The 5 Biggest HVAC Companies in San Antonio Are Mostly Invisible to ChatGPT. Here's the Data.

I ran 60 AI search queries on the five biggest HVAC companies in San Antonio. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. Four queries on each surface. The kind of questions a homeowner actually types when their AC goes out in July.

The five companies collectively earned 9 citations out of 60 possible. That's 15% AI visibility for the most recognized names in the metro.

The most-recognized brand in the city scored 33%. The one with 850+ Google reviews and a BBB ethics award scored 0%. The company that wrote the article ranking #1 on Google for "best HVAC San Antonio" also scored 0%.

I'm going to walk through what I tested, what I found, and what it actually takes to show up in AI search if you run a home service business in San Antonio.

What I tested

I picked five HVAC companies that any San Antonio homeowner would recognize:

• TemperaturePro San Antonio (850+ Google reviews, BBB Torch Award finalist, woman-owned since 2017)
• Cowboys AC (KSAT 2025 SA Picks winner, UTSA Athletics partner, family-owned since 1985)
• Honeycomb Air (5.0 stars, 500+ reviews, MySA YourSA finalist, founded 2024)
• Champion AC (3,500+ reviews across platforms, veteran-owned since 2007)
• Jon Wayne Service Company (the brand most San Antonio homeowners can name without thinking, since 2001)

I ran four queries on each AI surface:

• "best HVAC company San Antonio"
• "AC repair San Antonio"
• "emergency HVAC near me" (with location set to San Antonio)
• "AC installation San Antonio"

Three AI surfaces:

• ChatGPT with search mode on
• Perplexity
• Google AI Overviews from incognito with San Antonio set as the location

Five companies. Four queries. Three surfaces. 60 data points. I screenshotted everything.

The numbers

Here's how each of the five companies scored across all 12 query-by-surface combinations:

• TemperaturePro SA (850+ Google reviews, BBB Torch finalist, founded 2017): 0%
• Honeycomb Air (500+ Google reviews, 5.0★, MySA finalist, founded 2024): 0%
• Champion AC (3,500+ reviews across the web, founded 2007): 17%
• Cowboys AC (KSAT 2025 winner, UTSA partner, founded 1985): 25%
• Jon Wayne (the biggest HVAC brand in San Antonio, founded 2001): 33%

A score of 0% means the company did not appear in any of the 12 query by surface combinations. Not as a citation, not as a recommendation, not even as a passing mention.

A score of 33% means Jon Wayne, the most recognized HVAC brand in the city, was cited 4 of 12 possible times. That's the ceiling of what any of the five biggest names hit.

The first surprise: Google AI Overviews never triggered

This was the number ONE finding I did not expect.

Across all four queries, Google's AI Overview did not appear once. Not on "best HVAC company." Not on "AC repair." Not on "emergency HVAC near me." Not on "AC installation."

Why? Google deliberately suppresses AI Overviews on commercial intent local queries. The reason is mechanical: AI Overviews don't show ads, and these queries are some of the highest-revenue ad inventory Google has. So Google holds back AIO and shows you sponsored Local Service Ads, sponsored search ads, and the Map Pack instead.

If you are running a home service business and you have been worried about Google AI eating your traffic, here's the practical truth: in commercial-intent local search today, Google's AI is barely in the room. Map Pack, paid ads, and organic listings are still the game.

ChatGPT and Perplexity are a different story.

The second surprise: the article that "wins" Google won nothing in AI

Honeycomb Air built the textbook play. They wrote a deeply optimized listicle titled "Best HVAC Companies in San Antonio 2026." They ranked themselves #1 in their own article. They link out to nine competitors. The article currently holds three of the top four organic spots on Google for that exact query.

In AI search, that article got cited zero times. Not by ChatGPT. Not by Perplexity. Not anywhere.

Honeycomb itself, the company, also scored 0%. Despite the listicle, despite 5.0 stars across 500+ reviews, despite the MySA YourSA finalist badge.

The "build a comparison article" SEO play that wins Google does not transfer to AI search. AI engines look at different signals.

The third surprise: llms.txt isn't the silver bullet

Going into this test, I assumed the company without an llms.txt file (Jon Wayne) would underperform the four that had one (TemperaturePro, Cowboys, Honeycomb, Champion).

