Every city has its own winner.When homeowners ask Perplexity for an HVAC company, there is no statewide leader. Each city has one or two local companies that AI names again and again, and the rest share what is left.
By Joel Maldonado, Neural Command (NRLC.ai) · Published 12 October 2026 · Method · Data (CSV) · PDF
Key findings
The companies Perplexity names most
Answers naming each company, out of 150 homeowner questions across 18 cities.
Every leader is local: LC Heating & Air in Los Angeles, Hilo Aire in Santa Clarita, Air-Tro in Pasadena, Anacapa and West Coast Air Conditioning in Oxnard. Most of each leader's mentions came from its own city.
Lead-gen sites feed most answers
Share of the 150 answers citing each website. Perplexity cited 10 sites per answer on average.
A strong site, plus the listings
What the most-recommended companies have in common.
The leaders' own sites were cited directly: LC Heating & Air's 15 times, and Hilo Aire's, Guthrie & Sons' and DeHart's 8 times each. Pages that answer the homeowner's question get quoted.
114 of 150 answers (76%) cited serviceagent.ai, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, ConsumerAffairs or similar. A company missing from them is rarely in the answer.
34 answers (23%) repeated star ratings or review counts, and 24 (16%) quoted prices. Companies with visible reviews and published pricing give AI something to say.
Aire Serv's city pages were cited 26 times, and "Aire Serv of Temecula" and "Aire Serv of Pasadena" were named by city. A location page per service area matches how homeowners ask.
Each city has a different winner
The company named most often for each city. Samples per city are small (8 or 9 questions), so read this as a direction, not a ranking.
| City | Named most often | Answers | Different companies named |
|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Clarita | Hilo Aire | 7 of 8 | 11 |
| Los Angeles | LC Heating & Air | 6 of 8 | 11 |
| Oxnard | Anacapa Heating & Air | 6 of 8 | 12 |
| Pasadena | Air-Tro | 5 of 8 | 11 |
| Temecula | Advanced Heating & Air Conditioning | 5 of 8 | 12 |
| Escondido | Free Air Mechanical | 4 of 9 | 13 |
| Modesto | DeHart Plumbing, Heating & Air | 4 of 8 | 11 |
| San Diego | Guthrie & Sons | 4 of 8 | 15 |
| Anaheim | J Martin Indoor Air Quality | 3 of 8 | 16 |
| Bakersfield | Greer's Banner Air | 3 of 8 | 17 |
| Irvine | McMaster Air & Heat | 3 of 8 | 18 |
| Riverside | ServLegacy | 3 of 8 | 14 |
| San Francisco | Magic Plumbing Heating & Cooling | 3 of 8 | 9 |
| San Jose | Comfort Energy | 3 of 8 | 17 |
| Fresno | Maximum Air | 2 of 8 | 17 |
| Long Beach | AirPoint HVAC | 2 of 8 | 12 |
| Oakland | Atlas Heating and Air Conditioning | 2 of 8 | 13 |
| Sacramento | A Cool Air, Inc. | 2 of 8 | 17 |
Open ground. Fresno, Sacramento, Oakland and Long Beach have no company named more than twice in 8 answers. A company there that fixes its site and listings has the best chance of taking the city.
Five fixes, in order of impact
What an HVAC company can do to be recommended more often.
- Complete the lead-gen and review listingsImpact: HighEffort: Low
Claim and complete profiles on Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, Yelp and the HVAC directories AI cites, with every service and city you cover. - Build a page per service and cityImpact: HighEffort: Medium
"AC repair in Pasadena", "heat pump installation in Pasadena": one page each, answering what homeowners ask, with your licence and service area. - Publish prices and offersImpact: MediumEffort: Low
Service-call fees, tune-up prices and rebate help, in plain text. Perplexity quoted prices in 16% of answers. - Make your reviews visibleImpact: MediumEffort: Medium
Show your rating and review count on your site and keep earning Google and Yelp reviews. AI repeats them. - Keep your name and details identical everywhereImpact: MediumEffort: Low
Same company name, phone, address and service area on every listing, so AI treats them as one company.
Method
150 questions written the way California homeowners ask, across 8 HVAC services and 18 cities plus statewide. Perplexity's search-backed answer engine (Agent API, 'fast' preset) via the API on 12 October 2026; one answer per question, no account history. Every company named and every site cited was recorded; names were extracted from the answers and variants merged. AI answers vary between sessions, and the Perplexity app can answer differently from the API. Per-area samples are small.
The question-level data is published below so anyone can check or reuse the counts. It lists each question, the companies named in the answer and the websites cited. Business names are as written in each answer (spelling variants were merged for the counts above, not in the file). Full answer text is not republished.
Data and downloads
150 rows, one per AI answer (perplexity). Licensed CC BY 4.0: free to reuse with credit to NRLC.ai.
Cite this study
Journalists: data questions and interviews, joel.m@neuralcommandllc.com.
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