What Perplexity Searches When You Ask for a Plumber

When our research panel, the Cheers Market Baseline, asks Perplexity for a local contractor, its searches stay close to the question and its follow-ups keep asking about price and licenses. That's the pattern across 56,712 searches it reported between July and October 2026. From August 6, some went straight to bbb.org or a state license board. Your BBB profile and license record are among the pages it looked for, and you can check both this week.

Last verified: November 1, 2026.

Perplexity answered the panel's 32 home-service questions 37,012 times across 100 US and Canadian metros. We could log this engine's searches in full, and its help center says it searches the internet in real time and cites what it finds. The log gives us a direct view of the records an assistant checks while researching a local provider.

What Perplexity typed into the search box

Google's guide to generative AI features calls it query fan-out when a system runs several related searches to gather information for one answer. Our explainer on query fan-out in Google AI Mode covers what Google has said; this log shows what one engine typed.

Word-for-word copies of the question made up 43.7% of the log, almost all with the city in, and rewrites that kept the city added 28.4%, so at least seven in ten searches named the city. Web addresses in place of search words came to 4.2% and everything else 4.4%. The remaining 19.3% were bare service terms with no place in them, like "hvac companies" (1,412 times) or "plumbers" (725), and 10,890 of those 10,965 searches landed between July 18 and August 17.

The rewrites stayed on the question's subject. When a question asked about pricing, deals or quotes, 38.0% of its rewrites included a price word, against 0.1% on the other 26 questions, so Perplexity didn't add price on its own. That interest shows up later, in the follow-ups.

"Near me" only shows up when the question says it

None of the panel's questions says "near me", so its count of zero isn't the real test; that needs questions other people wrote.

Twenty companies that use Cheers track 636 local questions that leave the phrase out, and Perplexity ran 1,152,987 searches for them in the same window. It added "near me" to 47, about 4 in 100,000. For the 13 home-service companies alone, it was 38 of 666,522.

When a question did say "near me", 56.0% of Perplexity's searches for it repeated the phrase. The phrase was usually supplied by the question, though the engine also added it in 47 searches.

That matters if you or your agency test visibility by typing "furnace repair near me" into Perplexity. Many of its searches will repeat the phrase because your question did, which tells you nothing about how it handles a customer who named the city.

From August 6, Perplexity's searches started naming specific websites

A site: search is limited to one website; type "site:bbb.org" in front of the words and every result comes from bbb.org. None of the 20,160 searches Perplexity reported from July 2 to August 5 used one. From August 6 through October 14, these site checks made up 1,416 of 36,552 searches (3.9%), about one in 26.

They didn't arrive evenly. September 18 to 20 alone produced 614 of them (43.4%), inside the 10.6% week, when Perplexity ran about 4.3 searches per answer, so read that peak as a burst. Without those three days, site checks were 2.5% of searches after August 6, and the order of sites barely moved.

The change shows up even when we hold our own collection method fixed, but we can't tell whether Perplexity began running these searches on August 6 or began reporting them.

Promptwatch saw something similar in ChatGPT two days later. Its data, reported by Search Engine Journal on August 19, 2026, put ChatGPT's share of fan-out searches using site: at 0.37% before August 8 and 16.8% from that day, though Promptwatch's own data page calls the figures provisional. That separate dataset adds context to the shift toward named-site searches.

Where the site checks went

On questions about US cities, Perplexity ran 969 site checks. The BBB drew 240 (24.8%), contractors' own websites about 190, and Google and license boards 122 each. Then came Angi with 72, utility and rebate programs about 60, manufacturer installer and dealer pages 55, associations and certifiers 18 and Yelp 16, and the last 73 went elsewhere.

Read the contractor group twice. Across the whole log it came to about 280 site checks over 265 websites, none drawing more than four, so a contractor's own website is one of the places Perplexity searched directly. That's one more reason the fixes below put your license number and prices on yours in plain text.

Canada differs in one place: on the 330 site checks for Canadian cities, contractors' own sites (about 70), Google (70), the BBB (63) and HomeStars (61) led, and HomeStars drew none on US questions.

Prioritize these records alongside your own website. After August 6, about 1 search in 120 went to bbb.org, 1 in 200 to a license board and 1 in 650 to a manufacturer page.

Of the 192 google.com checks, 89 pointed at Google Maps pages and 134 included "review" or "rating".

California's Contractors State License Board led the license group with 70 site checks and Texas's TDLR had 12, and 105 of the 180 license-board searches used words like lookup, verify, check or status. The FTC tells homeowners to run that same check before they hire.

Trade changes the mix. On US plumbing questions, the 378 site checks went to the BBB 134 times (35.4%), Google 65, license boards 53 and Angi 45. HVAC leaned on the BBB less, but across all cities, 257 of its 485 site checks came from one question about deals on a new furnace or air conditioner, so read HVAC's mix as that question's mix.

Electrician questions are the outlier. Of their 178 US site checks, license boards drew 42 (23.6%), manufacturer pages 35 and the BBB only 15, which is the practical case for putting license and insurance proof on the page where a buyer, or a search engine, can check it. The manufacturer checks (Tesla 21, Generac 13) came from the EV charger and generator questions.