The opposite happened. Jon Wayne scored 33%, the highest of the five. The four with llms.txt averaged 11%.

llms.txt is a useful piece of infrastructure. It is not by itself a ranking factor. What carried Jon Wayne was something more boring: brand recognition, decades of citations across the local web, and a strong Map Pack presence on transactional queries.

If anyone tells you "ship llms.txt and you'll rank in ChatGPT," they're selling you a shortcut that doesn't exist.

What actually wins AI search in San Antonio HVAC

The data is consistent across the surfaces that did show real AI behavior, namely ChatGPT and Perplexity. Four signals are doing the work:

1. Forbes mentions

Forbes was the single most-cited source in ChatGPT's answers across the four queries. Two of the five companies ChatGPT recommended for "best HVAC San Antonio" were cited via Forbes. ASC Heating & Air and ABC Home & Commercial Services both got Forbes-cited and both showed up in AI answers.

If you can land a placement in a Forbes "best of" list (and there's a real submission process for these), you get a citation that ChatGPT trusts more than your own website.

2. Yelp top-10 list pages

Perplexity's most cited source was Yelp's "TOP 10 BEST AC Repair in San Antonio" listing pages. Not Yelp business profiles. The editorial-style top-10 list pages.

Getting placed in those Yelp lists, optimizing your Yelp profile to qualify, and earning the badges Yelp uses to populate them is real work that pays off in AI citations.

3. Owned blog content AI can cite directly

One of the AI recommended companies in this test, All About Air Conditioning & Heating LLC, won by being cited via their own blog. Perplexity surfaced their article directly as a primary source for "best HVAC company San Antonio."

This is rare and it's powerful. To pull it off, the blog post has to be written for AI citation: clear question, clear answer, primary source format, schema markup, FAQ structure, and topical authority on the parent site. Honeycomb's listicle didn't get cited because it reads as marketing. All About AC's post got cited because it reads as reference.

4. Neighborhood-level pages and Map Pack

Cowboys AC was the only company in the test with a neighborhood-specific emergency page (cowboysac.com/brooks-city-base-area-emergency-ac-repair/) that ranked organic top-10 on Google. They scored 25%, the second-highest of the five.

Map Pack presence carried Jon Wayne's 33%. The Map Pack is its own algorithmic ranker. Strong GBP optimization, neighborhood level service pages, and citation density still carry weight, especially on commercial-intent queries where AIO doesn't trigger.

What this means if you run a home service business in San Antonio

Three things.

First, if you have been told "AI is the future, you have to be ready," the data says the future is here on some queries and absent on others. Informational queries ("best HVAC company") trigger AI. Commercial queries ("AC repair," "AC installation," "emergency HVAC near me") still run on Map Pack and paid ads. Plan for both.

Second, the visibility gap is real but it's not yet won. The biggest names in the city collectively earned 15%. That means there's no entrenched AI search incumbent in SA HVAC. The window is open.

Third, the path to closing the gap is not a single lever. It's a stack: Forbes tier citations, Yelp top 10 placements, owned blog content written for AI citation, and neighborhood-level GBP and organic pages. Each piece reinforces the others.

This applies past HVAC. Plumbing, electrical, roofing, landscaping, and the rest of home services all show similar patterns in the queries I have spot checked. HVAC is just the canary.

How I'd approach this if I were starting today

If I owned a home service business in San Antonio and wanted to start showing up in ChatGPT and Perplexity for my category, here's the order I'd run:

1. Audit current AI visibility on 4 to 6 of your top buying-intent queries. Three AI surfaces, screenshot everything. This whole post is the methodology.
2. Identify which third-party authority pages already win those citations. For HVAC in SA, that's Forbes, Yelp top-10 pages, MySA, and Angi.
3. Make a list of which of those you're already on, and which you're not. Pursue the gaps in priority order.
4. Write 3 to 5 owned blog posts in primary-source format on the queries customers actually type. Schema-marked. FAQ-structured. Written to be quotable, not promotional.
5. Build neighborhood-specific service pages for the top 5 to 8 ZIP codes you serve. Cowboys' Brooks City Base page is a working template.
6. Fix the boring infrastructure: GBP completeness, citation consistency, schema markup, sitemap, llms.txt. None of these are silver bullets. All of them remove friction.

That stack takes 3 to 6 months. The window to do it before someone else in your category does is closing.

Closing

If you want to talk through what your AI visibility looks like, and what it would take to move it, I'm Danny Tsui. I run ByteSimple, a one-person San Antonio agency working with home service businesses. You can reach me at danny@bytesimple.io.