From our Round Rock study
What do ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini look for when they recommend a local business?
They look for a web page that answers the customer's exact question: the town, the job, how you charge, your hours, and a way to book. Star ratings did not decide it.
Updated 14 November 2026
On November 13, 2026, we ran a study in Round Rock, Texas. We collected 212 answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini for normal homeowner plumbing questions.
Then we read the websites of two groups. The first group was the 11 plumbers the assistants picked most—shops named first in at least 10% of one assistant's answers. The second group was 12 plumbers sitting in the top 30 on Google Maps that never got named once.
Both groups had the same typical Google rating: 4.9 stars. Their websites, though, looked very different.
What separated the picked shops from the skipped ones
When a homeowner asks for a water heater repair in Round Rock, these tools look for a page they can read and quote back. The 11 picked shops gave them plain facts on the page. The 12 skipped shops mostly didn't.
| What was on the website | 11 picked plumbers | 12 skipped plumbers |
|---|---|---|
| Town name in the landing page title | 10 of 11 | 5 of 12 |
| A booking form or "book" button | 11 of 11 | 7 of 12 |
| Links to a page for the job (water heater) | 10 of 11 | 6 of 12 |
| Says 24/7 or same-day service | 10 of 11 | 7 of 12 |
| Links to a page for the city | 9 of 11 | 5 of 12 |
| States hours, 7 days, or 24/7 | 9 of 11 | 7 of 12 |
| Landing page was cited directly in answers | 9 of 11 | 0 of 12 |
| Says how they charge (flat rate, no dispatch fee, or a price) | 8 of 11 | 4 of 12 |
| Shows an actual dollar price | 5 of 11 | 0 of 12 |
Look at the money rows. Nearly half of the picked shops put an actual dollar figure on the page. Not one of the skipped shops did. Even saying "no dispatch fee" or "upfront flat-rate pricing" separated the two groups (8 of 11 vs 4 of 12).
And for 9 of the 11 picked shops, their landing page was the exact page the assistants cited as a source. None of the 12 skipped shops had their page cited.
What did not make a difference
Some things you might expect to matter didn't split the two groups at all.
- Google star rating: The median rating was 4.9 for the picked shops and 4.9 for the skipped shops. It was 4.9 for rarely picked shops, too.
- Google Maps rank: The median Maps rank was 16 for picked shops and 22 for skipped ones. That is close. Perplexity's favorite plumber sat 53rd on Google Maps with a 4.1 rating.
- Schema markup: This is hidden code on a site that tells search engines "this is a plumber" (LocalBusiness or Plumber schema). 5 of the 11 picked shops had it. 5 of the 12 skipped shops had it too.
- Robots.txt settings: None of the 47 shops we looked at blocked AI crawlers in their site files.
- "Best of" directory lists: Across 7 directory lists we read, every group sat on a median of 1 list. One site, BestProsInTown, listed 6 of the 11 picked shops versus 3 of the 12 skipped ones.
Where the answers came from
When the assistants showed where an answer came from (ChatGPT and Perplexity mostly; Gemini rarely showed a link), they pointed to a handful of sources: the shops' own service pages, Nextdoor, Yahoo Local, and "best plumbers in town" directory sites.
If your own website doesn't have a clear page for the job and the town, the tools have nothing of yours to cite.
An honest caveat
The 11 picked shops did have more Google reviews than the 12 skipped ones: a median of 607 reviews versus 79. So volume may help. Still, a 4.1-star shop sitting 53rd on Maps was Perplexity's favourite by a mile, ahead of shops with far better ratings.
Also, keep in mind what this is: one town, one day, 23 websites. It shows a clear pattern, not a law of nature.
What to do with your own site
You don't need a site redesign. You need pages that read like you talk on the phone:
- Build one clear page per job and per town you work in.
- Put the town name right in the page title.
- Say how you charge, and show a starting dollar price if you can.
- State your hours and service area plainly.
- Put a booking button on the page.
- Check your Nextdoor and Yahoo Local listings so the details match.
We wrote out the six fixes for plumbing websites on a separate page if you want to do them yourself.
If you are too busy running trucks to mess with web pages, start with our free check. We ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini fifty homeowner questions for your trade and town. You get an email report within 5 business days showing who gets named, whether it's you, and what their pages have. No card and no contract.
If you want us to fix it after that, we build the job and town pages for you, add a booking page or tracked phone line, and you only pay per new customer who books through it. Never for rankings or monthly reports.
Common questions
Do I need a 5.0 rating on Google to get recommended?
No. In our Round Rock check, both the most-picked plumbers and the ones never named had a median Google rating of 4.9. Perplexity's favorite shop had 4.1 stars and sat 53rd on Google Maps.
Does schema markup make a difference?
It didn't in our test. 5 of the 11 most-picked shops had LocalBusiness or Plumber schema markup, and 5 of the 12 shops that were never named had it too. Plain words on the page made the difference.
Is the check really free?
Yes. No card, no contract, nothing to cancel. If you want us to build the pages afterwards, you pay per new customer who books through a page or phone line we built, never for rankings or monthly reports.