Which Websites Does AI Cite for Each Home Service Trade?

Angi or HomeAdvisor and Expertise.com showed up in more than half of US ChatGPT answers in every home-service trade we track in October 2026 (69.4% and 63.8% overall), according to the Cheers Market Baseline, our own research panel. Past those two, the list changes with trade and engine, so a listings team working one generic citation list across HVAC, roofing and restoration spends part of every cleanup on sites those trades almost never see cited.

Last verified: November 1, 2026.

Most shares moved about as much between questions as between trades, but two gaps held on every question: ConsumerAffairs, a review site, appeared on all six electrical questions and neither roofing question, and the BBB ran lower on every plumbing and electrical question than on either roofing one. Google AI Mode read a different list again. Start from your trade's and your engine's list, not a generic top 50.

Directories are only part of each answer: ChatGPT cited a directory in 93.4% of US answers and a business's own website in 91.0%.

Cite this page as: Cheers Market Baseline, US, October 2026, "Which Websites Does AI Cite for Each Home Service Trade?," cheers.tech/geo-academy/which-sites-ai-cites-home-service-trades.

The sites ChatGPT cites in every trade

After those two, ChatGPT cited ConsumerAffairs in 41.7% of US answers, then two best-in-city list sites, BestProsInTown (35.3%) and ServiceAgent.ai (32.4%), with the review site Birdeye (33.4%) between them. Yelp (30.3%) and Thumbtack (29.9%) were close to tied, and the BBB showed up in 20.1%.

ChatGPT also carried a google.com link in 49.4% of answers, mostly Google Maps links that came with its new business layout. Because they arrived with the layout, we left them out of the cleanup list and gave Google its own step.

That layout change explains much of October's jump over the summer. Sistrix found ChatGPT switched to a building-block layout overnight on Oct. 8 to 9, 2026 (Sistrix, Oct. 30, 2026), and in our panel its answers carried about 23 citation links each from Oct. 9 to 31, against 4.6 from Aug. 31 to Sept. 20. More links push every share up, so read the chart for its order more than its levels.

Our ChatGPT sources page explains how ChatGPT searches before it cites.

Where the list changes by trade

Each line is one trade's whole October on ChatGPT, as the rounded percentage of US answers citing each site. Angi or HomeAdvisor and Expertise.com never fell below 55% in any trade, and "business sites" means a business's own or brand website.

• All trades (8,100 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 69, Expertise.com 64, ConsumerAffairs 42, Yelp 30, Thumbtack 30, BBB 20, business sites 91.
• HVAC (2,565 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 60, Expertise.com 56, ConsumerAffairs 53, Yelp 40, Thumbtack 21, BBB 26, business sites 95.
• Plumbing (2,433 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 69, Expertise.com 65, ConsumerAffairs 44, Yelp 28, Thumbtack 31, BBB 13, business sites 89.
• Electrical (1,432 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 79, Expertise.com 56, ConsumerAffairs 53, Yelp 26, Thumbtack 39, BBB 11, business sites 91.
• Roofing (479 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 74, Expertise.com 69, ConsumerAffairs 0, Yelp 26, Thumbtack 41, BBB 34, business sites 90.
• Windows and doors, 1 question (240 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 73, Expertise.com 83, ConsumerAffairs 27, Yelp 28, Thumbtack 30, BBB 45, business sites 86.
• Water damage, 1 question (239 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 56, Expertise.com 80, ConsumerAffairs 1, Yelp 18, Thumbtack 20, BBB 38, business sites 97.
• Pest control, 1 question (238 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 82, Expertise.com 76, ConsumerAffairs 48, Yelp 24, Thumbtack 17, BBB 19, business sites 87.
• Lawn care, 1 question (237 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 78, Expertise.com 89, ConsumerAffairs 0, Yelp 14, Thumbtack 38, BBB 6, business sites 82.
• Garage door, 1 question (237 answers): Angi or HomeAdvisor 91, Expertise.com 96, ConsumerAffairs 2, Yelp 29, Thumbtack 49, BBB 37, business sites 85.

Whether BBB accreditation is worth paying for is a separate question; this page only measures whether ChatGPT cites the BBB.

A trade's line also hides movement between its questions.