Citations, a different measure, point a similar way. In a Yelp-commissioned count of organic US AI citations in the fourth quarter of 2025, the BBB came second of six platforms, with 149.7K to Yelp's 512.7K and Angi's 145.6K. Yelp's shareholder letter doesn't name the firm that counted, and what each AI engine cites is a separate question.

What Perplexity suggests asking next

Perplexity suggests follow-up questions alongside its answers, and we sorted the 129,679 we logged into keyword themes that can overlap. Some themes just echo the question; others are topics Perplexity raised on its own.

Urgency is mostly echo: it appeared in 66.3% of follow-ups to the six urgent questions and 4.6% of the rest. Price is different, showing up in 12.6% of follow-ups to the 26 questions that never mention pricing, deals or quotes (29.2% on the six that do). Reviews do something similar, at 27.6% after the four review questions and 10.4% after the rest.

Licensing, insurance or permits came up in 13.5% of all follow-ups though no question mentions a license, and in 23.2% on electrician questions. On plumbing questions in both countries, 17.8% of follow-ups asked about price and 11.9% about licensing. Comparisons ran 14.2% on the 31 questions that don't ask for quotes.

These are suggested questions, not proof that a homeowner asked them. Still, the searches stuck to the question while the follow-ups wanted to know what the job costs and whether the contractor holds a license, which is one more reason to publish price ranges.

The pages a branch can write from these follow-ups

Narrower patterns inside those themes map to pages a branch can write. With heating season starting, get the furnace and water heater versions live before the November and December calls; the titles below are examples, not data.

• Compare quotes, bids or prices (8,709 follow-ups, 6.7%). "How to compare furnace replacement quotes": the lines a fair quote includes and what to ask about each.
• Cost of a job (7,376, 5.7%). "Water heater replacement cost in Omaha": a range, what moves it, and a price that includes the fees every customer pays.
• Equipment brands (7,083, 5.5%) and warranty (6,205, 4.8%). "Brands we install and the warranties that come with them", linked to your listing in each manufacturer's locator.
• "What criteria define the best..." (4,549, 3.5%). "What to look for in an electrician", linked to your full Google reviews, not a hand-picked set.
• Verify a license or insurance (4,144, 3.2%). "Our license and insurance", with the numbers and links to the board's lookup.
• Questions to ask before hiring (2,535, 2.0%). "Questions to ask before you hire a roofer."
• Financing, rebates or tax credits (1,756, 1.4%). A page naming the utility rebate program you work with, since utility and rebate pages drew about 110 site checks. Financing terms go up only with the lender's disclosures.

Don't build from the most repeated strings. The top one, "what criteria define strongest reviews for plumbers in [city]" (106 times), just restates the panel's own question.

Write one page per real question in each market where the answer differs, never one per wording. Google's AI guide warns against separate content for every variation or fan-out query and ties it to its scaled content abuse policy, and its spam policies treat pages "created to rank for specific, similar search queries" as doorways. The rules for city pages without doorway risk show where that line sits.

What to fix this week

• Check your license record against your name. Look yourself up by business name and license number on the board that regulates you (California's CSLB, Texas's TDLR, or for Ontario electricians the ESA's contractor lookup). If that name doesn't match your website and Business Profile, add your trade name to the board record where allowed, or show the legal name next to the license number on your site; don't rename the Business Profile to a legal name customers don't use. Then print the license number as text on each location page, linked to the board's lookup, as the license and insurance guide lays out.
• Write the furnace and water heater pages first, from the list above.
• Put prices and emergency availability in plain text on your website, and only what's true at that branch. A price has to include the fees every customer pays, which California and Minnesota both require. Financing copy that names a payment amount, term or down payment triggers extra disclosures under Regulation Z, the APR among them, and a special needs its terms and an end date. Use the dedicated service-price field for an actual flat fee, as Google's services help permits; keep promotional pricing out of the business description and custom service names.
• Open the bbb.org profile for each location and correct the name, phone, address, city and service categories. It was the single most searched site in the log. The site-check count differs from the related answer-citation study, so we do not use the two counts interchangeably. Whether accreditation is worth paying for is a separate question.
• Name the city and the service plainly in your website's titles, headings and first sentence ("Water heater repair in Omaha"), not "near me". Keep them out of your Google Business Profile name, though: Google's guidelines say it should be the real-world name customers know, and unnecessary extra words in it can get a profile suspended.
• If a branch is a certified installer or authorized dealer (Tesla Wall Connector, Generac, a ductless brand), check that it appears in the manufacturer's locator, such as Generac's dealer locator, with its own phone number and URL. Claim the status only while you hold it and follow the manufacturer's logo rules. Manufacturer pages appeared in 56 site checks, mostly on electrician questions, making the locator particularly relevant for those services.

Method

The Cheers Market Baseline is a research panel Cheers runs, not a set of customers: 32 home-service questions asked every week in 100 metros (60 US, 40 Canada), with the place written into the question. For each Perplexity answer from July 2 to October 14, 2026, we stored the web searches Perplexity reported and the follow-ups it suggested: 37,012 answers, 56,712 searches and 130,970 follow-ups, less 1,291 malformed entries, leaving 129,679. A search counts once for each answer that contained it, and Perplexity reported about 1.5 per answer, a rate that moved between about 1 and 2. On nine days we have searches but no answer record, so per-answer figures are approximate.

