Your Customers Are Using ChatGPT to Find a Plumber. You're Probably Not on the List.

The new search engine doesn't care how long you've been in business.

I tried something this week.

I opened ChatGPT, picked a town in my area, and asked it to find me a few good plumbers. Then I asked Perplexity. Then I checked what Google's AI Overview was showing for the same query.

Three different AI tools, three slightly different lists. But they had one thing in common. Not a single one of them recommended the plumber with the best Google reviews in that zip code.

The guy with 287 five-star reviews and 22 years in business? Nowhere. The AI picked someone else entirely. When I went to look at why, the answer was depressingly simple.

The plumber with the best reputation in town has a Facebook page instead of a website. The AI couldn't see him. So it skipped him.

This Is the Part Most Contractors Are Missing

A year ago, "online presence" meant Google. You showed up in the map pack, you got calls. You didn't, you didn't.

That's still partially true. But more and more of your customers, especially anyone under 40, are skipping Google entirely. They're asking ChatGPT. Some are using Perplexity. Others are typing questions straight into the AI Overview bar at the top of Google itself.

Those tools work differently than regular search. They don't rank a list of links and let the customer pick. They pick for the customer. One name comes back. Maybe three.

If your business isn't on that short list, it might as well not exist.

Why the AI Skipped the Best Plumber in Town

Here's the part that should bother you. The AI isn't picking based on quality of work. It can't. It has no idea who's good at plumbing. What it can do is read.

So it reads websites. It reads what businesses say about themselves, what services they offer, what towns they serve. The more there is to read, and the clearer it is, the more confidently the AI can recommend you.

The plumber with 287 reviews and a Facebook page? The AI has nothing to read. A Facebook page is mostly photos and short posts. No service description. No location info. No structured information at all.

So the AI moves on. The next guy on the list has a website. Maybe his work isn't as good. Maybe his reviews are mediocre. But the AI has 800 words about his services, his town, and how to contact him. Confidence wins.

The 30-Second Test

Want to see this for yourself? Open ChatGPT right now. Type in:

"Find me a [your trade] in [your town]."

See if your name comes up. If it doesn't, look at the businesses it did recommend and click on their websites. You'll notice a pattern. They're not always the biggest companies. The reviews aren't always the best either. What they have in common is websites that actually said something the AI could understand.

This isn't going to get less important. The number of people using AI to make decisions like this is growing every month. In two years it'll be the default for an entire generation of homeowners. The contractors who set themselves up to be findable now are going to clean up. The ones who don't are going to wonder why the phone stopped ringing.

What You Actually Need

Same answer I always give. A real website. Not a Facebook page. Not a one-page placeholder from 2017. A real site with your services written out, your service area, your phone number where it belongs, and enough actual content for an AI to know what you do.

That's it. You don't need to game the algorithm or write a blog. Just give the robots something to read so they have a reason to send people your way.

I build these for contractors every day at Same Day Websites. Flat fee, hand-coded, written so AI tools and regular Google can both pick up on what you do. Free sample first if you want to see it before you commit.

But before anything else, run the test. Ask ChatGPT for a [your trade] in your town. See if you exist.

If you don't, that's the answer.