How to Get Your Business Recommended by ChatGPT: We Asked Four AI Engines for an HVAC Company in Baltimore

On October 11, 2026, we asked four AI assistants the question a homeowner in Baltimore County asks when the house goes cold or the AC quits. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude each got the same three questions, with web search on wherever the engine allows it:

1. 01"Recommend an HVAC company in Greater Baltimore, Maryland."
2. 02"Who is the best HVAC company near Towson, MD for a furnace replacement?"
3. 03"My AC stopped working. Which company should I call for AC repair in Baltimore County?"

That is twelve answers. Below is what came back, what the answers said they were leaning on, and what it means if you want your business to be one of the names. One note first: we are not recommending anyone here. These are the engines' answers on one day, reported as they gave them.

What the four engines actually said

The first finding is the one that matters most: the engines did not agree. Across twelve answers, no single company was named by all four.

• Perry Hall Heating & Air Conditioning came up most often, in 5 of the 12 answers, all from ChatGPT and Gemini. ChatGPT made it the first call for AC repair in Baltimore County.
• A.J. Michaels was named in 4 answers, by three different engines. For the plain "recommend an HVAC company in Greater Baltimore" question, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity all included it, and ChatGPT and Perplexity put it first.
• SuperTech HVAC and F.H. Furr were each named in 4 answers, but each by only two engines.
• For the Towson furnace question, ChatGPT started with Beltway Air Conditioning, Heating & Plumbing; Perplexity started with Albright's Mechanical Services; Gemini started with SuperTech. Three engines, three different first picks.
• Claude named companies only when it searched the web. On the two questions where it answered without searching, it declined to name anyone and told the asker to check reviews and licensing themselves.

So "getting recommended by ChatGPT" is the wrong goal on its own. A homeowner might ask any of these assistants, phrase the question any of a dozen ways, and get a different shortlist each time. The businesses that came up repeatedly were not the ones that had done something clever for one engine. They were the ones with the most evidence about them, in the most places.

What the answers leaned on

You don't have to guess what an engine was looking at; most of these answers say so. Reading all twelve, the same kinds of evidence kept appearing:

• Ratings and review counts. Most of the twelve answers mentioned a rating or reviews. Claude's one named answer described a company with "over 500 5-star reviews." ChatGPT pointed to a company page advertising "2,100+ 5-star reviews."
• Local conversation. Three of ChatGPT's answers cited Reddit, including a recent thread on r/BaltimoreCounty where locals recommended companies for honest diagnosis and no pressure to replace. A Reddit thread in your county is word of mouth that a machine can read.
• Third-party listings. BBB accreditation, review aggregators, a manufacturer's dealer page with its own rating, a "best pick" listing. These came up as reasons to trust a name.
• A page for the town. ChatGPT cited one company's dedicated Towson page. Perplexity started with another because it "explicitly serves Towson." When the question named a town, a business that clearly says it works in that town had an easy way into the answer.
• Plain facts the engine could repeat. Phone numbers, service areas, "24/7 emergency service," hours, the year a company was founded. Five answers mentioned 24/7 availability, and several said where a company was based. An answer is built from statements, and a business that states its basics clearly gives the engine something to say.
• Licensing. Eight of the twelve answers brought up licensing, often telling the homeowner to check a contractor's Maryland license. That is advice to the buyer, but it is also a hint: a license number stated plainly on your own site is one less thing for anyone, person or machine, to wonder about.

None of that is new. It is the same evidence a careful homeowner would gather by hand: reviews, what the neighbors say, whether you actually work in their town, whether you're licensed. The AI answer is a shortcut through that search, not a replacement for it.

Why being found now includes being found by an AI

AI search results increasingly answer a customer's question before they ever reach a business's website. A homeowner who asks an assistant for a name may never see your site, your ads or your Google listing directly; they see a short answer, built from all of those, with a handful of companies in it. The ones left out don't get a second look.

That is why we treat AI visibility as part of being found, not as a separate project. If you want the longer version of how these answers get assembled, we wrote about it in getting named by ChatGPT. The short version is above: the answers are only as good as the evidence about you that is out there to find.

Why a roofer and a dentist aren't found the same way

How a roofer in Towson gets found is different from how a dental practice in Bel Air gets found, and the same is true of how each one gets named in an AI answer. A furnace that quits in January is an emergency; a homeowner wants a phone number and someone who comes tonight, which is why "24/7" and a local phone number showed up so often above. A patient choosing a dentist is making a slower decision and reading more.

We track this for the practices we work with. A dental practice in Timonium is named in 23 of the 40 AI answers we check for it each week, and 9 of its 16 tracked searches are in Google's top three. Its strongest pages answer the questions patients actually ask, in plain sentences, with the practice's own facts. Different trade, same principle: the business that is easiest to describe accurately is the one that gets described.

What to check in your own business first

Before spending a dollar on anything labeled "AI optimization," check the basics, because they are what the answers above were built from:

1. 01Your Google Business Profile. Are your name, phone, address and service area exactly the same as on your website? Are there recent photos of your actual work? (We wrote about why real job photos matter on a profile.)
2. 02Your reviews. How many, how recent, and do you reply? The engines quoted counts and ratings; a profile with 40 reviews from 2019 tells them less than one with steady reviews this year.
3. 03A page for each place you want work from. If you want furnace jobs in Towson, is there a page that says, plainly, that you do furnace replacements in Towson?
4. 04Your plain facts, stated plainly. Hours, emergency availability, license number, the year you started, the brands you service. Sentences, not just a logo strip.
5. 05What people say about you elsewhere. Search your company name with "reddit" and your county. If the conversation exists, you'll know what an engine will find. If it doesn't, the work is getting more customers to talk about you in public.
6. 06Ask the engines yourself. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude the question your customer would ask, with your town in it. Note who comes up and what the answer says about them.

If you'd rather have someone run all of that for you, our free site audit checks the website side of it, and it's a reasonable place to start.

How we'd figure out where you're losing ground

If the checklist turns up more than you want to fix yourself, that's what a discovery call is for: thirty minutes on the phone, five questions about how your business actually gets work now, and a fixed-scope plan with a price on it. If we can't help, we say so on the call.

For HVAC and other trades, our work with HVAC companies covers the full picture, including local SEO, map pack and AI search visibility as part of Managed Growth. We won't promise you a spot in an AI answer, because nobody can; what we can do is make sure the evidence about your business is complete, consistent and easy to repeat.

Where this fits with everything else

AI visibility is one more leak, sitting next to the ones most owners already know about: estimates that never get a follow-up, calls that go to voicemail after five, a Google profile nobody has touched in a year. Fix the evidence and the follow-up together, and the answers have something good to say about you, and the customer who calls gets an answer too.

If you want to talk through where your business stands, book a discovery call.