We asked AI 160 questions about Austin trades. 33 of 40 companies never came up.
Original research. Four trades, five homeowner questions each, eight asks each, checked against 40 Austin companies. Every question printed, the limits stated.
Most Austin trades companies we checked never came up when AI answered homeowner questions. We asked Perplexity 20 questions, 8 times each, across plumbing, roofing, HVAC and electrical on November 3, 2026, for 160 answers. 33 of 40 companies were never named, and no plumbing answer named any of the five we checked. Cost and "what to look for" questions named no company at all.
We asked an AI search engine 160 questions a homeowner asks before calling a plumber, roofer, HVAC company or electrician in Austin. Most of the companies we checked never came up once.
Five questions per trade. Each asked eight times, because an AI answer changes from one ask to the next. Every answer stored word for word.
Then we took 40 Austin trades companies and counted how often each was named.
The numbers
Perplexity, November 3, 2026. Austin, Texas. 4 trades, 5 questions each, 8 asks each.
| Trade | Companies checked | Never named | Answers naming any checked company |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plumbing | 5 | 5 of 5 | 0 of 40 |
| Roofing | 19 | 17 of 19 | 12 of 40 |
| HVAC | 12 | 8 of 12 | 16 of 40 |
| Electrical | 4 | 3 of 4 | 16 of 40 |
| All four | 40 | 33 of 40 | 44 of 160 |
"Never named" means the company's name did not appear in any of the 40 answers for its trade. Only 7 of the 40 companies were named even once.
What we found
33 of 40 companies never came up
Each company had 40 chances to be named: five questions about its own trade in Austin, eight asks each. 33 of 40 were never named once. Plumbing was the starkest. None of the five plumbing companies appeared in any of 40 answers.
Those 40 answers still named companies. Every "best", "emergency" and "most trusted" plumbing answer named some. They were just not the ones we checked.
What this means for an owner: a homeowner who asks AI for a plumber in Austin gets a list. Being a real, working company with a website is not enough to be on it.
Cost and "what to look for" questions named nobody
We asked five kinds of question. Three of them named a company in every answer: "who is the best", "who should I call in an emergency" and "who is the most trusted". Two of them named no company in any answer.
- Cost questions (a new AC system, a water heater, a panel upgrade, a roof replacement): 0 of 32 answers named a company. All 32 gave dollar figures.
- "What should I look for when hiring...": 0 of 32 answers named a company. Plumbing answers named the state licensing board. No business.
That is 64 of 160 answers with no company in them. The engine answered the question and sent the buyer nowhere.
Why it matters: on "who is best", a company competes with whoever is already on the list. On cost and hiring questions, the list is empty. We did not test whether a clear local cost page gets a company named. It is the only slot we measured where nobody was in the way.
A few companies take every "best" and "most trusted" slot
Seven of the 40 companies were named at all. Two of them were named in 16 of their trade's 40 answers: every "best" answer and every "most trusted" answer, all eight asks each.
Meanwhile similar questions gave different lists. In roofing, "who is the best roofing company" named none of our 19. "Who are the most trusted roofers" named at least one of them in all 8 asks.
What this means: there is no single AI ranking to climb. Each wording of the question pulls its own short list.
The questions, asked word for word
Austin, Texas in every question. Eight asks each. The right column counts answers that named any company we checked, out of 8.
| Question | Named a checked company |
|---|---|
| Who is the best plumber in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who should I call for an emergency plumber in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| What does it cost to replace a water heater in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who are the most trusted plumbing companies in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| What should I look for when hiring a plumber in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who is the best roofing company in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who should I call for roof storm damage repair in Austin, Texas? | 4 of 8 |
| What does a roof replacement cost in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who are the most trusted roofers in Austin, Texas? | 8 of 8 |
| What should I look for when hiring a roofer in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who is the best AC repair company in Austin, Texas? | 8 of 8 |
| Who should I call for an emergency AC repair in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| What does a new AC system cost in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who are the most trusted HVAC companies in Austin, Texas? | 8 of 8 |
| What should I look for when hiring an HVAC company in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who is the best electrician in Austin, Texas? | 8 of 8 |
| Who should I call for an emergency electrician in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| What does a panel upgrade cost in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
| Who are the most trusted electrical contractors in Austin, Texas? | 8 of 8 |
| What should I look for when hiring an electrician in Austin, Texas? | 0 of 8 |
By question type, across all four trades (32 answers each): "best" named a checked company in 16, "emergency" in 4, "most trusted" in 24, cost in 0, "what to look for" in 0.
What this does not tell you
Read this before quoting any number above.
Forty companies in total, and only 5 plumbing and 4 electrical. One company moving changes a trade's rate a lot. Treat each trade's figure as a sample, not a measure of the trade. The overall 33 of 40 is firmer than any single row.
Every answer came from Perplexity's API with web search on. That is a close proxy for the app, not the same thing. We did not measure ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews. They may name different companies.
Austin only. The main run was November 3, 2026. We ran the same 160 questions again on November 5. The headline held: 34 of 40 never named, and 0 of 40 plumbing answers named a checked company. The details moved. Roofing answers naming a checked company fell from 12 to 6, HVAC rose from 16 to 17, electrical fell from 16 to 11. An AI answer is a distribution. One day's count is a snapshot. See Does AI give the same answer twice?
This is not a random sample. We took Austin trades companies with an owner-level contact (owner, founder, CEO or president) in a commercial B2B database, one person per company, and dropped remodelers, window, solar and commercial firms. Nobody read each website, so a few may do some commercial work. Companies without an owner contact in that database were never in the pool. No company is named on this page. They are small businesses that did not ask to be in a study.
A company counts as named when its name appears in the answer text: the full name, the name without the city, or all its distinctive words. We read the near misses by hand. Whether an answer names any company at all was checked by script plus a scan for bolded business names and phone numbers.
It does not show why a company was or was not named, whether it is a good company, or how many homeowners ask AI this. For scale: BrightLocal's survey of 1,002 US consumers found "45% consumers using AI tools for local business recommendations (up from 6% last year)" (March 2026). CallRail found 0.353% of all inbound calls in September came from AI search, and 0.616% in home services. Many people ask. Few calls come from it yet.
Run the same check on your own business
You do not need a tool for a first read. Pick the three questions a homeowner in your area asks before calling anyone. Ask each one eight times in the AI assistant your customers use, in fresh chats. Write down every company named.
Or start with the free AI Visibility Check. It asks once and reads your site, so treat it as a first look, not the eight-ask read described here.
If you never appear, you are with the 33. If you do appear, note which questions. In this data, being named on one wording did not mean being named on another.
One more pattern in the same data: a company's site can be listed as a source while the company is never named. We wrote that up in Why AI uses your website but recommends someone else. The same method on 235 builders in 15 cities is in Which local builders does AI name?
Cite this as MarqueeOS, "Which Austin Trades Does AI Name?", November 2026, and link to this page. The aggregate data is in data.json.
Keep reading
Why AI Uses Your Website But Recommends Someone Else
One Austin plumber's site was listed as a source in all 8 asks and the company was never named. Why it happens and what to try.
Read the guide → Decisions · 5 min readWho ChatGPT Ads Work For (and Who They Don't)
The advertisers who last are self-serve products that finish a task people already do in ChatGPT. One homepage and a small budget spread wide is how the rest lose money.
Read the guide →Want to know where you actually stand?
The Diagnostic ($2,500) runs this measurement on your business, across the questions your buyers ask, and ends in a written plan with a fixed fee.
See the Diagnostic →