NamedLocal › Studies › National: plumbers
We took 74 established, well-reviewed plumbing companies across Denver, Phoenix, Nashville, Charlotte, Columbus, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Cache Valley, asked Google's AI the questions a homeowner actually types, and recorded who it named back. 39 of the 74 never came up.
This isn't a story about one unlucky town. The share of invisible companies ran from 14% in Columbus to 73% in Cache Valley, and in half the cities it was 50% or worse.
These rosters skew toward the strong end of each market: companies that show up on public "best plumber in [city]" lists, many with hundreds or thousands of reviews. A random sample of every plumber in each city would almost certainly look worse.
The pattern
The single most repeatable finding, in city after city: a big pile of Google reviews did not translate into being named by AI.
Reviews are a reputation signal for humans reading a Google profile. AI assistants build their answers from a different footprint: what a company's site says in machine-readable form, and where it's mentioned across the sources the AI reads. Those two footprints barely overlapped here.
By city
| City | Checked | Never named | Invisible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cache Valley, UT | 15 | 11 | 73% |
| Denver, CO | 7 | 5 | 71% |
| Phoenix, AZ | 7 | 5 | 71% |
| Salt Lake City, UT | 18 | 9 | 50% |
| Nashville, TN | 7 | 3 | 43% |
| Charlotte, NC | 7 | 3 | 43% |
| Portland, OR | 6 | 2 | 33% |
| Columbus, OH | 7 | 1 | 14% |
| Total | 74 | 39 | 53% |
Salt Lake City and Cache Valley are from our earlier single-market studies using the same method and question set; the other six cities were run 2026-07-05. Links go to the full per-company breakdowns.
How we checked
Nothing you can't repeat yourself. For each city we sent Google's AI (the Gemini model behind Google's AI answers) 10 real homeowner-style questions, twice each, and recorded every plumbing company it named. Questions like:
A company counts as "invisible" if it was named in none of the answers, and "named" if it came up at least once. Rosters came from public "best plumber in [city]" lists, so they skew toward established, well-reviewed companies.
The companies
| A Better Plumber | invisible |
| TYCO Plumbing | invisible |
| Aurora Plumbing Company | invisible |
| SWAN Plumbing, Heating & Air | invisible |
| Drain Terrier | invisible |
| King Rooter & Plumbing | named |
| Applewood Plumbing, Heating & Electric | named |
| Custom Plumbing of Arizona | invisible |
| Benjamin Franklin Plumbing | invisible |
| Pink Plumbing & Sewers | invisible |
| Moon Valley Plumbing | invisible |
| Mr. Rooter Plumbing of Maricopa County | invisible |
| George Brazil Plumbing & Electrical | named |
| The Plumber Inc | named |
| Doctor Drips | invisible |
| Donelson Air | invisible |
| 100 Percent Plumbing | invisible |
| Hoffmann Brothers | named |
| Wehby Plumbing | named |
| Morton Plumbing, Heating & Cooling | named |
| Mr. Rooter Plumbing of South Nashville | named |
| FATman Plumbing Pro | invisible |
| E.R. Services | invisible |
| Guaranteed Plumbing & Construction | invisible |
| Superior Plumbing and Drains | named |
| Queen City Plumbing | named |
| Three Way Plumbing Services | named |
| WyattWorks Plumbing | named |
| Pro Drain & Rooter Service | invisible |
| Crouchley Plumbing Company | invisible |
| Service Plus Plumbing | named |
| Rescue Rooter Portland | named |
| Mr. Rooter | named |
| Axiom PDX | named |
| McDermott Plumbing & Backflow | invisible |
| The Waterworks | named |
| The Local Plumber | named |
| Apex Plumbing, Heating and Air Pros | named |
| Plumbing & Drain Professionals | named |
| DrainMaster | named |
| The Eco Plumbers | named |
Salt Lake City and Cache Valley have full per-company counts on their own pages: Salt Lake City plumbers and Cache Valley plumbers.
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
The AI wasn't refusing to answer. In every city it named plumbers confidently: a small, shifting set that changed with the phrasing of the question, often including businesses that weren't on our roster at all. Roto-Rooter showed up in every single market we checked. Ask the same question twice and the list moved.
That instability is the opening. No one owns these answers yet. The companies that do get named have a footprint AI can actually read: consistent listings, mentions on sources it trusts, and a site that says plainly what they do and where. That's learnable, and it's exactly the kind of thing a business can fix.
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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