For home-services companies
Be the company AI recommends.
Homeowners have stopped scrolling Google. They ask AI “best HVAC / plumber / roofer near me” — and it answers with a shortlist, ranked by your reviews. We make sure your company is on it.
field audit · june 2026 · perplexity · phoenix, az
We asked AI what homeowners ask.
In June 2026 we ran the questions Phoenix homeowners actually type on Perplexity, one of the major AI answer engines. Three patterns held — and every one is something a company can act on.
Finding 1
AI ranks you by your rating and your review count.
Ask “best HVAC company in Phoenix” and AI returns a shortlist justified by Google rating and review volume. The striking part: it explicitly discounted a perfect 5.0 with few reviews as “a less certain signal,” and favored a 4.8 backed by far more reviews. For a contractor, review count isn’t vanity — it’s the evidence AI ranks you on. How we earn the reviews →
Finding 2
It’s all third-party — not your website.
The sources behind the answer were Yelp, Angi, Forbes Home, ConsumerAffairs, and a stack of “best-rated” directories and articles — not company websites. A company with a thin Google profile and no directory presence simply doesn’t make the list, no matter how good the work.
Finding 3
The cost questions are wide open — and some rivals already own them.
We asked “how much does it cost to replace an AC unit in Phoenix” and AI cited cost guides plus the local companies that had published clear pricing pages. These are the questions homeowners ask before “best company,” and the contractors who answered them get cited first. The ones who didn’t are invisible there.
“For home-services pros, your review count isn’t vanity — AI literally discounts you for not having enough reviews.”
So how does your company get named?
The same three steps we run for every client, tuned for home services.
See exactly where you stand
We run the questions your future customers ask — “best [trade],” “emergency [trade] near me,” “what does [job] cost” — across every major AI engine, and show you, word for word, who AI recommends and which sources it used.
Build the signals AI ranks on
We strengthen your Google Business Profile and your genuine review volume, get you listed correctly on the directories AI reads (Angi, Yelp, Thumbtack, BBB), and publish clear cost and job-type content — so AI is confident recommending you.
Watch it move
We re-run the same questions every month and report the movement — rating, review volume, and AI visibility together — with a tamper-evident receipt you can verify.
Compliance
Honest, and within the rules. We never fabricate reviews (the FTC bans them), we keep license, credential, and guarantee claims accurate, and you approve everything before it goes live. We optimize how your company is found — we don’t put words in your customers’ mouths.
See what AI tells your customers today.
We’ll run your trade and city across every major engine and show you, word for word, who’s recommended — free, built by hand.
Sources & method
- Oracite audit, June 2026 — buying-intent home-services queries (“best HVAC company in Phoenix,” “how much does it cost to replace an AC unit in Phoenix”) run on Perplexity; the AI’s rating/review reasoning and cited sources recorded as returned. A small, transparent sample, not a full index; AI answers vary by person and location and change over time. Specific companies are intentionally not named here.
- That being cited differs from being recommended, and that AI leans on third-party consensus, are both consistent with a June 2026 controlled study of Google’s AI Overviews. Search Engine Land.