How AI Assistants Recommend Florida Roofers (Q2 2026)

The one-sentence finding

If you ask four different AI assistants who the best roofer in your Florida city is, you get four meaningfully different answers, and most local roofers are missing from at least half of them.

That is the whole point of this report. "Are we visible in AI search?" is the wrong question, because it assumes one answer exists. There are at least four, and they disagree.

How we measured this

This is the first published run of the Florida Local Search Index AI-visibility layer. The method is deliberately boring, because boring is what makes it citable.

• The assistants: ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (Google), Grok (xAI), and Claude (Anthropic), each called through its API with live web search or Google grounding enabled.
• The questions: a frozen set of 8 natural roofing prompts: best roofer in [city], FL, who should I call for a roof replacement in [city], FL, best company for storm damage roof repair in [city], FL, and similar.
• The repetition: each prompt was run 5 times per assistant, because AI answers vary run to run. We report how often a business appears (for example, 4 of 5 runs), never a single answer.
• The record: every answer was saved verbatim with its timestamp and model version. We then extracted the businesses each answer named. Nothing here is an estimate.

That works out to 8 prompts x 5 runs = 40 answers per assistant per city, or 160 answers per market across the four assistants.

Titusville: a two-business race that depends on the assistant

In Titusville, two businesses dominate, but which one leads flips by assistant:

Robert Jones Roofing and Titan Roofing of Florida are the clear AI-visible leaders in Titusville: between them they top three of the four assistants and appear heavily on the fourth. Notably, Claude tells a different story, putting Flagship Roofing first. If you only checked ChatGPT, you would never know Flagship was a contender; if you only checked Claude, you would underrate Titan.

Melbourne: the rare cross-assistant winner

Melbourne is the cleanest result in the dataset, and the best illustration of what "winning" AI visibility looks like:

If you are a Melbourne roofer and your name is not DC Roofing, JT Roofing, Patrick Roofing, or one of the handful above, the AI assistants are recommending your competitors and not you.

Orlando: a big market with no consensus

Orlando is the largest, most saturated market we measured, and it shows. No single business led across assistants:

Schick Roofing has the strongest overall position (leading Grok and Gemini), but ChatGPT and Claude name entirely different businesses first. In a market this fragmented, AI visibility is genuinely up for grabs. No roofer owns the conversation yet.

What this means for a local roofer

Methodology and honest limits

We would rather under-claim than over-claim, so here is exactly what this is and is not.

• What it is: measured primary data. Real questions, run repeatedly, recorded verbatim, with the businesses extracted from those recorded answers. Whether a business appears is a reproducible fact about that assistant at that time.
• Coverage: three markets (Titusville, Melbourne, Orlando), one trade (roofing), Q2 2026. This is a sample, not a statewide census. The method scales; the coverage will grow.
• The assistants are API surfaces, not the consumer apps. We measured the ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude APIs with web search or grounding on. These are the best measurable proxies, but they are not identical to what you see typing into chatgpt.com, and Google's AI Overviews have no API and are not measured here. We disclose that gap rather than paper over it.
• Model versions drift. The assistants change their underlying models over time. We record the model version on every answer so future comparisons stay honest. Today's snapshot is exactly that: today's.
• Naming: we report the businesses these assistants recommend. That is a positive, observable fact about those businesses. We do not publish a "worst" list.

Want to know where your business stands?

This report covers roofing in three cities. The same measurement runs for any local trade in any Florida market: optometrists, restaurants, law firms, flooring, real estate, and more.