NamedLocal › Studies › Cache Valley plumbers
We took 15 established Logan-area plumbing companies and asked Google's AI the questions a homeowner actually types. Then we wrote down which ones it named back. The pattern was not the one we expected.
Here's the twist: the valley's two most-reviewed shops — Apex Plumbing (more than 750 Google reviews) and Gary Ricks Services (more than 650) — were named in zero of 10. Holm's Plumbing, with about 30 reviews, led the field at 8 of 10.
This isn't us scoring everyone low to make a point. Some companies did great — Trujillo Plumbing & Rooter was named in 9 of 10. The real finding is that a big Google review count and AI visibility barely overlapped here. A wall of five-star reviews doesn't get read by an AI the way a footprint across the web does.
How we checked
No tricks, and nothing you can't repeat yourself. We sent Google's AI (the Gemini model behind Google's AI answers) 10 real homeowner-style questions and recorded the companies it named back. A few of them:
A company counts as "invisible" if it was named in none of the 10 answers. Our list came from public Cache Valley plumbing directories, so it skews toward established, well-reviewed companies. A random sample of every company in town would almost certainly look worse, not better.
The companies
| Company | Named in | |
|---|---|---|
| Apex Plumbing | 0/10 | invisible |
| Gary Ricks Services | 0/10 | invisible |
| Canyon Plumbing & Heating | 0/10 | invisible |
| Restore Pipe Systems | 0/10 | invisible |
| Lee's Plumbing | 0/10 | invisible |
| Craig's Quality Plumbing | 0/10 | invisible |
| Backdoor Piping & HVAC | 0/10 | invisible |
| Scott James Plumbing & Heating | 0/10 | invisible |
| Myers Plumbing | 0/10 | invisible |
| Larsen Plumbing & Heating | 0/10 | invisible |
| Jim Hill Plumbing | 0/10 | invisible |
| Service Depot | 1/10 | partial |
| Roto-Rooter | 7/10 | partial |
| Holm's Plumbing | 8/10 | partial |
| Trujillo Plumbing & Rooter Service | 9/10 | partial |
Snapshot from July 2026. AI answers shift over time, so this is where things stood when we ran it, not a permanent verdict. This measures whether AI names a company, not the quality of its work, and we're not affiliated with any of these companies.
Who AI does name
Google's AI leaned on a small, shifting handful: Trujillo, Holm's, and Roto-Rooter from our list, plus names it pulled from elsewhere like Jerry's Plumbing Repair, JM Mechanical, and Logan Plumbing Co. Ask the same question twice and the list moved.
| Company AI named | Times |
|---|---|
| Trujillo Plumbing & Rooter Service | 9/10 |
| Holm's Plumbing | 8/10 |
| Roto-Rooter | 7/10 |
| Jerry's Plumbing Repair | 7/10 |
| JM Mechanical | 4/10 |
| Logan Plumbing Co | 3/10 |
That's the opening. AI is willing to recommend Cache Valley plumbers — it just isn't naming most of them, and the ones it names aren't the ones with the most reviews. They're the ones with a presence it can actually read: consistent listings, mentions across the sites it trusts, a site it can parse. That's learnable, and it's exactly what a business can fix.
Why it happens
AI assistants name businesses whose websites spell out their services, the areas they serve, and homeowner questions in a form a machine can read, backed by steady reviews on the sources these tools trust. A company can have great plumbers and a five-star reputation and still get skipped, because the signals an AI relies on aren't on the page in a way it can use.
There's no ranking report and no traffic drop to warn you when this happens. The only way to know where you stand is to ask the AI the way your homeowners do.
A note for the companies on this list
If you run one of these companies and want the specific questions you were missing from, plus the two or three things on your site that would most improve your odds, email jeff@namedlocal.com and I'll send your breakdown. No charge, and no pitch you didn't ask for.
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