AI Visibility Index
81% of pest-control businesses we scanned got zero citations from AI answer engines, and 62% weren't mentioned at all.
A first-party benchmark of 32 pest-control businesses in one Southwest Riverside County market we scanned in June 2026, across the ChatGPT and Perplexity answer engines. It is a local snapshot, not a national figure.
The finding
In June 2026 we scanned 32 pest-control businesses across one Southwest Riverside County market, asking the AI answer engines the question a customer would ask: who is the best pest control in this city. 26 of the 32, or 81%, got zero citations from any engine. Only 6 were cited. Another 6 were named in the answer text without a citation, and the remaining 20, or 62%, were absent entirely, never named and never linked. When someone asks AI who to call, most of these businesses are simply not in the answer.
The numbers
- 81% got zero citations. 26 of 32 businesses were not cited by a single engine.
- 62% were absent entirely. 20 of 32 were never named and never linked in a single answer.
- 38% appeared at all. 12 of 32 were named or cited by at least one engine, and only 6 of those were actually cited.
- The engines cited almost no one. Perplexity cited 5 of the 32; ChatGPT cited just 1.
- The citations concentrate. A small handful of domains captured most of what the engines did give out, and everyone else was absent.
How we measured it
We ran 32 real pest-control businesses across one Southwest Riverside County market through two leading AI answer engines, ChatGPT and Perplexity, in June 2026, using the natural query a customer types: "best pest control in [city]." For each business we recorded two things: whether it was cited, meaning an engine named it with a link, and whether it appeared by name at all. A business counts as cited only when an engine actually linked it. A name with no link counts as appearing but not cited. An ambiguous mention was counted the conservative way, as absent. This benchmark measured two answer engines; our full visibility scan covers more. We do not name the businesses we scanned, or any business that surfaced in the answers. The aggregate is the point, and the aggregate is real.
This is one vertical, one region, one point in time. We publish it as a benchmark of a pattern we see everywhere: most local businesses that are excellent at the actual work fall out of the answer the moment the search moves to AI.
Cite this
SMPL Strategies, AI Visibility Index: Pest Control (June 2026). https://smplstrategies.com/resources/ai-visibility-index/pest-control/