I am a plumber: appearing in AI is of no use to me?
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A water leak does not wait. The day your customer asks an AI who to call, it answers them with a few names. We asked the question.
What the AIs answered
All three AIs answered with company names. Every time, ChatGPT provided a list of plumbers along with their phone numbers, which it claimed to have "verified today on their official websites". In one of its responses, it added who to call if the leak is on public streets, and pointed out that a written estimate is mandatory before any home repair service.
None of the three cited Google Maps.
Who is cited
The cited pages are of three kinds:
- websites of tradespeople and plumbing companies in Périgueux;
- matchmaking platforms and directories, such as Depanneo, PagesJaunes, or Travaux.com;
- a few official pages on water and on consumer rights regarding emergency repairs: the Grand Périgueux, economie.gouv.fr, service-public.gouv.fr.
Almost all the company pages cited by ChatGPT and Claude have "Périgueux" in their title.
How they search
To find the information, the AIs write their own searches, for example "plombier urgence fuite d’eau Périgueux". The words "plombier", "fuite", and "urgence" appear in the searches of each of their responses. ChatGPT goes further: it also searches for companies by name to find their phone number.
What this changes for a plumber
The customer who uses an AI only sees a few names. A plumber who is absent from the pages it reads will not appear in the response, even if they are the closest.
Some of these names come from platforms: ChatGPT itself presents one of them as an intermediary that sends a plumber. The platform then responds instead of the tradesperson.
So, is it of no use?
For a plumber whose booking diary is full thanks to word-of-mouth, maybe not much. We do not measure how many customers ask an AI which plumber to call. What we do measure is who is cited the day they do.
What you can do, simply
- A clear page per service and per city, for example leak repair in Périgueux, with the city in the title: this is the common thread among the cited pages.
- Be present on the directories and platforms that AIs read for your trade.
- Keep your hours and phone number up to date: ChatGPT includes them in its response.