Your Customers Are Asking AI Who to Hire (and Your Name Isn't Coming Up)
Updated: Oct 10
Try this experiment tonight. Open Chat GPT and type: "Who's the best plumber in Savannah?" Or "Best HVAC company near me?" or whatever industry you work in...
You'll get a short list of names. And chances are, yours isn't on it.
(I hope that I'm wrong!)
A company called Local Falcon ran 37,500 AI searches across the 100 largest U.S. cities, asking five AI platforms (ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Grok) who the best local pros were.
They studied real estate agents, but the mechanics apply to every home-service business — plumbers, roofers, HVAC techs, electricians.
The results should make every local business owner sit up straight.
91.5% of established, website-publishing professionals were never named.
Not once. Not by a single platform.
That's not 91.5% of the lazy ones, either — these were ranked pros with real websites. And among the highest-volume sellers in each city, the people actually doing the most business, only 21.2% were cited by any AI platform at all.
Let that sink in. Doing great work and ranking #1 on Google doesn't mean AI will recommend you.
Those are officially two separate games now.
Being the Best Doesn't Matter if AI Doesn't Know You
AI doesn't care about your reputation the way your neighbors do. It doesn't know you fixed the Morrisons' AC at 10 p.m. on a Friday. It knows what it can read: your Google Business Profile, your reviews, your website, and what other sites say about you across the internet. If your online footprint is thin, you might as well not exist in AI's world.
No matter how good your work is.
Here's the flip side, and it's exciting: in the average city, one agent accounted for 26.6% of everything AI said about agents there.
One person owns the AI conversation in their market while everyone else is invisible. Somebody is going to be that person in your trade and your town. It could be you, but only if you move before your competitor does.
Where AI Actually Gets Its Answers
The study also revealed that the five AI platforms barely agree with each other. 82.6% of the professionals named were named by only one platform and no other.
ChatGPT's favorite isn't Gemini's favorite.
There is no single AI ranking to win, you have to show up consistently everywhere.
So where do these answers come from? Google Business Profiles are the single largest source AI platforms cite when recommending local pros.
Your GBP isn't just a map listing anymore, it's feeding the answers.
And here's the tactical nugget: 18 of the 25 most-cited websites carried a "best real estate agents in [insert your city]" page, if that makes sense...
Translation for your type of business: pages that directly answer the questions your type of customers ask ("best plumber in Pooler," "top rated lawyer in Richmond Hill") are exactly what AI reaches for.
A recent analysis of home-service AI searches found the same pattern.
Gemini leans heavily on contractor websites for its citations, while ChatGPT pulls more from directories and review sites.
Different engines, different ingredients, same recipe: clear, consistent, credible information about who you are.
Your AI Visibility Checklist
You don't need to become an AI expert to have your business recommended by AI. You simply need to stay updated on best practices (like you're doing now) ... and do the fundamentals that feed into the AI answers:
Complete your Google Business Profile. Every service listed, photos uploaded, hours current, posts fresh. This is now your most important digital asset — it feeds AI answers directly.
Get reviews weekly, not yearly. Consistent, recent reviews beat a pile of old ones. Make asking part of every finished job.
Keep your name, address, and phone identical everywhere — your site, Google, Yelp, Facebook, every directory. AI gets confused when your listings disagree. Confused AI doesn't recommend you.
Answer the question on your website. A service page titled something like "AC Repair in Savannah" that actually explains what you do, where you work, and why you're good at it is AI food.
Check yourself. Ask the AI assistants who they'd recommend for your trade in your town. If you're not there, now you know — and so do your competitors, eventually.
The shift from the Yellow Pages to Google took years.
The shift to AI search is happening in months.
The businesses showing up in AI answers right now are building an advantage that's going to be very hard to catch.
Your Move
If your phones aren't ringing because AI never mentions your name, let's fix that.
Book a free digital marketing consultation with me and I'll map out your next 90 days, all the way from your Google Business Profile to your reviews to your website.
So the next time someone asks AI who to call in Savannah, the answer is you.
— Matthew Davis, Matt Davis Marketing LLC
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