How AI assistants recommend plumbers
Someone with a leak who asks an AI assistant for a plumber gets a few names to call, and a different few from the next assistant. Here is what they answered in every city the AIGROW Index asked, and what a plumber can work on.
- Cities asked
- 88
- Names in the rankings
- 1,287
- Businesses named per city
- 39
- Names repeated on a rerun
- 37%
- Answers that name the leader
- 50%
The first two rows are counts; the rows under them are medians over the ranked pages. Every question was asked without a location or a chat history.
Asked for a plumber in 88 cities, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok named about 39 businesses per city, and 62% of those names came up only once. Each assistant builds its list from what is published about a business. What a plumber controls is that public record: the jobs, the area covered and the listings.
What a customer asked, and who came first
One place of the 88, as an example: New York. Every place was asked the same questions in its own language, and its page in the Index has the full ranking.
- Who is the best plumber in New York?
- I have a leaking pipe at home in New York. Which plumbing company should I call?
- I need an emergency plumber in New York tonight. Who would you recommend?
- Which plumber in New York would you trust to replace a water heater?
- Petri Plumbing & Heatingnamed in 33% of the answers
- Roto-Rooter Plumbing & Water Cleanupnamed in 31% of the answers
- Hub Plumbing & Mechanicalnamed in 25% of the answers
The names that recur
80 different businesses came first across 88 rankings, and 38 names were listed in three places or more. These are the most frequent.
- Les Bons Tuyaux7 places
- Aspect6 places
- Les Bons Artisans6 places
- MesDépanneurs.fr6 places
- SOS Plombier6 places
- Les Bons Plombiers5 places
Counted by spelling: two businesses with the same name in different places count as one.
What an owner can work on
No one can promise a place in an assistant’s answer. What an owner controls is what is published about the business, and these are the parts the questions above point to.
Say that you come out at night
Two of the four questions were a leak and a plumber needed tonight. If you take emergency calls, say so with your hours and your area, in the same words on your site, your Google Business Profile and the directories.
Name the jobs you do
One question asked who to trust with a new water heater. A line for each job you take on, from leaks to boilers, tells an assistant which questions you answer.
One name, one number
A trade often appears under several names and phone numbers across directories. Make them one, so every source an assistant reads describes the same business.
Every ranking for this trade
The AIGROW Index publishes the ranking of each place with every answer, and how it was measured.
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