How visible are hvac businesses to AI? We measured 61 of them.
Part of the AI Visibility Index, an unfiltered audit of 1,354 US local service businesses across 50 metros. This page is the hvac cut: the real median, the checks this trade fails most, and how it ranks against every other trade we measured.
01Where hvac stands
Hvac ranks 6th of 15 trades measured, 2 points above the all-trade median of 72. Each group below is scored as points earned against points available across the 61 businesses in this trade.
The pattern holds here as it does across every trade in the study: an AI engine can nearly always reach these sites. What it cannot do is describe them precisely, because the machine-readable facts and the answer-shaped content it needs are missing.
02What hvac businesses fail most
Share of the 61 audited hvac businesses that outright failed each check. Ten worst shown.
The most common single failure in this trade is FAQPage schema, missing on 95.1% of hvac sites audited. It is worth knowing that this is a fixable, mechanical problem rather than a content one: it is a block of markup stating who the business is and what it answers, not a rewrite.
03Every trade, ranked
Median and mean score per trade, for the 15 trades with a large enough sample. Hvac is highlighted.
| Trade | Audited | Median | Mean |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roofing | 54 | 80 | 74.3 |
| Garage And Doors | 32 | 79 | 75.3 |
| Painting | 27 | 75 | 73.6 |
| Remodeling | 56 | 75 | 70.3 |
| Windows And Fencing | 42 | 74 | 70.0 |
| Hvac | 61 | 74 | 72.8 |
| Flooring | 33 | 74 | 71.5 |
| Auto Detailing And Repair | 444 | 73 | 67.5 |
| Locksmith | 27 | 72 | 70.3 |
| Plumbing | 49 | 72 | 66.3 |
| Pools And Spas | 110 | 70 | 66.0 |
| Electrical | 44 | 70 | 68.0 |
| Landscaping | 48 | 70 | 66.5 |
| Pet Services | 95 | 69 | 66.2 |
| Contractor And Handyman | 137 | 68 | 62.7 |
The spread between trades is much smaller than the spread inside any one of them. Who built the website matters more than what the business does, which is why a trade average is a starting point and not a verdict on any one site.
04Method, in short
Businesses were drawn at random from Overture Maps open place data across 50 US metros, one per registrable domain, with a fixed seed and no score filter. Every business drawn was audited and counted. 61 hvac businesses responded and were scored against the same 23 checks we run for clients. Full method, limitations and the null results we could not explain away are on the main Index page, and every figure is published as JSON under CC BY 4.0.
05Other trades
Where does your hvac site sit?
Run the same 23 checks on your own site. No email, no call, no card: the score and every failing check appear on the page.
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