We asked five AI systems to recommend multi-location HVAC, plumbing, and restoration firms. SERVPRO is unanimous for restoration. HVAC and plumbing franchises split.
Across six buyer-intent prompts spanning restoration at multi-building portfolios, large-scale commercial restoration, plumbing and HVAC multi-metro franchises, and insurance-carrier preferred-vendor selection, run three times against ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok in May 2026, the five engines named 53 distinct firms with a mean inter-engine Jaccard overlap of 0.54 — a number that conceals two patterns. Restoration is brand-dominant: SERVPRO is unanimous #1 on both restoration prompts, Paul Davis Restoration is the consensus #2, BELFOR and PuroClean round out the corroborated tier. HVAC and plumbing fragment across franchise networks: Mr. Rooter Plumbing leads ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok; Benjamin Franklin Plumbing leads Perplexity; 1-800-Plumber + Air leads Claude. The IICRC certification database, insurance-carrier preferred-vendor directories, and after-disaster trade press carry restoration; franchise-network corroboration and metro service-area pages carry HVAC and plumbing.
What this means for you
- Restoration is brand-dominant. SERVPRO is unanimous #1 on HMS-02 (water/fire damage at multi-building portfolios) and HMS-06 (large-scale commercial/residential restoration). Paul Davis Restoration is the consensus #2 across every engine. BELFOR / ServiceMaster Restore / PuroClean round out the corroborated consensus tier.
- HVAC and plumbing fragment across franchise networks. Mr. Rooter Plumbing leads ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok on the plumbing/HVAC franchise prompt; 1-800-Plumber + Air leads Claude; Benjamin Franklin Plumbing leads Perplexity. Comfort Systems USA surfaces inconsistently for HVAC consolidator queries.
- 0.54 inter-engine overlap — mid-range, masking the hybrid pattern. The restoration prompts pull the average up; the HVAC/plumbing prompts pull it down.
- Implication for your firm: the competitive game is different in each sub-category. For restoration: brand-consolidator displacement (very hard) or build adjacent specialty niches where the giants don't dominate. For HVAC/plumbing: capture a slot in the franchise-network consensus, or build metro-specific answer pages that surface for geographically-scoped queries (which this pilot did not test — regional independents likely surface there). The Diagnostic measures which side of the split your firm sits on and what to build.
Cost of inaction: insurance-carrier preferred-vendor placements and franchise-network consensus harden across years. For restoration, the carrier directories and IICRC presence weight everything; the consensus tier is already set. For HVAC and plumbing, the franchise tier is still fluid — that window does not stay open indefinitely. The Diagnostic measures where you sit now; the gap compounds every quarter you do not close it.
For what to do about it, see the Multi-location Home Services industry brief →
What this page measures
Each row is not a ranking. It is observed surfacing — how often a company entered the AI-mediated consideration set across a bounded battery of buyer questions. The heatmap maps citation territory: for each question the engines repeatedly surface a small set of companies, and those companies currently hold the answer layer for that question. The question is not "who is best?" — it is "who appears when the buyer asks?"
Observed surfacing, not endorsement. These pages sit inside the same Content / Retrieval / Trust architecture as the rest of our working papers on AI-mediated buyer discovery.
Category temperature: frozen vs molten
Frozen
The engines have converged on a small canonical set, reinforced by broad corroboration, accumulated entity clarity, and a large shared retrieval surface. On-page changes alone are unlikely to displace the top tier; the strategic question shifts to defending edge cases and emerging buyer questions.
Molten
The answer has not set. Engines disagree, adjacent or foreign firms may enter the answer set, and retrieval-surface quality matters more. Companies can still claim citation territory by publishing answer-shaped, entity-clear, machine-retrievable content.
Multi-location Home Services is a hybrid category. Mean cross-engine overlap 0.54; two of six prompts produced unanimous winners (both restoration, both SERVPRO). Restoration is frozen; HVAC and plumbing franchises fragment. B2B SaaS & Industrial Manufacturing is the cleanly-frozen comparison (0.85); Commercial insurance brokers is the cleanly-molten one (0.38).
How to read this
Hover or tap any engine cell above to see the real prompts behind that number.