Across plumbing's nine questions, Angi or HomeAdvisor ran from 9.3% of one question's answers to 96.2% of another's, and Expertise.com from 5.5% to 92.1% across HVAC's ten. The two gaps held anyway: ConsumerAffairs was in 28.5% to 75.6% of each electrical question's answers and 0 of 479 roofing answers, and the BBB stayed at or under 17.5% on all 15 plumbing and electrical questions but reached 31.7% and 35.6% on the two roofing ones. So check the questions your own customers ask; how to find the sources AI uses in your industry shows how, and Cheers' free AI visibility check shows which sites each AI answer cited about your business.

Several trades have their own list sites, and roofing has the most. The Roofing Brief, which calls itself a roofing publication and runs a "Best Roofers by Metro" page, was in 65.6% of ChatGPT's roofing answers, ahead of Yably (21.9%), RooferDirectory (21.1%), GAF (20.5%), roofingcontractors.org and Trustanalytica (15.0% each) and RoofersRanked (12.7%). RooferDirectory says a listing isn't an endorsement, roofingcontractors.org says it takes no paid placement in its registry, and RoofersRanked says it may include clearly marked sponsored placements.

Other trades have their own list sites too, counted over the whole of October (all but HVAC rest on one question). Garage door answers cited ThreeBestRated in 36%, GarageDoorList in 32% and Garage Door Handbook in 23%, and water damage answers cited Restoration Index (32%) and WaterFireMoldLookup (17%), which both say they don't sell rankings, plus Trustanalytica (31%). Pest control had an unnamed list site at 54% (its pages wouldn't load for us), PestBridge at 28% and Trustanalytica at 24%; lawn care had Yably (35%), LawnStarter (30%) and Houzz (28%); windows and doors had BestPickReports (40%), Houzz (19%) and ThreeBestRated (17%). In HVAC, BestHVACCompanies reached 9.9% and BestPickReports 8.8%; BestHVACCompanies says it lists companies rated 4 or higher with at least 10 Google reviews and sells featured placement.

Electrical answers also cited ThreeBestRated (16.1%), HomeGuide (15.4%), Reddit (11.7%) and state license pages, California's in 14.1% and Texas's in 5.9%. California's also reached 14.6% of roofing and 15% of window and door answers, which a directories-only audit misses.

Our September trade guides differ because they pooled US and Canadian cities from Aug. 31 to Sept. 20, before the Oct. 9 change, and the two leaders barely appear in Canadian answers.

After that change, 46.4% of US ChatGPT answers cited a dated best-of list like "best [trade] in [city] 2026," counting "top" lists and 2025 dates. ConsumerAffairs' lists alone were in 24.8% of all answers and ServiceAgent.ai's in 6.7%; in 89.4% of those answers the list sat on a directory or list site, and 197 sites published them. The list-publisher step in the cleanup section covers them.

Google AI Mode and Gemini cite different sites

Google AI Mode cited Expertise.com in 3 of 8,179 US answers that listed sources, and booking pages where ChatGPT cited list sites: Housecall Pro in 23.5% and ServiceTitan in 7.2%, against 4 of 8,100 ChatGPT answers for either. Angi or HomeAdvisor (27.6%) and Yelp (26.3%) led the directories, then Thumbtack (11.4%), ConsumerAffairs (2.3%) and the BBB (1.1%).

AI Mode's google.com links, in 67.2% of answers, had no page address to open. It cited a business's own site in 51.3% of answers and a directory in 50.3%, well under ChatGPT's rates.

Google AI Mode, US answers, Oct. 2 to 31, 2026, as rounded percentages of each trade's answers:

