I asked AI 912 times who to hire for HVAC in Wilmington. Here is what it said.
By Erin Cronin, The Coastal Collaborative
September 4, 2026
The median HVAC business in this sample came up in 12.5% of AI calls across 12 businesses with completed scans. The range runs from 0.0% at the low end to 48.6% at the top.
0 out of 12 businesses I checked have a contact form that does not work. That is 0.0% of the sample. Every form submission hitting a dead endpoint is a lead that business paid for and will never see.
1 out of 7 businesses with PageSpeed data scored below 50, which is the bottom band Google reports for mobile. The score is a lab composite of load and responsiveness metrics, not a count of visitors leaving, so it is a flag to check the load time rather than a number of lost customers. Null scores were excluded from both counts.
The 912 calls were spread across openai, gemini, and perplexity, across 12 businesses. 11 of them at 3 runs per prompt, 1 at 5.
I asked three AI models, openai, gemini, and perplexity, the kinds of questions a homeowner in Wilmington would ask when their AC stops: who do you recommend, who is the best HVAC company near me, and who should I call for emergency repair. Each prompt ran 3 times per model for 11 of the 12 businesses and 5 times for the other 1, so I could measure a rate rather than a one-time answer.
Every model gives a different answer to the same question. SparkToro and Gumshoe ran 12 prompts 2,961 times and got a different brand list more than 99% of the time. The same study found something the headline misses: the pool of brands is far steadier than the order. The leaders in a category turned up in 55 to 77 percent of answers however the question was phrased. The order is noise; how often you appear is not. That is why this report uses appearance rate across many runs and not a ranking from one search. A one-time ranking tells you where you landed on one draw. Appearance rate tells you how often you show up, which is the number that matters.
No business is named in this report. Every number is an aggregate across the full sample.
Questions I get asked.
What is AI visibility?
How often your business comes up when someone asks an AI model for a recommendation. It is not a ranking. It is a rate, measured across many calls to the same model.
Why does my ranking change every time I ask ChatGPT?
Because there is no fixed ranking. Each call is a fresh draw. SparkToro and Gumshoe ran 12 prompts 2,961 times and got a different brand list more than 99% of the time. The same study found the pool of brands is far steadier than the order: the leaders in a category showed up in 55 to 77 percent of answers however the question was worded. The order is noise. How often you appear is not, and that is the number this measures.
Does llms.txt or schema markup fix this?
No. Ahrefs found that llms.txt got zero requests on 97% of 137,000 domains. Schema markup came back null in their controlled test. Neither moves the number.
How do I find out my own number?
The free AI Visibility Scan at thecoastalcollab.com runs the same prompts against your business and shows your appearance rate, your competitors, and what is leaking on your site.
However you reach out, it is me on the other end. Not a bot, not an assistant, not a “team member will be in touch.”
Want your own number? Run the free AI Visibility Scan at thecoastalcollab.com. It uses the same prompts and shows your appearance rate, your competitors, and what is leaking on your site.
No businesses are named in this report. Aggregates only.
Data snapshot: September 25, 2026