- ARestoration is brand-dominant. SERVPRO is named #1 by all five engines on the rapid-response and large-scale restoration prompts. Paul Davis Restoration is the consensus #2 across every engine. BELFOR, ServiceMaster Restore, and PuroClean form the corroborated second tier. These firms have decades of insurance-carrier preferred-vendor relationships, IICRC certification presence, and after-disaster trade-press coverage — the engines reflect that consensus cleanly.
- BHVAC and plumbing franchises fragment. On the multi-metro plumbing/HVAC franchise prompt, Mr. Rooter Plumbing leads three engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok), 1-800-Plumber + Air leads Claude, Benjamin Franklin Plumbing leads Perplexity. Roto-Rooter, Comfort Systems USA, and Aire Serv surface inconsistently. No single brand achieves the cross-engine consensus that SERVPRO or Paul Davis achieve in restoration. The competitive game in these sub-categories is fundamentally different.
- Which multi-location HVAC and plumbing service providers are commonly recommended for managing maintenance contracts across 10+ commercial properties?
- Which restoration companies are frequently cited for rapid response to water and fire damage at multi-building property portfolios?
- Which restoration service providers are commonly included in insurance-carrier preferred-vendor networks for water and mold damage?
- Which HVAC and plumbing consolidators are frequently recommended as approved vendors by commercial-property insurers?
- Which plumbing and HVAC service franchises are commonly recommended for serving multiple metro areas with consistent quality?
- Which restoration companies are most frequently cited for managing large-scale commercial and residential water and fire damage projects?
Scope — US market, multi-location operators (5+ locations). The six prompts span three commercial-property-manager scenarios (multi-building HVAC, restoration at building portfolios, HVAC consolidator vendor selection) and three franchise/insurance-carrier scenarios (restoration in carrier preferred-vendor networks, plumbing/HVAC multi-metro franchises, large-scale restoration). Regional independents serving a single metro surface only on geographically-scoped prompts, which this pilot did not test.
Strategic reading: two patterns inside one sector
Multi-location home services is two competitive games in one category. Restoration is brand-dominant. SERVPRO appears at #1 on every engine for the multi-building water/fire-damage and large-scale restoration prompts. Paul Davis Restoration is the consensus #2 across every engine. BELFOR, ServiceMaster Restore, and PuroClean form the corroborated second tier. The engines reflect decades of insurance-carrier preferred-vendor relationships, IICRC certification presence, and after-disaster trade-press coverage. On-page changes alone are unlikely to displace this consensus.
HVAC and plumbing fragment. On the multi-metro plumbing/HVAC franchise prompt, Mr. Rooter Plumbing leads ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok; 1-800-Plumber + Air leads Claude; Benjamin Franklin Plumbing leads Perplexity. Comfort Systems USA and ARS/Rescue Rooter surface inconsistently for HVAC consolidator queries. No single brand achieves the cross-engine consensus that SERVPRO or Paul Davis achieve in restoration. The competitive game here is closer to commercial insurance brokers than to restoration: a contested second tier where corroboration and engine-specific weighting both matter.
Underneath, surfacing appears sensitive to different signals per sub-category. For restoration: IICRC certification database presence, insurance-carrier preferred-vendor directory placements, after-disaster trade press (R&R Magazine, Restoration & Remediation), and BBB profile completeness. For HVAC/plumbing: franchise-network brand recognition, NATE certification visibility, BBB and Angi/HomeAdvisor profile depth, and metro-specific service-area pages. For local independents serving multiple metros: the geographically-scoped query path — metro-specific answer-shaped pages, consistent NAP, and local-press placements — is the realistic route to surfacing.
Local versus national dynamics. National restoration consolidators dominate unbranded category prompts; regional independents serving multiple metros largely do not surface unless queries are geographically scoped. For a multi-metro operator, the path is metro-specific answer pages plus presence in the directories the engines weight per metro.
Brand-dominant restoration, fragmenting franchise tier
Research publication based on sampled AI outputs collected on 2026-05-30. Findings reflect observed outputs in this sample and are not statements of company quality, ranking factors, or business performance.