How we measure who AI recommends

These rankings aren't opinions, votes, or paid placements. They are a record of what AI actually answers when we ask it — the same way a real business owner would — who to call.

The five steps, in plain language

1. 1

   We ask the questions real business owners ask.

   In each metro we ask leading AI assistants for a commercial security company 4 different ways per service — everyday phrasings like "Who is the best commercial security company in my city?", "I manage a commercial building and need the fire alarm system inspected. Who should I hire?", and "What company should I call to install access control at my office?". We ask separately about four kinds of work: fire alarm, access control, security cameras, and commercial security systems. No trick prompts, no leading questions. Across 34 metros and all four services, that came to 532 checks for this edition.

2. 2

   We record every company it names.

   Each answer gets logged exactly as given. We then match every recommendation against the 2,211 commercial security companies in our dataset. Each business AI names is credited to exactly one company — and when we can't tell for certain which local company it meant, no one gets the credit. No company is ever 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 each service list shows how many of the 4 checks named each company. 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, service by service. 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. This edition: July 2026.

This edition

What this is — and what it isn't

Being on this list means AI recommended that company when we asked, in that 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 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.