to recommend anyone. But that finding needs its second half: social is where the homeowner goes immediately after the AI names you. An AI recommendation followed by a profile whose last post is fourteen months old dies right there, at the next click.
Any claim that somebody “owns” AI results
The same Atlanta query, run twice on all three platforms in one sitting, produced a different answer every time. There is no shared index, no shared ranking, and no consensus to win. If an agency offers to place your company at the top of ChatGPT, ask them which of the three platforms they mean.
Social sits in the verification layer rather than the ranking layer, which is why we treat it as a trust asset rather than a reach metric.
How the test was run
Method
The queries in full
Transcribed verbatim from the query bubble in each capture.
| # | Query as typed | Platforms | Mode |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | best home remodeling company in Atlanta | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 2 | who should I hire to remodel my bathroom in Tampa | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 3 | top roofing contractors Flint Michigan | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 4 | who is a good general contractor in Miami for a kitchen renovation | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 5 | best bathroom remodelers Detroit | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 6 | best deck builder in Grand Rapids Michigan | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 7 | basement finishing contractor Lansing MI | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 8 | best custom home builder in Macon GA | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 9 | how do I find a trustworthy remodeling contractor in Orlando | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 10 | is Alair Homes Marietta a good contractor | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 11 | kitchen remodel cost Savannah GA and who should I hire | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant (picker); 15s reasoning trace · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
| 12 | best home remodeling company in Atlanta (repeat of run 1) | ChatGPT · Gemini · Perplexity | ChatGPT: Instant · Gemini: Flash · Perplexity: default |
Results also vary with the location a query is made from; these runs reflect one location.
The evidence
The answers, as they came back
Six of the seven captures behind this page, in one place. Click any one to open it full size. The Miami answer sits in its own section above, next to the claim it proves.
What it means for you
What this means for your business
AI visibility is not a new service, and we don’t charge extra for it. The same signals that make Google trust a contractor — specific local data, verified numbers, consistent listings, a site written so machines can quote it — are exactly what ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity read. It’s already inside the work.
The eight signals above map onto three things we were doing anyway. Google Business Profile accuracy, directory and BBB citations, and license-listing consistency across DBPR, LARA and the Georgia board are all part of how we run search engine optimization for remodeling contractors — the same profile and citation work, now with a second audience reading it. Getting the checkable facts onto the page in a structure a machine can lift, which is the mechanism that got Gaven and Copper Sky quoted, is ordinary website work done deliberately rather than a separate product. And keeping the profile a homeowner lands on after the AI names you looking alive is what the social work is for.
Two things we do not do, stated plainly. Reviews are yours. We will hand over the process, the timing and the request templates, but the asking has to come from the person who did the kitchen, and nobody should be selling you review volume as a deliverable. And Reddit is not for sale. ChatGPT was the only platform reading it, it is earned by other people talking about your work, and any agency claiming to manage it is describing something you should not want.
The one genuinely new piece is small: a one-time check that your license listing, business name and address read identically across the state database, your Google Business Profile, BBB and the directories. Mismatches there are common, cheap to fix, and in these runs they were sitting directly in the AI’s line of sight.
Questions we get
Frequently asked
Can you guarantee my company shows up in ChatGPT?
No, and neither can anyone else. The clearest result from this test is that no consensus exists between the platforms. The same Atlanta query returned different top picks on ChatGPT and Perplexity, and Gemini refused to name one at all — twice, in the same sitting. There is no single result to be placed in. What we can do is work on the inputs the platforms were demonstrably reading: an accurate and active Google Business Profile, a growing review count, a license listing that matches your business name exactly, a clean BBB record, presence in the directories that came up as sources, and a website that states checkable facts in a form a machine can lift. Those raise the probability that an assistant has something specific to say about you. Anyone converting that into a promised placement is selling you a certainty the data does not support.
Is AI visibility different from SEO?
Mostly it is the same work read by a different audience. Every one of the eight signals in this test — profile accuracy, review volume, license consistency, BBB, directory presence, permit history, on-page facts — is something a local SEO program already touches, because Google has been reading those signals for years. What changes is the output format. Google returns a list of links and lets the homeowner judge; ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity read the same material and return a verdict, sometimes with a number attached. That raises the cost of an inconsistency. A license listed under an old business name is a minor untidiness in a search result and a reason to hedge in an AI answer. So the honest framing is that ai search optimization is not a separate discipline sitting alongside SEO. It is the same groundwork, now with a second reader that summarizes instead of linking.
Do I need a separate “AI optimization” package?
No, and we would be cautious about anyone quoting you for one. AI visibility is not a new service, and we don’t charge extra for it. The same signals that make Google trust a contractor — specific local data, verified numbers, consistent listings, a site written so machines can quote it — are exactly what ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity read. It’s already inside the work. The test bears that out: the profiles, license records, directory listings and on-page facts the platforms cited are the same assets a local search program maintains. Where a genuinely new piece exists it is small — a one-time consistency check across your state license database, Google Business Profile, BBB and directory listings — and it belongs inside an audit, not a retainer line item. If a proposal prices AI visibility as its own product, ask which specific signal it addresses that your existing search work does not already reach.
What should my website say to get quoted by AI?
Facts a stranger could check. In these 36 answers the platforms only ever quoted specific structured claims: license numbers, permit counts, years in business, review counts, named certifications, service areas, price ranges. Gaven Constructions in Miami wrote their permit count and license number onto their own page, and Perplexity reproduced that line as part of its reason for naming them. Gemini took a price range and a service area straight off a Lansing contractor’s site. What never got quoted, on any platform, was the standard service-page vocabulary — quality craftsmanship, free estimates, family owned, fully insured. Those phrases carry no checkable content, so there is nothing in them for a machine to lift. If you want to be described accurately when a homeowner asks about you, put the numbers on the page in plain text and stop burying them in a PDF or a hero image.
How fast does AI visibility change?
Faster than search rankings in one direction and slower in the other. The platforms update models and retrieval behavior continuously, so an answer can change without anything about your business changing — the Atlanta repeat in this test changed inside a single sitting. That is why we re-run this test annually rather than treating it as settled. The underlying signals move at their own pace, and they behave like SEO assets: review counts, permit history, directory listings and license records accumulate slowly and hold their value once built. A profile fixed this month will not flip an answer next week. Over two or three quarters, though, it changes what there is for the platforms to find. The practical implication is that this is not a campaign with a finish line, and any timeline that promises a specific AI outcome by a specific date is guessing at something the platforms control.
Free audit
Want to know what the AIs say about your company right now?
We’ll run the same check on your business — your name, your trade, your city, across all three platforms — and show you the answers alongside the signals behind them. It’s part of the free audit. No new package, no separate charge.
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