• All trades: Angi or HomeAdvisor 28, Yelp 26, Thumbtack 11, Housecall Pro 24, ServiceTitan 7, business sites 51.
• HVAC: Angi or HomeAdvisor 24, Yelp 24, Thumbtack 7, Housecall Pro 27, ServiceTitan 5, business sites 44.
• Plumbing: Angi or HomeAdvisor 28, Yelp 23, Thumbtack 8, Housecall Pro 29, ServiceTitan 9, business sites 68.
• Electrical: Angi or HomeAdvisor 31, Yelp 42, Thumbtack 20, Housecall Pro 29, ServiceTitan 13, business sites 50.
• Roofing: Angi or HomeAdvisor 23, Yelp 19, Thumbtack 6, Housecall Pro 1, ServiceTitan under 1, business sites 43.
• Windows and doors, 1 question: Angi or HomeAdvisor 35, Yelp 28, Thumbtack 8, Housecall Pro 5, ServiceTitan under 1, business sites 42.
• Water damage, 1 question: Angi or HomeAdvisor 31, Yelp 20, Thumbtack 36, Housecall Pro 7, ServiceTitan 4, business sites 58.
• Pest control, 1 question: Angi or HomeAdvisor 28, Yelp 20, Thumbtack 14, Housecall Pro 3, ServiceTitan under 1, business sites 41.
• Lawn care, 1 question: Angi or HomeAdvisor 24, Yelp 20, Thumbtack 20, Housecall Pro 3, ServiceTitan 0, business sites 20.
• Garage door, 1 question: Angi or HomeAdvisor 41, Yelp 25, Thumbtack 21, Housecall Pro 20, ServiceTitan 17, business sites 35.

Those google.com links ran from 56% of AI Mode's electrical answers to 87% of its roofing answers, and the BBB stayed at 1.3% or less everywhere but roofing (5.7%).

Gemini listed sources in only 4,626 of 8,217 US answers. When it did, it cited a business's own site in 92.0% of them and a directory in 56.7%, the same lean Yext found in 6.8 million AI citations (Oct. 29, 2025): 52.15% of Gemini's citations came from brand-owned sites and 48.73% of ChatGPT's from third-party sites, though Yext counted citations, not answers, and didn't break out home services.

Among named sites, Angi or HomeAdvisor led Gemini at 18.5%, then ServiceAgent.ai (16.8%), ConsumerAffairs (10.7%), Thumbtack (9.2%) and Forbes (7.2%); Gemini never cited Yelp, and GAF reached 31.3% of its roofing answers. Angi or HomeAdvisor was the only site above 10% on all three engines.

Run the cleanup for your trade

The list you need to work is short. ChatGPT linked 16,454 different sites in US answers in October, but more than nine in ten in each trade were businesses' own websites or other sites off our directory list. Set aside businesses' own sites and Google, and the ten most-cited remaining sites took 65% to 85% of what was left.

Here's that list, from ChatGPT's US answers from Oct. 9 to 31, 2026, keeping sites in 20% or more of a trade's answers. Each line splits them into sites to claim and correct and lists and review sites that pick for themselves, and "also check" names the trade list sites above.

• HVAC: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 67, Yelp 36, BBB 29, Thumbtack 22; lists and review sites Expertise.com 58, ConsumerAffairs 57, ServiceAgent.ai 40, BestProsInTown 39; also check BestHVACCompanies, BestPickReports.
• Plumbing: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 74, Thumbtack 38, Yelp 35; lists and review sites Expertise.com 74, BestProsInTown 52, ConsumerAffairs 50, ServiceAgent.ai 36; also check state license pages (California's).
• Electrical: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 88, Thumbtack 50, Yelp 35; lists and review sites Expertise.com 65, ConsumerAffairs 60, BestProsInTown 47, ServiceAgent.ai 41; also check ThreeBestRated, HomeGuide, state license pages.
• Roofing: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 83, Thumbtack 52, Yelp 34, BBB 32; lists and review sites Expertise.com 82, BestProsInTown 79, ServiceAgent.ai 58; also check The Roofing Brief, RooferDirectory, roofingcontractors.org, RoofersRanked, Yably.
• Windows and doors, 1 question: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 83, BBB 48, Thumbtack 39, Yelp 37, Houzz 23; lists and review sites Expertise.com 86, ConsumerAffairs 27; also check BestPickReports, ThreeBestRated.
• Garage door, 1 question: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 96, Thumbtack 61, BBB 44, Yelp 38; lists and review sites Expertise.com 98, ServiceAgent.ai 77; also check ThreeBestRated, GarageDoorList, Garage Door Handbook.
• Pest control, 1 question: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 94, Yelp 31, BBB 23, Thumbtack 22; lists and review sites Expertise.com 82, ConsumerAffairs 54, BestProsInTown 35; also check PestBridge, Trustanalytica.
• Water damage, 1 question: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 69, BBB 45, Thumbtack 26, Yelp 25; lists and review sites Expertise.com 84; also check Restoration Index, Trustanalytica, WaterFireMoldLookup.
• Lawn care, 1 question: claim and correct Angi or HomeAdvisor 87, Thumbtack 49, Houzz 37; lists and review sites Expertise.com 89, ServiceAgent.ai 24; also check Yably, LawnStarter.

