How we measure who AI recommends

These rankings aren't opinions, votes, or paid placements. They are a record of what AI actually answered when we asked — the same way a building owner would — who to see.

The five steps, in plain language

1. 1

   We ask the questions real building owners ask.

   In each metro we ask leading AI assistants for a fire protection company several different ways — everyday phrasings like "Who is the best fire protection company near me?", "Who can service the fire extinguishers in my building?", and "Which company should inspect our fire sprinkler system?". No trick prompts, no leading questions.

2. 2

   We record every company it names.

   Each answer gets logged exactly as given. We then match every recommendation against the U.S. companies in our dataset. When AI names a business with multiple locations, we credit it once — one winner per named business, so no company is double-counted.

3. 3

   We publish the count, not a number one.

   We tested this. Running the identical questions on the identical list a second time, the same day, changed which company came out on top in more than a third of markets — and in most markets the top spot was already shared by two to five of them. What did NOT move was the count: a company named in most checks was named in most checks again. So the page shows how many of the 5 checks named each one. Companies with the same count are shown together, alphabetically, because the measurement does not separate them.

4. 4

   Named once doesn't make the list.

   Companies named in exactly one check reappeared less than half the time when we re-ran the same questions. That is a coin flip, not a recommendation, so we keep the data and don't publish the name. Two mentions came back 86% of the time; four came back every time. Each metro page shows only the companies AI named more than once. We never publish a bottom list and never name who didn't make it.

5. 5

   We re-run it quarterly.

   The same benchmark, the same way, every quarter. Companies that improve their AI visibility can appear in the next edition — and the run date is printed on every page. The first edition is being measured now.

This edition

What this is — and what it isn't

Being on this list means AI recommended that company when we asked, in this edition, in that metro. It is a measurement of AI visibility — not a judgment of the quality of anyone's work, and not a claim that unlisted fire protection companies are worse at what they do. AI answers also change over time, which is exactly why we re-measure quarterly and date every edition.