The "near me" check uses Perplexity searches for 636 questions across 53 accounts belonging to 20 companies that use Cheers, in home services and other local categories, over the same window. The questions that did say "near me" were 55 questions across 16 accounts belonging to 12 companies, with 191,045 searches; leaving out the company with the most of them drops the 56.0% repeat rate to 50.0%. We count parent companies rather than locations, publish aggregates only, and excluded questions that name the tracked company, Cheers-owned accounts and test accounts.

Weekly site-check shares (weeks start Monday) sat at 0.0% from July 6 through the week of July 27, then ran 0.9% in the week of August 3, 0.8%, 3.1%, 2.4%, 2.8%, 4.6% (September 7, on 1,531 searches), 10.6%, 2.5%, 3.8% and 6.8% (October 5, on 1,500 searches). The chart leaves out the partial weeks at each end: July 2 to 5, with no site checks, and the week of October 12, with 106 searches. September 18 to 20 carry 43% of the site checks; without them, site checks were 802 of 31,816 searches after August 6, led by the BBB (158), contractors' own websites (about 150), license boards (125) and Google (104).

Two other things entered the log that same week: "licensed, insured or certified" in rewrites, none before August 4, and web addresses in place of search words, 2,362 from August 4 against 19 before. Perplexity's changelog has entries dated July 27, August 4 and August 24, 2026, and none mentions a change to how it searches.

Country comes from the city named in a search or follow-up. Themes, site groups and follow-up patterns are keyword and domain matches. Price means cost, price, how much, charge, fee, rate, afford, cheap or budget (charge, fee and rate as whole words); urgency means emergency, 24/7, same-day, after-hours, weekend, tonight, right now or fast; licensing means license, insurance, certified or permit; comparisons means vs, versus, compare, comparison, difference or better; reviews means review, rating or complaint. Another 3,995 follow-ups (3.1%) were in other alphabets, which our English keywords can't read.

Site checks go into groups by domain: the BBB, Google, Angi, HomeStars and Yelp by their own domains; license boards by a list of state and provincial board domains plus government pages searched with a license word; utility and rebate programs, manufacturers, associations and other government pages by their own lists. Contractors' own websites are every target on no list, so that group may hold a few utility pages and its totals carry "about"; we count those sites without naming any.

Limits: this is Perplexity only, and we didn't capture ChatGPT's, Gemini's or Google AI Mode's searches, though Google's AI features page says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use fan-out too. The panel's questions are templated, so real customers word things more loosely, and 117 of the site checks name no city. The log shows what Perplexity searched and suggested, not which pages it read, cited or recommended, and none of it proves a page change would get a business recommended. Themes miss some phrasing, and the last two weeks are thin.

Sources

• How does Perplexity work?, Perplexity Help Center, undated. Perplexity searches the web in real time and cites sources.
• Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, Google Search Central, updated July 2026. Google's definition of query fan-out and its warning against content for every variation.
• Why Reddit's ChatGPT Citation Drop Isn't Fully Explained, Search Engine Journal, August 19, 2026. Promptwatch's site: share in ChatGPT fan-out before and after August 8.
• Reddit Citations Are Dropping in ChatGPT, Promptwatch, August 18, 2026. The figures are provisional.
• How To Avoid a Home Improvement Scam, FTC Consumer Advice. Homeowners should check a contractor's license.
• Yelp Q2 2026 shareholder letter, Yelp (SEC 8-K exhibit), August 6, 2026. The Yelp-commissioned count of AI citations by platform.
• Spam policies for Google web search, Google Search Central, updated August 28, 2026. Doorway and scaled content abuse.
• Check a License or HIS Registration, California Contractors State License Board, undated. California's license lookup.
• TDLR License Data Search, Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, undated. Texas's license lookup.
• Contractor locator tool, Electrical Safety Authority (Ontario), undated. Ontario's licensed electrical contractor lookup.
• Hidden fees, California Department of Justice, undated. Advertised prices must include required fees.
• Minnesota Statutes section 325D.44, Minnesota Revisor of Statutes, 2026 edition. Advertised prices must include mandatory fees.
• Advertising (Regulation Z), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, current version. Disclosures that financing terms trigger.
• Manage your services on your Business Profile, Google, checked November 2, 2026. Dedicated service-price fields and restrictions on custom service names.
• Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help, undated. The profile name should be the real-world name.
• Generac Dealer Locator, Generac, undated. The manufacturer locator.
• Perplexity changelog, Perplexity, entries dated July 27, August 4 and August 24, 2026. No entry mentions a change to searching.
• AI features and your website, Google Search Central, updated December 2025. AI Overviews and AI Mode may use fan-out.

Sources read November 1, 2026.

Dylan Allen-Arnegård is the CEO & Co-Founder of Cheers, the done-for-you local visibility partner for established home-service companies and PE-backed portfolios.