First, get the profiles you control directly right: Google Business Profile, Apple Business and Bing Places. Aggregator updates can push corrections, but coverage varies, and if your locations already disagree, start with fixing conflicting records across locations before adding a new listing.

Running several trades? Angi or HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack and Expertise.com sit in every line, so every location gets those plus Google Business Profile, Apple Business and Bing Places, and each trade's line adds the rest.

Then work through your trade's line in this order.

Open the "claim and correct" profiles this week. Do two locations, or your only one, then the rest. Fix name, phone, address or service area, hours and the website link first; a wrong phone number or a closed location on a site ChatGPT cites in half its answers is the expensive kind of mistake, and "St." versus "Street" isn't.

Check which Angi and Thumbtack profiles you already have. Correct the ones that exist. Most of their ChatGPT links from Oct. 9 to 31 went to the platforms' own city and category pages (about seven in ten US answers for Angi or HomeAdvisor, 30.7% for Thumbtack), and business profiles showed up less often. Claim and complete the profiles relevant to your branch, using the actual sources in your markets to prioritize the work. Evaluate any paid lead programme on the leads it delivers.

Ask list publishers to fix their facts. Check each branch on the best-in-city lists in your trade's line, and on ConsumerAffairs where it shows up, and ask the publisher to fix what's wrong. Read how each list picks: Expertise.com says it picks first and lets a business that passes choose to advertise. Keep editorial selection and advertising clear: any paid placement should be disclosed, and its value should be assessed on the placement and audience being offered. Roofing, lawn care, garage door and water damage can skip ConsumerAffairs (0% to 2% of their answers, against 44.1% to 53.5% in HVAC, plumbing, electrical and pest control).

Keep each Google Business Profile right. That's the Google-side work on both engines, since ChatGPT's google.com links were mostly Maps links and AI Mode's had no page address.

Get booking pages ready for Google AI Mode. Make each location's booking page public, current and tied to the right branch; Housecall Pro pages were in 27% to 29% of AI Mode's HVAC, plumbing and electrical answers, and garage door answers linked other scheduling pages too.

Treat Yelp as a page to keep accurate. Yelp asks businesses not to request reviews there.

Run Canadian locations off a different list. HomeStars, the BBB and Canadian best-in-city sites lead there.

Recheck every quarter. Thumbtack and Forbes moved so far between July and October that a summer list is already stale, so compare the same trade, cities and engine each time.

Canadian locations

Canadian answers run on a different list. On ChatGPT, HomeStars appeared in 56.9% of Canadian answers, Birdeye in 49.3%, BestProsInTown in 42.8% and the BBB in 34.5%, with ThreeBestRated.ca (33.1%) and IndustryOversight.ca (32.7%) close behind, while Angi or HomeAdvisor showed up in 0.3%, ConsumerAffairs in 0.2% and Expertise.com in 0.0%.

Google AI Mode in Canada cited google.com most (71.1%), then Housecall Pro (14.1%), HomeStars (12.8%) and ServiceTitan (11.2%). It cited a business's own site in 62.8% of Canadian answers and a directory in 27.0%, and had Angi or HomeAdvisor, Expertise.com and ConsumerAffairs all at 0.0%.

What changed since summer

Across our 100 US and Canadian cities, Thumbtack's climb on ChatGPT started before the layout change, from 0.4 links per 100 answers in the week of July 6 to 7.6 by Sept. 21 and 20.4 by Oct. 19. Angi or HomeAdvisor went from 39.7 to 76.6, Expertise.com from 34.3 to 45.9 and ConsumerAffairs from 13.2 to 28.8, partly because answers carried more links. Forbes fell from 6.9 to 0.0 and made it into 7 of 8,100 US answers for the month, while on Gemini it rose from 0.2 to 3.1.

The order at the top held through the Oct. 9 change even though every level rose: in the week before it, Angi or HomeAdvisor was in 45.2% of US ChatGPT answers, Expertise.com in 42.9% and ConsumerAffairs in 24.3%. That's why this page ranks sites within October rather than against the summer.

