The prompts we run
For Columbus HVAC work, the current set is three questions, each asked of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity in a fresh signed-in chat:
- “best HVAC company in Columbus Ohio”
- “best furnace repair Columbus OH”
- “recommended AC repair near Columbus Ohio”
That is nine answers. A shop is counted as named only if it appears in the written answer. A mention that appears only in a Yelp or other source snippet is labeled and is not counted as a recommendation.
Wording can shift slightly — for example, “air conditioning” versus “AC” — and we record the exact prompt used on that date. The prompts do not include your company name.
Where this matters, and where it does not
A furnace that fails late at night still often goes to whoever answers the phone or appears in Google Maps. The assistants matter more when someone is comparing shops in ordinary language: who is recommended, who to call for furnace or air-conditioning repair, which company is treated as the best in town.
Those “best of” and recommended-repair questions already produce shortlists with real contractor names. The snapshot shows whether your name was in the answers we collected on that date. It is not a claim about your service work, and it is not a Maps ranking.
What we do after the snapshot
If you want the work done, the setup covers your Google Business Profile, Bing Places, core directory citations, review-request wording you can send after a job, and LocalBusiness or HVACBusiness schema on the website. We measure that work by repeating the same nine prompts at the start and at the end of about 30 days. Setup begins at $497. Ongoing monitoring, if you want it, is $149 a month.
We do not publish a public list of shops that were missing from these answers, and we do not present this page as a ranking of Columbus contractors.