What does AI cite when people search for a home services contractor?

On 2026-09-26 we sent five home services prompts, one run each, to gpt-5.1 with its web search tool on, and recorded every URL the model attached to its answer. We sorted each cited host by type with our own simple rules: a contractor's own site, a directory or review site, a news, reference or government site, Reddit, or social. The sorting is ours; the hosts are what the model attached.

The prompts were written the way a homeowner would type them, one per trade and city: roof replacement contractor in Toronto, best plumber in Vancouver for a water heater, HVAC company in Calgary for furnace repair, electrician recommendations in Chicago for a panel upgrade, and landscaping company in Dallas for a backyard redesign.

Toronto roofing: seven citations to four hosts, homestars.com, reviews.birdeye.com, trustanalytica.org and reddit.com. The answer named five roofing companies drawn from those pages and spent most of its length on how to choose: detailed reviews, two or three written quotes, credentials, and avoiding door-knock offers.

Vancouver plumbing: nine citations to homestars.com, bestprosintown.com, plumbing.ca and reviews.birdeye.com. The answer named seven plumbing companies from those pages with a checklist. No plumber's own site was cited.

Calgary furnace repair: five citations, all to HVAC companies' own sites, comfortunion.com, fagnansfurnace.ca, harmonyheating.ca, onestophvac.ca and primeairltd.ca, and the answer named exactly those five. Dallas landscaping: five citations, all to landscapers' own sites, alterradesignllc.com, dallasdreamyard.com, longhorntx.com, oc-dfw.com and originallandscapeconcepts.com, and again the answer named those five.

Chicago electrician: eleven citations to nine hosts, angi.com, homeadvisor.com, homeguide.com, consumeraffairs.com, reddit.com, reviews.birdeye.com, serviceagent.ai, a home inspection company and a local guide site. The answer named a few electricians, quoted a typical cost range for a panel upgrade taken from those aggregators, and listed licence, insurance and permit checks.

The split is stark. For the two Canadian trades where HomeStars is a dominant directory, roofing in Toronto and plumbing in Vancouver, the model built its whole answer from HomeStars, review aggregators and Reddit and never cited a contractor. For furnace repair in Calgary and landscaping in Dallas it cited only contractors' own sites and named exactly the companies whose pages it read. For the Chicago electrician it used the US directory set, Angi and HomeAdvisor and HomeGuide, plus Reddit, and pulled a price range from them.

By our sorting, 21 of 37 citations were directory or review sites, 12 were contractors' own sites and four were Reddit. The twelve own-site citations came from two prompts and none from the other three.

For a Canadian roofer or plumber, the HomeStars profile and the review aggregators are where the model looked, so the profile, its reviews and the consistency of the company name across those sites matter as much as the website for this kind of answer. For a US electrician, Angi, HomeAdvisor and HomeGuide played that role, and the model also read price guides, so a contractor's own plain page about what a panel upgrade costs and involves is the page that could be cited instead.

The Calgary and Dallas results show the other path: when the model cites contractor sites, it names exactly the companies it read, so a clear service page for the specific job, furnace repair, backyard redesign, with the city named, is what gets a contractor into the answer. SearchPod builds those pages, keeps directory profiles consistent, and tracks which prompts cite a contractor with a fixed prompt panel.

A single model, a single run of each of five prompts, on one date. Another day, model or wording would produce different citations, and the host sorting is ours. The contractors the model named are recorded only as what it said; nothing on this page verifies or endorses any company.