The platforms are moving too. Yelp told shareholders on Aug. 6, 2026 that its ratings and reviews "recently began powering ChatGPT's local experience in relevant categories" (Yelp Q2 2026 letter). Angi said its app would be live in Gemini from Aug. 13 (Angi, Aug. 12, 2026), and Google's Aug. 12 post names Angi and Thumbtack for finding a home pro there. Those apps sit apart from the citations counted here.

Our Yelp and ChatGPT analysis separates citations in answer text from the Yelp content displayed in map cards.

Citation destinations and descriptive language answer different questions; our trade-by-trade trust-signal study examines the language AI repeats.

The Perplexity search-query study looks one step earlier at the searches the service ran, rather than only the sites it cited.

If BBB appears in your sources, use the accreditation decision guide to separate free profile maintenance from the paid accreditation decision.

For lawn care, the ChatGPT recommendation guide applies the trade-specific source findings to practical profile and website checks.

Method

The Cheers Market Baseline is our own research panel: every week it asks ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Gemini the same 32 home-service questions in 100 metro areas, 60 in the US and 40 in Canada. Perplexity isn't in this edition.

The window is Oct. 2 to 31, 2026; numbers are from the 60 US cities unless they sit in the Canadian section or say "US and Canadian cities together." The measure is the share of answers that listed sources and cited a site at least once, not how prominent it was or whether anyone clicked. Angi and HomeAdvisor count as one site.

The US bases are 8,100 ChatGPT, 8,179 Google AI Mode and 4,626 Gemini answers that listed sources, and the Canadian bases are 5,401 on ChatGPT and 5,448 on AI Mode. They're repeated answers to the panel's own questions, not a measure of how often customers search.

Trades come from each question's wording: plumbing has 9 questions, HVAC 10 (including duct cleaning and indoor air quality), electrical 6, roofing 2, and garage door, lawn care and landscaping, pest control, water damage restoration, and window and door replacement one each. One-question trades rest on 237 to 240 ChatGPT answers, so we mark them and round to whole numbers; each question drew 181 to 299 ChatGPT answers that listed sources.

About a fifth of whole-October ChatGPT answers (1,796 of 8,100) predate the Oct. 9 format change, so whole-October numbers run below current levels. The cleanup list uses the 6,304 answers that listed sources from Oct. 9 to 31; page-type and dated-list checks use all 6,307 US ChatGPT answers from that window. Gemini listed sources in about one in five US answers early in October and nine in ten by the last week.

The weekly figures in "What changed since summer" are links per 100 answers, US and Canadian cities together, from about 3,000 to 3,300 ChatGPT answers and 3,098 to 3,287 Gemini answers a week.

A "business site" is any cited site that isn't Google, a directory or list site, social media, a booking platform, government, a manufacturer or retailer, or media, so it includes national brand sites and a few list sites off our directory list. We sorted Angi, HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack links into business profiles and city or category pages by page address, with cost guides and articles in neither group; treat both splits as approximate.

We count contractor and franchise websites in every share but never name them, and we only checked what AI Mode's google.com links contained in US answers. The smallest US panel city has about 300,000 people, so small-town lists may differ. A site's share doesn't show that claiming a profile, advertising or getting onto a list gets a business recommended.

Sources

• What changed in ChatGPT in October: GPT-6, UTM tracking and sources, Sistrix, Oct. 30, 2026. ChatGPT's Oct. 8 to 9 layout change.
• AI Visibility in 2025: How Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity Cite Brands, Yext, Oct. 29, 2025. Gemini's lean to brand sites, ChatGPT's to third-party sites.
• Our selection process, Expertise.com, undated. How Expertise.com picks and when a business can advertise.
• Yelp Q2 2026 shareholder letter, Yelp via SEC EDGAR, Aug. 6, 2026. Yelp reviews powering ChatGPT's local experience.
• Angi Among the First Home Services Marketplaces Available in Gemini as a Connected App, Angi via GlobeNewswire, Aug. 12, 2026. Angi's app live in Gemini from Aug. 13.
• New connected apps and services in Gemini, August 2026, Google, Aug. 12, 2026. Google naming Angi and Thumbtack for finding a home pro.
• Trade list sites' homepages, undated: The Roofing Brief, RooferDirectory, roofingcontractors.org, RoofersRanked, GarageDoorList, Garage Door Handbook, Restoration Index, WaterFireMoldLookup, PestBridge, BestHVACCompanies. How each list describes its rankings and placements.

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.