AI visibility benchmark · first-party data

How often AI recommends plumbers

We asked AI engines the questions buyers ask, like "emergency plumber near me", and counted how often each of 65 plumbers was named.

15.8%
of AI answers named the average plumbing business
17
of 65 were never named by AI
5
of 65 were named in half or more of answers

What we found

AI named the average plumbing business in 15.8% of the answers we checked, below the 20.8% average across all 1,584 businesses we measured.

17 of the 65 were never named in any answer. 5 were named in half or more.

On their own websites, the weakest signal in this category is quotable content and the strongest is machine-readable information. Across all our research, off-site brand recognition is the signal that most separates the businesses AI names from the ones it ignores.

Method: the latest report for each business in the Are you found by AI? corpus, 27 June to 29 September 2026. A business's percentage is the share of saved AI answers that named it, counting every repeat of each question. Failed or missing answers don't count against it, and businesses without countable answers are left out. Only categories with 12 or more businesses are published. Aggregates only, never an individual business.

Where do you sit?

The category average is not your number. The free scan asks ChatGPT and Gemini two of your buyers' questions and shows who they name.

All category benchmarks →